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Articles by Tom Laskawy

A 17-year veteran of both traditional and online media, Tom Laskawy is a founder and executive director of the Food & Environment Reporting Network and a contributing writer at Grist covering food and agricultural policy. Tom's long and winding road to food politics writing passed through New York, Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, Florence, Italy, and Philadelphia (which has a vibrant progressive food politics and sustainable agriculture scene, thank you very much). In addition to Grist, his writing has appeared online in The American Prospect, Slate, The New York Times, and The New Republic. He is on record as believing that wrecking the planet is a bad idea. Follow him on Twitter.

All Articles

  • ‘Ag-gag’ bills face tough row to hoe

    As you were saying?Big Ag is having trouble installing its Iron Curtain. I am referring, of course, to the various “ag-gag” laws proposed in Florida, Minnesota, and Iowa that would make it illegal to produce (and, in some cases, possess) undercover videos from within factory livestock farms. The latest state legislature to pursue this dubious […]

  • Groups sue FDA to stop Big Ag antibiotic abuse — and it just might work

    A growing weight of research links routine antibiotic use on factory farms to the rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria — which are showing up in more and more places worldwide (including, according to recent studies, in your local supermarket). Doctor groups, from the American Medical Association to the American Society of Microbiology, have appealed to the […]

  • Forget rice, think meat and yogurt: ‘Chinese food’ looking more and more like Western diet

    Meating demand: Workers at an industrial meatpacking house in China try to keep up with their nation’s soaring appetite for animal products.Photo: Shreyans BhansaliIt’s Monday, which for many is now a meatless day, so it’s appropriate I think to highlight Howard Schneider’s Washington Post article on the long-anticipated Chinese meat-eating explosion: For China, the world’s […]

  • Big Ag doesn’t want you to care about pesticides

    Power to the people pesticide industry!The produce lobby is livid that consumers might be concerned about pesticides. They are taking their fury out on the USDA for its annual report on pesticide use (via The Washington Post): In a recent letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, 18 produce trade associations complained that the data have […]