Growers and Grocers

Many thanks to Kate at Accidental Hedonist for the original inspiration for this story.
A funny thing has happened on the way to eating healthier over much of 2006. Organics have positively exploded on grocery store shelves, making well-informed consumer decisions more difficult than ever. A while back, I wrote about the USDA’s […]

For this week’s news, it will be pretty hard to beat Sheryl Kirby’s post about bugs in food coloring. I’m still wondering about what this means for vegetarians.
In fact, food production news this week seems to be dominated by the question of what is really in our food, and whether said food lives up […]

I took a trip to London in April, and I can tell you that the British are on top of food-related issues. All over the city, food purveyors tout dishes as organic, vegetarian, this-free and that-enriched. And Prime Minister Tony Blair does have good table manners at international summits. But he is not so popular […]

Lucy Arin was born and raised in Ohio. She began cooking at her mother’s side at age 7, and has never stopped being fascinated with the chemistry of cooking. She rarely follows a recipe as written. Because she and her husband both have family histories of heart disease and diabetes, and both work full time, […]

Environmental group Defenders of Wildlife is making news by reporting that mercury levels in many imports of canned tuna exceed federal mercury limits. Canned tuna from Ecuador and Mexico were the worst offenders. Defenders of Wildlife previously targeted the same countries for their failure to follow dolphin-safe tuna practices.
The higher mercury […]

The USDA wants to redefine the grass-fed label, but for once they want to make it harder for large corporations to slap the eye-catching label onto their products. The government agency is considering a change that would require 99% of an animal’s energy to come from “grass or forage.” And they’re looking for comments on […]

The prestigious French “Appellation d’origine contrôlée” label applies to food products as well as wine. On June 22nd, 2006, the national AOC institute (Institut National des Appellations d’Origine) recognized two new food products: the Nîmes olive and Corsican chestnut flour.
Two hundred Corsican farmers grow chestnuts for the sweet, delicate flour that Corsican cooks use […]

I live in the Aveyron department in France, and my husband is a consultant for farmers. When he visits sheep-raising country, his clients often offer him a large round of Roquefort to take home. Despite my fondness for this famous blue-veined cheese, I usually have so much of it on hand that I don’t […]

California melons fared better than stone fruit this year, according to the California Farm Bureau Federation.
I can’t add to the website’s text:

Excellent quality melons are being harvested in the Imperial Valley. Farmers expect to continue shipping fruit until July 4th. They credit warm weather in the desert for contributing to high quality among the melons […]

The United States House of Representatives has added a boost for organic produce to its 2007 Agriculture Appropriations Bill, according to this post at Blog for Rural America. Formerly, the bill provided $1.8 million to help farmers make the transition to an organic model.
Now, the bill sets aside $5 million for the research. This is […]