Articles by Tom Philpott

Tom Philpott was previously Grist's food writer. He now writes for Mother Jones.

All Articles

  • A bad idea, plus lots of cash

    What’s that in your gas tank?This is a blog post about the intersection of a bad idea and lots of cash–your cash. The bad idea is this: growing crops to ferment and distill them into ethanol for internal combustion engines. A few days ago, the EPA revealed that by its calculations, use of corn-based ethanol […]

    Tom Philpott Technology

  • A terrific NYT piece on Smithfield and the globalization of pork

    On Wednesday, The New York Times ran a terrific, long article — one that reporters had clearly worked on for a long time — on Smithfield Foods’ rapid transformation of hog farming in Eastern Europe. The article documents how the Virginia-based pork giant has squashed small-scale hog farming in Romania and Poland, just as it […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Smithfield: don’t worry, we’re testing our Mexican hogs for swine flu

    For a lobbyist working the Hill on behalf of an industry, the gold standard is self-regulation. No need to send in inspectors — we’ll test our process to ensure that it doesn’t pollute. Trust us! Astonishingly, pork giant Smithfield Foods has evidently managed to arrange just such a testing regime with regard to its hog-rearing […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • The EPA holds corn ethanol accountable … sort of

    In February 2008, a group of researchers led by Tim Searchinger of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School published a paper (PDF) in Science Express called, “Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change.” Their conclusion was startling: the government policy of supporting biofuel production, which had begun in the […]

    Tom Philpott Politics