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Special Digest, rumor version: Mike Taylor to Join FDA
Another round for the revolving door: Rumor has it that Mike Taylor, currently a professor at George Washington University but better known for his work as Monsanto’s Vice President for Public Policy, will start on Monday at the FDA in a position coordinating food safety. Congress
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Family farm advocate named GIPSA head
Sunshine comes to the stockyards: USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack wins some more fans in these quarters by naming Dudley Butler to head the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA). (USDA
Organic agriculture gets $50M boost from USDA
Feeling like 50 million bucks: Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan announced $50 million for a new initiative to meet the Obama Administration’s promise to encourage more organic agriculture production. The 2009 Organic Initiative, to be funded as part of the Environmental Quality Incentives
Kansas Senate leaves rBST milk labels on ag committee floor
No crying over milk labeling: The Kansas Senate apparently won’t even attempt to override former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’s veto of legislation (as described in the Lawrence Journal-World)
USDA to hold listening sessions on national animal ID system
Start packing, Walter: We knew swine flu novel H1N1 virus was going to move animal-tracking to the front burner. AgSec Tom Vilsack today announced that the USDA will hold a series of “listening sessions” on the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) next month in Alabama, Colorado,
Wisconsin spinach recalled, DC protests
Safety in numbers: Kleen-Pak brand fresh spinach is being recalled in Wisconsin and Illinois after testing positive for salmonella. (Brownfield) Just one more incident to add to the call for food
Dow Chemical should catch hell
Walleye from the Chemical guys: In spite of Michigan’s restrictive walleye consumption advisories, Dow Chemical — the company responsible for the dioxins that contaminated the local watershed — sponsors a Walleye Festival that promotes sport fishing in the polluted waterway. Although Dow promised
Swine flu and Mexican CAFO connection
Hogs, bogs, and floggings: Tom Philpott takes a careful, comprehensive look at the possibility the swine-flu outbreak originated from the area around Granjas Carroll’s hog confinements (Smithfield has a stake in them), whether transmitted by workers, flies, or asymptomatic pigs. And if it didn’t,
Digest - News: Smithfield’s flu, organic for the masses, Vilsack reserves judgment
They’re not confining everything, apparently: MSM’s all over the swine flu (SJ Merc) and U.S. hog prices are tanking (Reuters), but
Digest - Blogs, features and snacks: Pesticide perversions, subsidy love, the anti-Pollan
Small-town physician sees effects of Big Ag: an Indiana neonatologist finds that birth defects, including spina bifida, cleft pallet and lip, down syndrome, urogenital abnormalities, and club foot (among others) are more likely to occur in pregnancies that begin between April and July — the time period
‘Killer’ movie tells who to charge for the large
“Killer at Large,” a new documentary DVD, is a veritable banquet of obesity information, serving up copious facts and personal tales about the American obesity epidemic that threatens to shorten the life span of the current generation of young people.
Digest - News: Plastics make kids fat, North Star stars in food safety, peanut payout
Chemical reaction: A long term study by Mount Sinai Medical Center on children in East Harlem links exposure to a class of chemicals called phthalates — found in products that list “fragrance” as an ingredient, and in soft plastics — with childhood obesity. The study found that the heaviest
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
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’
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
