Hype haymaker : “The sustainable agriculture world is abuzz today with news of the Supreme Court’s ruling regarding an earlier lawsuit, brought by alfalfa farmers, that sought to stop any planting of Monsanto’s genetically engineered Roundup Ready alfalfa seed. While the press coverage heralds the ruling as a decisive victory for Monsanto, a close reading shows that, in fact, it’s a fairly significant win for opponents of... 

Silent scream : “In America, chemicals are innocent until proven guilty,” writes Bejamin Ross in this fascinating summary of the FDA and the larger history of U.S. regulation of toxic substances in food and our everyday environments. While this rule of thumb has been in place for over a century, it’s not how they do it in England: there, the “precautionary principle” (also known as “better safe than sorry,’... 

By law, California schools prohibit the sale of sugary soft drinks in schools during school hours. The idea was to have kids drink water and juice. But overwhelmingly, the replacement has been “sports” drinks, which are nothing more than sugar water with artificial food colorings, and ,yes, a few electrolytes. The great majority of kids don’t reach a point where their body needs these electrolytes. But the beverage companies... 

Snow us the money! David Goldstein , Washington correspondent for McClatchy newspapers, reports that three senators are standing up for the poor, neglected industrial agriculture industry against the wicked Know Your Farmer Know Your Food program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. From the story : Sens. Pat Roberts of Kansas , John McCain of Arizona and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia complained in a recent letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack... 

Pollan nation: In what is ostensibly a five-book review for the June 10 New York Review of Books, journalist Michael Pollan has an epic essay charting the emergence and character of the food movement. Or, as he puts it, “‘movements,’ since it is unified as yet by little more than the recognition that industrial food production is in need of reform because its social/environmental/public health/animal welfare/gastronomic costs... 

It was a bad week for some of the ocean’s top predators in Doha, Qatar as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) rejected international trade restrictions on northern bluefin tuna ( Thunnus thynnus ) and eight species of sharks. I haven’t seen much coverage of vote on the shark listing, so this post will focus on the bluefin tuna vote. The New …  Read More →

Cross-posted from Grist , where I am serving as deputy food editor (part time). Have locavores and feminists — factions that a few years ago, some bloggers believed to be fundamentally at odds — become allies? That’s what Peggy Orenstein suggests in her essay, ” The Femivore’s Dilemma ,” for today’s New York Times Magazine . The author of several best-selling nonfiction accounts of …  Read More →

Here’s chef Peter Gordon in Britain’s The Independent ; “Our love affair with home-grown ingredients is killing innovation in our restaurants.” He’s speaking mainly from a British perspective and, though he doesn’t make the distinction, he seems to be arguing only with the fundamentalists among the “eat local” movement. But it’s a good read. Whether or not there is a “growing tide of... 

Remember the proposed soda tax? The added penny per fluid ounce, generating $50 billion in funds to combat obesity in the next 10 years. Well, forget about it. Never mind obesity. To hell with diabetes. The beverage industry needs to grow its bottom line, and no one is going to to tax its products. Certainly not a bunch of do gooders on behalf of the “nanny-state”. You see, in this great democracy called America, money votes. And...