Section » CAFOs
Digest - Features and blogs: No flies on me, tomato realities, Osterholm revolves
The 'fix' is in: Sources say that the Obama Administration will nominate Michael Osterholm to head the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service on Monday, in clear violation of its own anti-revolving-door policy. Osterholm is a longtime supporter of food irradiation, but that's not all - if you have any expensive technological solution in need of a problem,
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Digest - features and opinion: Bisphenol A back-room dealings, CAFOs on land and sea
The FDA's ass is GRAS: Great investigative piece about the controversy over bisphenol A, the chemical used to line baby bottles and canned food, among hundreds of other uses. Is it a scientific dispute? Not really, it's mainly "a battle to protect a multibillion-dollar market from regulation. In the
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
Digest - News: The Vilsack reaction, ammonia-rama, and hungry holidays
Eaters unite: A fairly universal 'harumph' erupted from the sustainable-food community after the announcement of Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa, as Obama's USDA pick. As usual, Michael Pollan articulates why the community is pretty cynical but still holding out just a little bit of hope. (NPR) Food
Digest - News: More midnight rollbacks, valuing fast food, and Irish pork CSI
Heavy metal blowout: The FDA has recommended that the Bush Administration revise its consumer guidance on fish, changes that would encourage women and children to eat more fish despite growing concerns about mercury contamination (not to mention, um, the absolute unsustainability of our current seafood-consumption
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,
Digest: Toxic whales, piles of poop, and a brightening future for GM crops
Leaving resistance to the weeds?: In response to surging food prices and population growth, Brazil, the EU, and other regions that haven't allowed the cultivation of herbicide-tolerant and other GM crops are loosening their restrictions, crossing their fingers, and hoping for a second Green Revolution.
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,
Oprah show torpedos CAFOs, gives props to Prop. 2
As just about everyone probably knows, most of Oprah's Tuesday show was devoted to reporter Lisa Ling's "How We Treat the Animals We Eat" investigation. I don't have cable, and thought I could watch the episode one way or another
Judge tells UDSA to stop interfering with the California election
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled that the USDA has been improperly inserting itself into California electoral politics by planning advertisements that would advocate against Proposition 2, an initiative on the November 4th ballot. Proposition
Centralization takes center stage at the Commonwealth Club
As part of the "How We Eat" series at the Commonwealth Club this month, Slow Food Nation Policy and Communications director Naomi Starkman moderated a thoughtful panel discussion
Something good for a change: USDA increases info access on meat recalls
Score one for access to information. The USDA announced today that starting next month, it will publicize the names of retail stores that have received shipments of recalled meat and
Apocalypse Cowabunga! The Simpsons on factory farming
I'm close to finishing "Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds," a new book by the fearsomely qualified Claire Hope Cummings. It's
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
