food
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CBS Evening News report on antibiotics in livestock, part 1
Update: Catch the preview and part 2 here. Here is part 1 of the Katie Couric’s CBS Evening News report on antibiotic use in livestock. She pulled no punches. This first segment focused on poultry processing facilities in Batesville, Ark. and drug-resistant MRSA. As in the preview, Couric explicitly discussed the possibility of transmitting disease […]
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CBS News previews its no-holds-barred report on antibiotics in livestock
Update: Catch part 1 and 2 of the series. Oh, boy. This one has blockbuster written all over it. Tonight, the CBS Evening News is broadcasting the first in a two-part series on the use of antibiotics in livestock (some background here). Katie Couric previewed the report this morning — and it looks like a […]
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USDA makes the right call on school meat safety, animal tracking
From its failure to rein in abuse of farm subsidies to its misguided efforts on international trade, the Obama USDA has disappointed many progressives. But let’s take a moment to offer kudos to USDA Chief Tom Vilsack for two positive developments in one week. On Thursday, the USDA responded to revelations first published in USAToday […]
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Battle for the soul of organic dairy farmers goes on behind the scenes
There is a battle going on in the White House for the very soul of the organic dairy movement — and possibly over the future of small family-operated dairy farms — and you don’t even know it. I’d like to think that I’m overstating things but no. At issue is an obscure rule in the […]
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Did Jamie Oliver meet his match in ‘America’s Fattest City’?
When last we saw British superstar chef-turned-food-system-reformer Jamie Oliver, he was in the midst of teaching “the fattest city in America” how to cook. How did it go? Well, thanks to the miracle that is reality television, we’ll find out one episode at a time. The series — Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution — doesn’t premiere […]
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Lesson for schools: sweetened junk shouldn’t count as food
Sugar in school: give the people what they want? Reporter Ed Bruske spent a week working in a Washington, D.C. public school lunchroom. His series of articles (1, 2, 3) that resulted are fantastic reading for anyone following the ongoing debate regarding school lunches and the challenges for enacting real reform. Today’s entry looked at […]
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Supreme Court ruling on elections puts concept of any kind of reform into doubt
In a ruling today, the Supreme Court rolled back campaign finance laws to the pre-Watergate era: Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections. The ruling was a vindication, the majority said, […]
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To address obesity, the First Lady will need to cast a wide net
Michelle Obama’s anti-childhood obesity agenda would have kids a little less round ’round the middle.White House Flickr streamWhile we await Michelle Obama’s speech this Wednesday to the United States Conference of Mayors that will likely launch her new campaign against childhood obesity, I thought I’d offer a little perspective as well as a few bits […]
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Scientists confirm link between BPA and heart disease in humans
The FDA’s new report on the safety of endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A is months overdue and there is still no sign of when or if the agency will release the report. Perhaps they are waiting for that piece of “smoking gun” evidence that BPA represents a clear and present danger to human health? Well, thanks […]