Must-bleed TV: Proving once again that the British have more balls than … well, anyone, a new show is debuting on the BBC called “Kill it. Cook it. Eat it.” It’s filmed in an abattoir with a restaurant built on the end. If our cable provider obliges, we’ll be tuning in to give those who […]

Meat technology: A Scientific American editorial discussing consumer resistance to cloned meat recommends transparency and labeling. One fact it says most meat eaters don’t know (and we didn’t): “The cattle industry has long employed a process called budding, in which technicians manually separate the undifferentiated cells in a fertilized cow egg that has undergone several […]

Bird-flu CSI: It’s official — comparison between the UK and Hungarian strains of the avian-flu virus reveals the highest genetic match, much more so than the strains found in wild birds. Press release
Dept. of About Time: A federal judge ruled yesterday that the USDA failed to adequately assess possible environmental impacts before approving Monsanto’s genetically […]

Farm Bill 101: Tom Philpott plans to analyze the political economy of farming and suggest a socially and environmentally sustainable farm policy. (Someone has to do it, and we’re glad he’s volunteered.) The 2007 Farm Bill will affect everybody who cares about what they eat, and/or about the environment, so if you’re unsure how agricultural […]

Bacteria love bagged lettuce: Scientists are now confirming the obvious — that processing, mixing, and bagging leafy greens promotes the spread of bacteria like E. coli, just like it has in the hamburger industry. Others claim the Vegetable Industrial Complex, with its triple baths of chlorinated water, is far more hygienic than homes or restaurants […]

Salon.com*: Q&A with Michael Pollan about the recent revolting-food news, including why he trusts the FDA more than the USDA and why we must “figure out a way to [match] the regulation to the production system” as well as get rid of antibiotics in the meat production chain.
Asbury Park Press: The number of Taco Bell […]

Grist: Starting today, our favorite irreverent environmental magazine is offering a multi-part crash course on biofuels and whether they’re just fleeting flirtations in our long-term love affair with oil. The initial three pieces include Tom Philpott explaining in his usual concise, precise way how the world became dependent on fossil fuels in the first place; […]

Grist: Tom Philpott explains why Thanksgiving can often suck, as “people not socialized to cook and eat together can be expected to bare their fangs when they’re forced to do so.” But it doesn’t have to, and we should reclaim it.
New York Times: Peter Hoffman, owner and chef of Savoy, has a long op-ed about […]

Houston Chronicle: Columnist Neal Pierce urges readers to have a “100-Mile Thanksgiving” and explains once again to skeptical Texans why buying local makes sense on many levels.
New York Magazine: Highlighting what’s available now at New York’s Greenmarkets, this article made us want to try all the different varieties of potato.
AP/Seattle P-I: Japan has confirmed its […]

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: very informative article about how badly the discovery of genetically engineered rice hiding in an export shipment has hurt the U.S. rice industry, with Arkansas the biggest loser. (Arkansas grows roughly $800 million worth of the $1.3 billion U.S. rice market; it’s the state’s biggest crop.) The solution, says the industry — which […]

Grist: Tom Philpott has a searing look at this country’s love/hate relationship with pesticides. Money quote: “Like the oil industry, agribusiness survives on its ability to privatize profits and socialize costs.”
Food and Wine: In what’s essentially a companion feature to Chronicle reporter Carol Ness’s “Back to the Ranch” article a few weeks ago, NY Times […]

San Francisco Chronicle: Columnist Mark Morford apparently just finished reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and man, is he pissed. And since Morford is never more rabidly entertaining than when he’s really, really mad, readers will surely enjoy his rant on “The Sad Death of Organic.” An appetizer: “Kellogg’s Organic Rice Krispies. It’s sort of like saying […]

Last Thursday, E. Ho and I took an unflinching look at the ingredients of the food in our cupboard.
Well, we maybe flinched a little. I’m not saying all of the foods pictured here are bad for you.
It’s just impossible to tell if they’re bad for you.

Inspired by the documentary Future of Food, which focuses on […]

Washington Post*: A federal court concluded last week that the USDA repeatedly broke the law by allowing genetically-engineered crops to be planted on hundreds of acres in Hawai’i without first studying their impact.
New York Times*: Monsanto will control even more of our seeds. The deal to buy Delta and Pine Land Company — the nation’s […]

Slate.com: As of last year, the U.S. appears to have an oversupply of meat, and a huge demand for corn and grain. Writer Daniel Gross says the latter is because protein producers are competing for corn with ethanol suppliers; Dairy Queen wonders if the drops in demand for factory meat — which are slight — […]