Story of the Week American farmers routinely give the drug ractopamine hydrochloride to livestock. The chemical, which mimics stress hormones and makes the heart beat more rapidly and promotes growth and the production of lean meat. But at a cost. It has sickened more animals than any […]
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The healthy food movement just got a CE-Yo. Gary Hirshberg, the head of Stonyfield Farm, announced that he was turning the operation of the Londonderry, New Hampshire- based organic yogurt company over to Walt Freese, who has held executive positions at Ben & Jerry’s in Burlington, Vermont, and Celestial Seasonings in Boulder, Colorado. Hirshberg (who […]
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Methyl iodide is one of a family of chemicals that researchers view as well-known cancer hazards. The chemical is also a neurotoxin and causes late-term miscarriages. And it kills soil-dwelling organisms — which is why farmers (particularly strawberry and tomato growers) fumigate fields with it prior to planting. Calling it one of the most toxic chemicals used in […]
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Tags: Methyl iodide
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Newsbites I hereby declare this week Paula Deen Week. Her culinary tastes may be questionable, but no one can debate that the woman has a rare knack for self-promotion. As a service to readers of Politics of the Plate, I plowed through dozens of commentaries on Deen’s announcement that she has diabetes, and have winnowed out three […]
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| Tags: Paula Deen
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Dioxins are nasty chemicals. They are human carcinogens. They cause reproductive problems, wreck the immune system, and interfere with hormonal production. The World Health Organization ranks them among the “Dirty Dozen,” a group made up of organic toxins that persist in the environment (and our bodies) for decades. Although they are produced mainly by industrial processes, […]
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| Tags: Dioxins
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If you enjoy this blog, I’m asking a favor, and it’s not for me. Please consider making a donation for Sam Mayfield, a documentary producer and friend of mine who is raising funds to defray production costs of her new film Wisconsin Rising! The documentary tells the story of how the people of Wisconsin rose […]
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PR Flub of the Week The award this week goes to Trader Joe’s. The feel-good bastion of all things fair and natural, has steadfastly refused to sign a Fair Food Agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)—a social-justice organization based in the south-Florida migrant community of Immokalee. The coalition has long been pressing supermarkets […]
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| Tags: Colaition of Immokalee Workers, Fisheries Management, Harris ranch, Hostess Brands, NAFTA, Slope Farms, Slow Food USA, Smithfield Foods, Trader Joe's
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Back in the 1970s, I spent a summer as a mate on a lobster boat off Nova Scotia. With cold weather, choppy seas, and the physical drudgery of heaving around traps, the job entailed many less-than-pleasant duties, but my least favorite was dealing with green sea urchins—which the lobstermen referred to as “whore’s eggs.” Several […]
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The cynicism of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) knows no bounds. Just before the holidays, the agency, which is supposed to protect Americans’ health, reneged on a 35-year-old pledge to ban farmers from administering low levels (also called subtherapeutic levels) of antibiotics that are used to combat infections in humans to livestock, not […]
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| Tags: Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, Antibiotics, FDA, Food and Drug Administration
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Before buying your next cut of beef, consider these two photographs. The top one is of the Harris Ranch Beef Company feedlot along Interstate 5 about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. There, up to 100,000 cattle at a time are crowded on top of their own excrement into one square mile of […]
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| Tags: CAFOs, Grass-fed Beef, Harris ranch, Open Space Meats
| 19 comments
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