Nutria are 20-pound rodents that are gnawing away at the coast of Louisiana. They are eating so much vegetation, principally roots that hold fragile outlying coastal pieces of land together -- kind of the way eggs bind a cake -- that they are causing serious problems. Like, "See ya, Louisiana Coast!" type problems. The sad thing is that someone actually deliberately brought the big fat rat thingies into Louisiana from Argentina in 1930 because they had the brilliant idea they were going to make fur coats out of them. And now, there are way way way too many of these things to make fur coats. I mean, even if everyone in the world was Paris Hilton and wanted a fur coat, they'd have leftovers.

So, what do we do about nutria? Time to start eating! At least, that's the most recent plan put forward by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries -- reduce nutria populations by turning them into jambalaya and snack sticks. Some dudes who are making a film about nutria, entitled Rodents of Unusual Size, wondered what all this culinary innovation tasted like. You can watch the taste test here. Or just run.

OK, meat eaters, do you want the good news or the bad news first? Hey, I know! I’ll start with the bad news: In a just-released study, Consumer Reports tested 257 samples of ground turkey from supermarkets, and found that virtually every one was contaminated with either fecal bacteria, staph, or salmonella. Even worse, most of the fecal bacteria were resistant to one or more antibiotics important to human medicine.

Clearly, between this study and the Environmental Working Group’s recent report on the high rates of fecal (and antibiotic-resistant) bacteria, it’s fair to conclude that the meat industry is struggling to keep its product safe.

The bit of good news here is that Consumer Reports tested both meat raised with antibiotics and meat raised without them. While meat raised without antibiotics had about the same rates of overall contamination as the industrial alternative, it had far lower levels of antibiotic-resistant strains -- and it’s the antibiotic-resistant bugs that should scare you. Infection with them puts you at far greater risk of serious illness or even death if you’re an infant, elderly, or immune-compromised.

The message to consumers is simple: Buying meat raised without antibiotics will reduce your exposure to the nastiest bacteria. Which is a good thing.

There’s a message here for the meat industry, too: Restricting agricultural use of antibiotics would have a big effect on meat safety. Of course, any Danish pig farmer would tell you the same thing. But here at home neither Big Meat nor the government agencies that police it are ready to face that reality.

Big corporations are feeding Americans a diet of crap, but a swarm of start-ups is chewing away at their market dominance.

The New York Times brought us the news this week that venture capitalists -- normally the lifeblood of innovation in the technology and cleantech sectors -- are increasingly providing the financial fodder for food-related start-ups. The injections of cash could be helping to fertilize a green agro-culinary revolution.

From the Times article:

In some cases, the goal is to connect restaurants with food purveyors, or to create on-demand delivery services from local farms, or ready-to-cook dinner kits. In others, the goal is to invent new foods, like creating cheese, meat and egg substitutes from plants. Since this is Silicon Valley money, though, the ultimate goal is often nothing short of grand: transforming the food industry.

Everybody who majored in English, comp lit, art, history, art history, or indeed basically anything except pre-med and economics has heard jokes about how you're just training to say "do you want fries with that." What you might not realize, though, is that you can major in "do you want fries with that," too, at McDonald's University in East London. And it's kind of a competitive school.

What would you do if someone told you that you had to cut up 100 watermelons? Personally, I would cry, and then, if that didn't get me out of the task, I would just run. But not the Fruit Ninja. No, he would just say, "Give me 10 minutes." Because the Fruit Ninja can cut up a watermelon in 20 seconds. Yes. If you don't believe me, just watch.

Heads up, pollinators of the world: Now would be a great time to take that European vacation you’ve always dreamed of. The European Commission -- the E.U.’s governing body -- voted on Monday to implement a continent-wide ban on the class of insecticides widely suspected of contributing to colony collapse disorder, the mysterious phenomenon that’s been decimating bee populations since 2006.

In January, the European Food Safety Authority warned that three types of neonicotinoid pesticides should be considered unacceptable for use based on their danger to bees. A growing body of scientific evidence has found that, while neonics can't be blamed directly for colony collapse disorder, they do mess with bees’ navigation, foraging, and communication abilities, throw off their reproductive patterns, and weaken their immune systems, leaving colonies more vulnerable to natural threats like mites and fungi. Neonics are the world’s most ubiquitous pesticides, used extensively on major crops like corn, soy, and canola. They're applied to seeds before planting and then show up in the pollen bees come to collect.

