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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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  • Industrial meat comes with antibiotics and endocrine disruptors

    A few years ago, scientists released one of the first studies to examine how diet can affect your exposure to toxic substances. In that case, researchers had a group of Seattle schoolchildren eat an organic diet for five days a week. Almost immediately, pesticide levels in the children’s bodies dropped to almost undetectable levels — […]

    Tom Laskawy Food and Agriculture

  • Keeping the farmer in farmers markets

    Photo: Natalie MaynorEarlier this week, the Wall Street Journal aired a bit of dirty laundry that was hiding out in local food’s hamper — the ongoing fight over who gets to sell in farmers markets. Many markets require that sellers be actual growers, rather than “resellers” of some form or another. At a certain level, […]

    Tom Laskawy Culture

  • Food safety reform is a mess

    My considered analysis regarding food safety in the U.S. is this: It’s an unmitigated disaster. Salmonella in peanut butter made by a single manufacturer causes deaths, sickness and the recall of thousands of different products from store shelves. Over 10 million pounds of beef have been recalled since President Obama took office. Indeed, the ongoing […]

    Tom Laskawy Politics

  • Does America cause cancer?

    (Grist/iStockphoto)A new government report [PDF] suggests that comedian Bill Maher was on to something when he joked in an interview last year with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson that “America causes cancer.” The report, released today, says that thousands of industrial chemicals in our environment are indeed making Americans sick, and its findings cannot be easily […]

    Tom Laskawy Culture