Climate Food and Agriculture

Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Poison Spray

Afghan poppy fields mysteriously sprayed with chemicals Recently, planes have been flying over the poppy fields of Afghan farmers, spraying them — along with houses, orchards, and perhaps even families — with toxic chemicals apparently intended to kill poppy crops and keep them from being converted to heroin. Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed shock at […]

Patricia Lovera, food safety crusader, answers questions

Patricia Lovera With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I am deputy director of the Energy and Environment Program at Public Citizen. We have campaigns on energy (fighting nuclear power and electricity deregulation), against the privatization of our water supplies, and on food safety (fighting food irradiation and other methods of industrialized food production that […]

All the Same Toxicity, Now With 90 Percent Ubiquity!

Rocket-fuel chemical taints lettuce and milk throughout the U.S. Here’s some unsettling food news: Perchlorate, an explosive component of rocket fuel, was found in about 90 percent of lettuce samples and 97 percent of milk samples from around the U.S. tested by the Food and Drug Administration. Health officials said the levels of contamination found […]

Paulding Gray

Mega-farms in Ohio offer stench but little else to communities The Plain Dealer examines the effects of eight giant hog farms built in Paulding County, Ohio, since 1994 and five mega-dairies since 2000, and comes away with a grim cautionary tale. A number of local families have fled from their homes, some unable to live […]

Organic is becoming popular … the horror!

An article in CorpWatch adeptly summarizes what strikes me as a classic dilemma facing enviro(nmentalist)s: Organic food is becoming more popular and the organic food industry is growing.  As it grows, large corporations are taking an interest, buying small organic companies, and attempting to supersize organic farming operations. By some estimates the percentage of organic food sold by organic markets has fallen from over 60 percent to just over 30 percent -- the rest taken up by Wal-Marty type stores (and a miniscule percentage by farmers' markets, food-buying clubs, and the like). Organic is going corporate.

Reactions, as you would expect, are split.

Umbra on the environmental impacts of soy

Dear Umbra, I’m interested in learning more about the treatment and genetic modification of soy and how prevalent this is. I think a lot of folks choose products such as soy milk because they think they are making a better choice for the earth, as well as themselves. I think this is an overlapping issue […]

More windmill tilting from PETA

Do you ever feel a slight twinge of guilt when digging into a plate of baked salmon, envisioning the poor fish frolicking with its family and thinking deep thoughts?  Yeah, me neither.  But PETA hopes to change that.  Their "Fishing Empathy" (seriously) campaign kicked off yesterday. It's built around convincing folks that fish are more intelligent than we thought (based on several recent studies).  "No one would ever put a hook  through a dog's or cat's mouth. Once people start to understand that fish, although they come in different packaging, are just as intelligent, they'll stop eating them," says PETA's Bruce Friedrich with that characteristic PETA blend of earnestness, hope, and slight creepiness.

Reception thus far has been, shall we say, skeptical.

Scrap Happy

San Francisco food-composting program is a hit In 1996, a company called Norcal Waste found that 19 percent of landfill matter in San Francisco consisted of discarded food scraps — and it sensed a market opportunity. Now the city boasts a popular and growing composting program, with discarded food collected and processed into organically certified […]

Now That’s a Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Pumpkins found to absorb pesticides from soil Pumpkins are not only good for jack-o’-lanterns, pie, and carrying Cinderella home — they are also extremely effective at drawing persistent organic pollutants like the toxic pesticide DDT out of soil, according to a new study by Canadian researchers. They tested rye grass, tall fescue, alfalfa, zucchini, and […]

Fish ‘n’ Chicks

Study finds excessive mercury in 20 percent of women of childbearing age A new Greenpeace-commissioned study on the correlation between fish consumption and levels of mercury in the body has produced interim results, and they may cause you to think twice about your next order of a tuna-salad sandwich. The study analyzed hair samples sent […]