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Digest – News: Peanut crime spree, spinach gets zapped, lonely locusts
Busting a nut: With the list of recalled peanut products topping 400, the Department of Justice begins a criminal investigation of the processing company behind it. The Food and Drug Act prohibits companies from knowingly transporting contaminated products across state lines, something the Peanut Corporation of America apparently did at least 12 times
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PR debacle for HFCS: Care for some mercury with your oatmeal?
That much-debated sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, is going to need more than a pricey PR campaign to fix this one. After one set of scientists found mercury — yes, everyone's favorite brain-impairing element — in almost half of commercial
Taxing cows to curb climate change
When you fill your car's tank, you pay a gas tax. Someday, when you fill your belly with cheese, milk, or steak, you might have to pay another type of gas tax — one levied on the methane and nitrous oxide emitted by the cows that produced or became your food. Bacteria in a cow's gut help digest what
Dope shit: Who to thank, and why, for antibiotics in your veggies
Manure, my favorite topic of conversation (particularly at parties), is pretty awesome. It has been a staple crop fertilizer virtually since humankind began cultivating its own food. It's everything synthetic fertilizer wishes
Stirring up some shit: New report on federal funding for factory farms’ waste and other programs
Agriculture policy in this country has been geared for 30-odd years toward one goal: the production of ever-cheaper food. But as is by now painfully obvious, cheap food has foisted its real costs onto the environment,
Produce perversions part 1: Living with the underbelly
Updated on 11/29 to clarify that perchlorate is from rocket fuel, not jet fuel. Thanks, Marc! (I admit that I thought they were the same thing; that is why I do not work for a defense logistics company.) 2008 has been, let's just say it, a pretty lousy year for food safety. Southern California meatpacker
Old snapshots document fish populations, curb “shifting baselines syndrome”
Most vacation snapshots spend their days languishing in photo albums, shoeboxes, or hard drives, not really doing anything useful. But thanks to a new field of research
Dispatch from APHA: Searching for the silver lining
Day two of the American Public Health Association meeting found me carting my breakfast (a poorly-executed bagel) to a hyper-air conditioned room to learn about bacteria on meat. Not the most ambient setting for food consumption,
Beware: Pirates patrol these waters
By Ben Bowman For the fish-loving Ethicurean, pensive while paddling a small craft through the treacherous Straits of Seafood Uncertainty, the signal ‘Safe Passage Ahead’ beamed from a passing research ship is more than enough to make the heart lift and quicken. This
Everything looks better when your head’s in the sand: The USDA stops tracking pesticide use
When I was four, I ate my mother's houseplant. (I claimed to have thought it was salad.) As any responsible mother would, she freaked out and called poison control. The friendly folks at the 800 number — who must get these kinds of calls all the time, poor guys — immediately asked her the two most
The trouble with Teflon
Farm Bill tension had me sequestered in the kitchen these past few evenings. With most things house-related, I find frustration to be an excellent source of motivation; I'm happy to report that thanks to the Farm Bill, the floors have been scrubbed, the cast-iron pan seasoned, and the last batch of citrus
The CAFO one-two punch
I am sitting in a swanky conference center on the outskirts of Phoenix, a city that may be one of our country's least sustainable, where the water is as scarce as the SUVs and air conditioners are numerous. But for all the shortcomings of developers who thought it would be a great idea to build a sprawling
Bucking the CAFO tax: A plea for conscientious objection
Here's a number to knock you out of that mid-day stupor: every year, taxpayers shell out between $7.1 billion and $8.2 billion to subsidize or clean up after our nation's 9,900 confined animal feeding operations. That's
Saving the songbirds (and ourselves)
Today's New York Times featured an op-ed by Bridget Stutchbury, a biology professor at the University of Toronto and author of Silence
Digest – Research: Recent Congressional Research Service reports
This is the debut of a sporadic digest of somewhat more weighty documents than typical digest items. The "Research" digest will include scientific papers, policy reports, and similar academic items. Today's edition is a collection of Congressional Research Service reports. If you have never
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