California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday vetoed a bill that would have made the state’s 700,000 farmworkers the only ones in the country to get overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week or eight hours a day. “The governor had a chance to make history,” said state Sen. Dean Florez, the Democrat who wrote the bill. “He had a chance to wipe a 70-year-old shame off the books of California. Instead, he has... 

The Gulf oil gusher is benefiting some farmers in southern states. They are getting paid to provide alternative wetlands for migratory ducks and geese that can’t hang out in oil-befouled, food-deprived waters on their way south. The $20 million program is meant to make about 150,000 acres available by mid-August in the five Gulf states as well as Arkansas, Georgia, and Missouri, the Associated Press reports. One farmer of rice and crawfish... 

In case attending sporting events weren’t problematic enough already, with the crowds, the obnoxious and drunken fans, the outrageous ticket prices and whatnot, ESPN now offers a report indicating that the food might be dangerous . The report is full of anecdotes like “mold in ice machines at six stands at Miller Park in Milwaukee and “a cockroach crawling over a soda dispenser in a private club at Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh.”... 

In the latest publicity stunt to rely on offending people to get attention, the Scottish brewer BrewDog has created a beer with 55 percent alcohol , stuffed the bottles inside dead small animals, and offered it for sale. Just 12 bottles are available. Some of the animals, which include seven stoats, four squirrels, and a rabbit, are dressed in kilts, others in top hats. “In true BrewDog fashion,” says company co-founder James Watt,... 

The site Food + Tech Connect has a map that “visualizes the global interconnections among food, agriculture, water, energy, soil, and humans that comprise our food system.” As you can imagine, it’s both bewildering and fascinating. It’s also brilliant. If you follow the interconnected maze of arrows from one end to the other, you can see, just for example, how “pest control” is, eventually, related to “marketing... 

Coca-Cola’s North American sales are up for the first time in more than two years. And CEO Muhtar Kent says this turnaround is “not an aberration.” North America “will be a growth market of great opportunity for the next 10 years and beyond,” he said during a conference call with analysts . But is Coke (KO) projecting growth based on how successfully it can continue to dupe Americans into thinking that Coke products... 

If you’re on Facebook and you don’t play FarmVille, you know how hard it can be to keep the online game out of your life. Now FarmVille is coming to grocery stores , in the form of stickers on some Green Giant brand fruits and vegetables. And you can’t hit the “hide” button in the produce section. General Mills (GIS), owner of the Green Giant brand of canned and  Read More →

Allow me to put on my Jack Shafer hat for a moment: The Associated Press has published an astonishingly weakly sourced article asserting that there is a “growing trend” of people butchering their own meat . Reporter Terence Chea doesn’t even pretend to back up the conclusions he draws. He simply draws them and goes on to offer a few anecdotes about home butchers. He …  Read More →

You might have heard the great interview on Fresh Air the other day with Paul Greenberg , author of  Read More →

Starbucks (SBUX) gets an “F” grade from the Better Business Bureau. But this means nothing, since the terrorist group  Read More →

Daniel Imhoff is the editor of a new book, The CAFO Reader , which features essays by writers like Wendell Berry , Michael Pollan , and Fred Kirschenmann , about Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations—meat factories. They aren’t called factories, though, they’re called “farms.” Legally. Which is a big part of the problem. Though they are as industrial as any tire factory, and perhaps do even more harm to the environment,... 

The best thing about Deborah Blum’s attempted takedown of raw milk in Slate today is how she describes the quasi-religious attitudes found among enthusiasts for a product that is unadulterated except when it’s adulterated with potentially deadly bacteria. Such attitudes are present among enthusiasts of all manner of supposedly “pure,” unprocessed, or locally grown foods—but raw milk seems to attract the nuttier ones.... 

Ever bought olive oil, only to find it somewhat disappointing or just downright bad? Sure you have. There are reasons for that. Researchers at the Olive Center at the University of California, Davis claim their tests show that some olive oils sold in the state with labels that say “extra virgin” aren’t extra virgin at all . Ten percent of the domestic varieties—and a whopping 69 percent of the imported ones—don’t... 

The New Yorker ’s Hendrik Hertzberg chimed in this week on both the “food wars” and on New York City’s decision to force restaurants to display their health-department letter grades . He refreshingly recognizes the flaws of both sides of the debates. On the food wars, he allows that “foodists” tend to be “relatively privileged and comparatively well-educated” types who “shop at Whole Foods... 

The New York Times this week reported on efforts by Australian scientists to make cow digestion mimic that of kangaroos . Cow burps, you see, are responsible for a lot of greenhouse gases (really). Kangaroos don’t have that problem. Bradford Plumer at the New Republic suggested that instead of all the scientific engineering, maybe we should just get people to switch from beef to ‘roo meat . Then the comments started coming in, and...