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  • Tainted cereal exposes soggy food-safety system

    Photo by Mykl Roventine, FlickrOn June 25, Kellogg’s issued a “voluntary recall” of 28 million boxes of its breakfast cereals, including Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, Corn Pops, and Honey Smacks. The company revealed it had detected an “uncharacteristic off-flavor and smell coming from the liner in the package” of the suspect cereal and warned of […]

  • Arsenic found in Utah kids’ pee traced to their pet chickens’ feed

    Backyard chickens: Fun for the entire family! That is, until your kids get arsenic poisoning from them. The Utah Department of Health tracked worrisome levels of arsenic in two kids’ urine to the family’s backyard chicken coop, reports Judy Fahys in the Salt Lake Tribune (hat tip to Cookie Jill). More specifically, to the arsenic-based […]

  • FDA takes steps to limit use of antibiotics in livestock

    Updated June 30 The FDA took a significant step yesterday toward restricting the routine feeding of subtherapeutic (medically unnecessary) doses of antibiotics to livestock. As Grist has detailed in previous coverage, this practice — which by some estimates consumes nearly 70% of all antibiotics administered in the U.S. —  has been linked to the rise […]

  • U.S. should follow Europe and put the brakes on nanotech food and other products

    Nanoparticles are already used in many sunscreens.(Photo: Alex Parlini, Proj. on Emerging Nanotechnologies)One month ago, the Committee on Environment, Health and Consumer Protection of the European Parliament voted in favor of excluding nanotechnology from the EU list of novel foods allowed on the market. This committee vote represents one of the first times ever that […]

  • What Is Our "Right" to Opt Out of the Industrial Food System?

    Slavery. Women prohibited from voting. No home schooling allowed. No interracial marriage. These were all official government policy at one time in America’s history, and have since been rejected by the courts. Now, the courts should break with another major taboo: restrictions on our access to food, most notably, raw milk. That’s the argument being […]

  • Endocrine disruptors really do suck

    U.S. manufacturers and agribusiness are addicted to endocrine disruptors — dangerous chemicals that alter the natural function of the body’s hormones. They are frequently used in plastics, in pesticides, and in personal care products and act in the human body as a “false” version of estrogen. They appear to be linked to a variety of […]

  • In Court Case, FDA Takes a Strong Stand Against Unabridged Food and Health Rights

    The expanding battle over raw milk has come to be seen by many advocates as a battle over food rights. Do we have a right to consume the foods of our choice? Or can the government restrict our access, or require processing and/or sterilization of certain foods, and simultaneously prohibit our access to the raw […]

  • Scientists: BPA has widely contaminated the oceans

    BPA leached from plastic: not just a problem for landlubbers.It’s looking more and more like the chemical industry’s idea to make the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A ubiquitous in the environment was a terrible, and terribly dangerous, idea. Having successfully tainted the food supply with its presence, BPA has now has put the world’s oceans at […]

  • Farmer-consumer group challenges FDA authority to ban interstate raw-milk sales

    Don’t cry over raw milk. The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund is taking on the Big Enchilada in the raw milk war: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s prohibition on interstate shipment of raw milk. The FTCLDF filed suit over the weekend in U.S. District court against FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg, and the secretary of the […]