food safety
-
![]()
![]()
USDA Inspector General: meat supply routinely tainted with harmful residues
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. ————- Oh, you wanted those burgers without harmful residues! Sorry, the USDA’s meat-inspection service can’t really help you on that score. Next time you’re at an eatery whose sourcing practices you don’t trust, avoid the veal. Skip the burger, too. […]
-
![]()
![]()
USDA research chief concerned about ‘safety of organic food’
GUADALAJARA, MEXICO — In another post, I’ll explain why I’m in Mexico for the next two weeks, and how I came to attend a conference sponsored by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, titled “Agricultural biotechnologies in developing countries: Options and opportunities in crops, forestry, livestock, fisheries, and agro-industry to face the challenge of food […]
-
![]()
![]()
Farmer-consumer group challenges FDA authority to ban interstate raw-milk sales
Don’t cry over raw milk. The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund is taking on the Big Enchilada in the raw milk war: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s prohibition on interstate shipment of raw milk. The FTCLDF filed suit over the weekend in U.S. District court against FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg, and the secretary of the […]
-
And the winner of the USDA food safety sweepstakes is …
Dr. Elisabeth Hagen! No, you’re not expected to know who she is. Suffice it to say that, as anticipated, USDA Chief Tom Vilsack turned to an under-the-radar choice for Under Secretary of Food Safety. Hagen, currently the USDA’s Chief Medical Officer, will, if confirmed, take charge of the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which […]
-
![]()
![]()
Boring conference food: our culinary future?
The way of all cuisine? This is a guest post by David Gumpert, author of the Raw Milk Revolution. ————- When a good Jewish mother or grandmother knows she’s going to have a big group of special guests, she shifts into high gear to prepare meals. (Yes, I’m definitely stereotyping here, but bear with […]
-
![]()
![]()
I drink raw milk (sold illegally on the underground market)
From Joel Salatin’s foreword to The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights by David Gumpert. I drink raw milk, sold illegally on the underground black market. I grew up on raw milk from our own Guernsey cows that our family hand-milked twice a day. We made yogurt, ice cream, butter, and […]
-
Is anyone in charge of food safety?
The fact that there remains no one in charge of food safety at the USDA has become a sick sort of joke among food policy types. It’s true that there is a second in command, Jerold Mande — but he’s a cancer doctor with no food safety background and, at best, a caretaker. He has […]
-
![]()
![]()
Cargill, the National School Lunch Program, and antibiotic-resistant salmonella
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. ———- Is antibiotic-resistant-salmonella-tainted beef what’s for dinner? Standard j-school-style journalism takes a lot of lumps these days–and justifiably so. To maintain an illusion of “objectivity,” traditional reporters write like above-the-fray observers merely recording “the facts”–as if choosing which facts to […]
-
![]()
![]()
Cargill plant recalls nearly a million pounds of tainted beef
Not-so-total recall: Cargill’s got nearly a million pounds of tainted beef circulating. In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. ——— Remember a couple of weeks ago, when news emerged that a Colorado grocery chain had churned out 466,000 pounds of beef tainted with antibiotic-resistant salmonella, sent it […]
