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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.

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  • The federal MMS: a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil industry

    The Deepwater Horizons rig goes boom, killing 11 people and starting a massive and ongoing oil leak. If the Minerals Management Service had been a functional, independent oversight agency, this disaster would likely have never happened.  (Photo: U.S. Navy) Has the government surrendered its ability to rein in corporate excess? Yes, says the New York […]

    Tom Laskawy Technology

  • The first law of cow dynamics

    Are mathematicians working on a grand unified theory of cow dynamics? It sure seems that way, according to a MIT Technology review post (hat-tip to Boing Boing): Today, the mathematics of animal synchrony takes a cloven-footed step forward with the unveiling of a model that describes the collective behavior of cows. Cows are well know […]

    Tom Laskawy Food and Agriculture

  • Did Elena Kagan really flunk a food-policy litmus test?

    Former Gourmet contributing editor Barry Estabrook, now writing for The Atlantic‘s online food section, has raised concerns that President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan may be too sympathetic to biotech giant Monsanto: It’s a good thing for Elena Kagan that there’s no non-GMO litmus test for Supreme Court nominees. She’d flunk. As solicitor general, […]

    Tom Laskawy Politics

  • New report from Childhood Obesity Task Force has something for everyone

    Kids exercise in an online video from LetsMove.gov, Michelle Obama’s campaign to fight childhood obesity. Michelle Obama’s Presidential Task Force on Childhood Obesity released its findings yesterday. It’s encyclopedic in scope and has something for everyone — from school lunch, to sugar taxes, to veggie subsidies, to dietary guidelines, to obesogenic chemicals. Even farm-to-school programs […]

    Tom Laskawy Politics