Want some formica in your formula?: We thought we’d seen the worst of the FDA’s screwups with this Chinese melamine debacle, but the agency still has surprises up its sleeve. It held back test results that reveal low levels of melamine in infant formula produced by U.S. companies Mead Johnson, Nestle, and Abbott Laboratories. Never […]

When organic gets fishy: The National Organic Standards Board ruled to allow farmed fish that consume up to 25% non-organic feed to be labeled “organic.” Consumer advocates worry it’s the beginning of a downward slide for standards on other organic animal products. (Washington Post)
Pasture perfect (almost): The USDA publishes new draft rules for organic milk […]

Salmon dieu!: On Wednesday, the National Organic Standards Board will rule on whether any fish can be labeled organic. Under the guidelines as proposed, wild salmon will not make the grade but farm-raised salmon could, even if they eat fish meal, which is feed spiked with ground-up wild fish. (Chicago Tribune)
Amen, Brother: Mark Bittman lays […]

Loren McClenachan is a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, McClenachan scours old newspapers, travel photos, ships’ logs, cannery records, and other records to get a sense of fish populations and sizes in previous decades and centuries. A series of snapshots illustrates how fisheries around the Florida Keys have changed in recent decades: the earliest photos show fish large enough to swallow a small child whole, while the most recent photos show fish that could barely threaten a finger.

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 was the effect on the fish-focused community two weeks ago when Science magazine published […]

When it comes to subsidizing big oil and gas, the Bushies are capable of most anything — including handing over the management of off-shore fish farms to the Minerals Management Service, which is proposing to build them on decommissioned oil rigs. You heard me right.

Heads of state, movie stars, and tycoons gathered in Tokyo to pay tribute to the world’s favorite sushi fish: the bluefin tuna. The occasion marked the passage of exactly one month since the bluefin was declared extinct.

Catching up on podcasts this weekend I listened to a few that might interest Ethicurean readers: Fredrick Kaufman talking about America’s eating history, Good Food from KCRW talking about sustainable seafood and backyard chickens, and Paul Roberts talking about his new book “The End of Food” on On Point Radio.

The May 20 episode of Quest, the science program on San Francisco’s public television station, had two segments that might be of interest to Ethicurean readers.

The word “sustainability” came up a lot at the Sustainable Food Institute portion of the Cooking for Solutions 2008 shindig held last week at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. And when I say a lot, I mean practically each minute. But thanks to six incredibly substantive panel discussions, several solo speakers, and all the informal conversations, I have a new respect for — and new ways of thinking about — what had previously seemed like a hollowed-out, meaningless abstraction.

Sample some of seafood’s sticking points by reading the current Edible San Francisco, our Fish Issue.

Taras Grescoe says he wrote “Bottomfeeder” (Bloomsbury USA, May 2008) for a somewhat selfish reason: he wanted to taste the world’s great seafood dishes — like bouillabaisse in Marseilles, fish and chips in England, bluefin tuna sashimi in Tokyo — before they disappeared or were dramatically changed by our plundering of the oceans. Whatever his motivation, Grescoe has given us a fascinating book that I hope will inform many about the dire state of the oceans, expose the dreadful environmental consequences of badly managed aquaculture, and prompt us to make better seafood choices.

Stop busting my chops: Researchers at Texas A&M have introduced a genetically modified hog that has a pair of succulent jowls at each end. Targeted at the “foodie” market, the new animal provides twice the usual amount of the cut used to make gourmet guanciale. (Charcuterie Today)

Sing for your supper: Responding to studies linking the beef-cattle industry with deforestation, Wendy’s plans to test-market a burger made of starlings. (News on the Wing)

Breaking news and developments, such as contaminated-food outbreaks, Farm Bill milestones, and how the farming community is faring around the world.

In-depth, offbeat, or thought-provoking features about aspects of SOLE food, from eating locally to farms marketing to methods of food preservation.