Section » E. coli
Digest – Features: The economics of cheap food, beef industry insider critics, fish farming
Feast and famine: It's the end of cheap food as we know it, says the Economist, whose food-price index is now at its highest since it began in 1845, having risen by one-third in the past year. The culprits, it says, are rising incomes in Asia that allow people to buy more grain-fed meat, and U.S. ethanol subsidies that have made corn (and therefore
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Digest – Blogs: Local focal, 0157 by the numbers, courting food stamps
In local parentis: Continuing our circle of mutual linkage, we agree with Lainie that it's important to distinguish between local food and products that are made by a local people using possibly nonlocal ingredients — and support both. While her solution, LoCo foods, for made by a local company,
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USDA requests comments on leafy greens rulemaking
Following last fall's crisis over E. coli contamination of spinach, the growers, distributors and retailers of salad mix started talking about improving their safety practices. A fair amount of activity in this area has been happening in California, including some bills in the legislature and voluntary
Digest – News: USDA loophole allows E. coli-positive beef to be sold, lots more news
Shit happens…to be legally sellable for consumption: "One federal inspector calls it the 'E. coli loophole.' Another says, 'Nobody would buy it if they knew.'" What are these officials talking about? A little-known fact that the USDA allows companies to sell meat that has tested positive
Digest – News: New AgSec nominated, organic food is superior (duh), meat zombies
Due to a road trip to remote Oregon with non-Ethicurean parental units and deadline pressures, there has not been a full Digest for over a week. (Sorry.) Some of these links are thus a little moldy, but we need'em for the archives, so just hold your noses.
Living with Ed, maybe: President Bush
Digest – News: Bayer uncensured, another beef recall (yawn), fishy recommendations
We seem to have settled into a twice-weekly, midweek+weekend routine for the Digest. If you need to snack between our buffets, plenty of
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Digest – News: Save our schoolkids (from their lunches), another E. coli outbreak, mass fish slaughter
Basic nutrition 101: The Washington Post reports that Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has introduced a bill that would have the government set new nutritional standards for the foods and drinks
Not so NAIS: Animal-tracking program is solution to wrong problem
Thanks to Marc R. for calling my attention to the Government Accountability Office's recent report on the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). NAIS, which first saw the light of corner offices at the USDA
Digest: We’re all just lab rats in the maze of the global food chain
Not much news this weekend. Which doesn't mean there's a shortage of links.
NEWS
Globalization risks: The New York Times has two top-notch articles, one in the Business section and one in Health, that could have been even better with a little integration. (We're just saying.) The first looks at how Comments Off • Read more »
Rhetorical questions about USDA recalls
Another day, another recall of ground beef possible tainted with E. coli 0157:H7, aka Revenge of the Industrial Food System. Actually, this is just an expanded recall, voluntary of course, because the USDA has no power to force the companies it regulates to recall their products. Kind of like being the
Digest: Industry, test thyself; biofuel polluters, genocide v. sodas
NEWS Test and ye shall find: Reporting for NPR, Sam Fromartz goes inside Natural Selection Foods, the mega-grower at the center of last year's spinach E. coli scare, which has started an ambitious testing program for all its
Digest: Garbage — it’s what’s for dinner! Plus, two views on food safety
"We are what they eat" — and it's even more unappetizing than you think: Forget melamine and cyanuric acid in animal feeds — we should be at least as concerned about the "business as usual" ingredients routinely fed to U.S. farm animals. This op-ed discusses the authors' Environmental
Digest: Bee conference, MickeyD’s makes Greenpeace, pass the chuck
"Mad bee disease"?: About 60 scientists are sharing their early findings regarding "colony collapse disorder" in bees. They're focusing on the most likely suspects: a virus, a fungus or a pesticide, particularly the neonicotinoids group banned in France for causing what the French called "mad bee disease."