Three neonics -- thiamethoxam, clothianidin, and imidacloprid -- will be banned for two years from use on crops bees pollinate, likely starting in December. From the BBC:

Nestled along a residential stretch of Seagirt Boulevard in Far Rockaway, the Seagirt Boulevard Community Garden has been a green fixture in this Queens neighborhood for over two decades.

A photograph of the space from 2009 reveals row after row of neatly planted greens, herbs, and flowers -- some held up toward the sun by wooden stakes and twine. An American flag stands tall alongside the garden’s center path, lined with stone grey bricks.

Over the years, the abundance at Seagirt has included kitchen staples like kale and potatoes, along with more unusual offerings of cat mint and bayberry. One volunteer plants a peanut crop.

Yet after Superstorm Sandy rolled through New York last fall -- causing an estimated $19 billion in public and private losses in the city alone -- little remained of the garden aside from its still-standing flagpole and wooden shade structure.

A now-faded line on the garden’s outlying fence serves as a reminder of the storm surge, which rose to over four feet at Seagirt.

Editor's Note: This story relied on a report in Us Weekly, which said Affleck would be doing his eat-like-a-poor-person thing for just one day. That's wrong. In fact, it's clear from Affleck's  Twitter feed (and the campaign it points to) that Affleck intends to do this for five days and he's doing it to get other people to join him, which is a worthy goal. Grist apologizes for the error. We never should have doubted you, Ben! Call us!

I want to be clear about something. I love Ben Affleck. I love him how you only love someone to whom you have spent most of your life being largely indifferent. After he made Argo, I was like, "OK dude, yes, you deserve to exist, big time. You made a movie like they used to make in the '70s, with the kind of suspense and storytelling no one even bothers with anymore because they're just like, oh, our trailer has a good joke in it about MILFs, so hello good opening weekend and screw Americans and their yearning for well-executed traditional narrative structure."

Anyway, Affleck is now, in the way only movie stars can, doing something "cool" that is also lame (which does not befit the man who made Argo). To raise awareness of global hunger, he is going to eat like a poor person for one day. One day. I had to read it several times myself.

McDonald's Japan is not doing well. So it held a meeting at the end of 2012 to try to reverse this downturn, which has now been going on for two years. And one of the main points of this meeting was, not surprisingly, "stronger marketing." The result? An ad featuring the "Dancing McCrew," two McDonald's "employees" dancing their little hearts out because working at McDonald's is soooo fun.

A slew of bills currently in front of state legislatures around the country aims to make it a crime to document what goes on behind slaughterhouse doors. But these bills themselves may be a blessing in disguise for animal rights activists.

Take the example of Wyoming, where a proposed bill recently dropped like a pesticide-poisoned honeybee. The bill would have made any recording illegal without permission from the facility owner, with a penalty of six months in jail and a $750 fine. Pushed by a Republican rancher, Wyoming House Bill 126 seemed set to pass the state senate.

That is, until "PETA had Bob Barker come out against it and it got a lot of media attention," Green is the New Red journalist Will Potter explains. "Bob Barker saves the day."

Potter and activist Andy Stepanian have been two of the most outspoken voices against ag-gag bills. When several bills made their way to state legislatures last year, "the threat was clear and real," Potter says. A domino effect seemed impending: If farm-friendly legislators could push these bills through in Missouri and Utah, what might happen nationwide?

"Each one of these pieces of 'model legislation' is seeing just how far they could push the envelope," says Stepanian. "'We have case law on record in this state, why don't you do the same thing in your state?' In time it chips away at our democratic freedoms."

But ultimately -- oddly enough -- both Potter and Stepanian aren't worried. Sure, if they passed, these laws would be a gut shot to the animal protection movement. But in becoming a national news story, ag-gags may have backfired instead. Every time a publication covers farm protection proposals, it uses the horrible images of abuse that investigators have dug up. That has made these stories a great way for activists to spread their message. And it has made Potter and Stepanian downright optimistic.