Sweet ‘n’ Low-Down

Sugar is causing environmental catastrophes A high-sugar diet is slowly fattening and sickening American people, but we’re getting off easy. Turns out the sweet stuff is outright killing endangered Florida […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 — […]

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 […]