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Digest – News: Gates Foundation exec picked for USDA research post, Roundup Ready losing potency
Get Shah-ty: The Obama administration has nominated Rajiv J. Shah to serve as Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics of the USDA. (NYT Diner’s Journal Blog) Shah is the director of the agricultural development program at the
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Digest – Features & Blogs: Local or just “good,” Marler takes the stand
We know it when we eat it: The NYT's Mark Bittman ponders what to call food that used to go by "natural," before that word got co-opted by corporate marketing teams. "Instead of labeling ourselves — I only eat 'local,' 'seasonal,' or 'organic' food — why don’t we just say we strive to eat 'good'
Digest – News: Perilous pork, the First Lettuce, food safety plateaus
Free-range throwdown: A New York Times op-ed turns the food-fear spotlight on pastured pork, covering a study that finds that "free-range pork can be more likely than caged pork to carry dangerous bacteria and parasites" including potentially-deadly Trichinosis. The author gets in a few more digs with
Digest – News: Antibiotics in byproducts fed to cows, Sebelius lobbied to veto milk labeling bill
It was a very busy week for the Ethicurean bees, and we had to skip the weekend Digest. So some of these links may be a tad moldy, but hey — expiration dates are for sissies. Send your tasty news links to dig
Pixies for the People: A new WIC Local Food Line
Can you hear the chanting? "Pixies for the People!" How about the drums? "Pixies for the People!" Pixie Tangerines, that is, not Tinker Bell. When
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Free-range Porky’s, now playing at one Bay Area cinema
San Francisco may have more vegetarians and health-obsessed eaters per capita than any other U.S. city, but it also has a fair number of pork lovers — and to serve them, numerous restaurants cure their own meat, offer whole
Digest: Monsanto blog launched, more food news from White House
New media = new image?: Monsanto has been a punching bag in the blogosphere for years. We should know. Now, the biotech giant has not only launched an ad campaign aimed at food's "thought leaders," it's digging into its deep pockets to fund a new Facebook presence, Twitter stream, and a blog, Monsanto
Digest: Times et al on food movement’s “arrival,” dairy drama, Murphy profiled
Busy days; we're playing catch-up on news this week. Send URLs we shouldn't miss to 1 Comment • Read more »
Digest – News: Anti-biotics, working for the (corporate) man, and the price of obesity
More squealing from the porkers: The National Pork Producers Council objects to federal legislation introduced Tuesday by Rep. Louise Slaughter (no pun intended, really), the only microbiologist in the U.S. Congress, that would restrict the use of medically-important antibiotics in livestock production.
Digest – Features & Blogs: Convention frenzy, local meat gets scrapped, and Michelle’s big announcement
O-yeah: Michelle Obama tells Oprah that she's planning a veggie garden on the lawn of the White House in order to "use it as a point of education, to talk about health and how delicious it is to eat fresh food, and how you can take that food and make it part of a healthy diet." The President won't be
Digest – News: The California conundrum, Monsanto at large, and tuna testing (not to be tried at home)
A new growth export market - the revolving door: U.S. government agencies are imploring foreign countries to bring their food safety regulations up to the (arguably pretty low) U.S. par, but the buck doesn't stop there: countries like India are being pushed to develop regulations on GM crops, industrial
Digest – News: Flesh-eating bacteria, wallet-eating food companies, and eating, righteously
Makes your skin crawl: As previously reported here, a flesh-eating, antibiotic resistant bacteria is killing 18,000 Americans a year and is carried by 45% of farmers and 49% of pigs in Iowa. Nicholas
Digest – News: Salmon synergy, Whole Foods less whole, rotation’s right
Slammed by synergism: Researchers expose juvenile coho salmon to combinations of commonly-used agricultral pesticides. For two-thirds of the pesticide combinations, they find that the effect of the combination is greater than the sum of the impacts of the individual pesticides (i.e. the combo has synergistic
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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
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Digest – News: Label libel, Chiquita goes bananas, and another reason to stay off soda
We digest the news for you twice a week. Read something great? Send it our way at dig2 Comments • Read more »
