Section » Cornification of America
Digest: Check your kibble, rice growers speak out, corn ripple effect
More bad pet food: The pet food recall has been expanded to other wt food brands and dry kibble as well. Boston Globe (via AP) While the AP story says the FDA would not name the manufacturer, the FDA's
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Digest: Foolish fuel, no “organic” cloned progeny, toxic fertilizer
Fuel for the fire: Tom Philpott flames corn-based ethanol boosterism for what it is — an agribusiness boondoggle and an economic and environmental disaster in the making. (Gristmill) Related headline: Farmers
Digest: Beef and sperm link, organic kiwis beat industrial, toxins everywhere
Male sterility and beef steroids: A new study says men whose moms ate a lot of beef during their pregnancy have a sperm count at 25% below normal. Possible suspects? Anabolic steroids used to fatten cattle in the U.S., or pesticides and other contaminants. Although the study is a little shaky, relying
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Digest: Cloning profits, Whole Foods fan, GMO arms race
Cloning end game: Buried in this recap of the FDA's proposed ruling on the safety of food from cloned animals are a few eyebrow raisers. One: ViaGen, the leader in animal cloning, has yet to make a profit — but its parent company is confident that will change "once the FDA approves cloned food." Two:
Digest: Straight from the abattoir, Observer gardeners, corny corn story
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 can stomach
Digest: SciAm editors support clone labeling, pork belly future bright, chocolate food for thought
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
Digest: Wild birds cleared, USDA censured, protection from transgenic corn
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
Digest: Why you should care about the Farm Bill, “good” vs. “bad” food, UglyRipe tomatoes, cornification counterattack
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,
Digest: Greens packaging, clone progeny, Fiji brand
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,
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Digest: Pollan on the FDA, Taco Bell update, updates from Britain
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
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Digest: Biofuels 101, fish wrapper-upper, Simon says
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
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Digest: Thanksgiving thanks, meat making, whale blubber salad
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
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Digest: Local hero, tater hots, mad Japanese cow, corn winners & losers
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
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Digest: The crises in rice and corn, beyond-organic gurus, BB fight
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
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