Articles by Tom Philpott

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

All Articles

  • The pet-food industry takes a serious look at distillers grains

    Should the mush left over after the ethanol process — known as distillers grains — be fed to farm animals? There’s been little real debate around that question, even though a) heavy use of distillers grains as cow feed has been linked to deadly E. Coli 0157H7 outbreaks; and b), the mush has been shown […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Weighing Obama’s and McCain’s stances on food and farm policy

    Will the next president be tough enough to defy the wishes of agribusiness? Apologies to Grant Wood Last month at Slow Food Nation, Michael Pollan made an interesting point about food policy and presidential politics. Food issues won’t likely play much of a role during the campaign’s stretch run, Pollan said, but the winning candidate […]

    Tom Philpott Politics

  • The Environment Report naively pushes Monsanto-related study praising rBGH

    I don’t know much about Environment Report, a non-profit producer of radio reports about, uh, the environment. But I can’t say I’m impressed by its recent piece on recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), the genetically modified "feed enhancer" for dairy cows that Monsanto recently sold to Eli Lilly. In it (transcript here), reporter Shawn Allee […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Bad news for climate change

    In August alone, loggers and farm interests leveled 300 square miles of Amazon rainforest, the Brazilian government reports (via AP). That’s a land mass larger than greater Chicago — taken out in the span of a single month. It also represents a leap of 228 percent over August 2007’s destruction. Two observations: 1) Higher soy […]

    Tom Philpott Climate & Energy