In a surreal press conference yesterday, Beef Products Inc took its best shot at making up for its silence during weeks of public lashing over what has been dubbed “pink slime,” an additive in ground beef made through a high-tech process that BPI invented. (See my previous posts here and here.) The event came in the wake of major grocery chains announcing they would stop selling beef containing the filler.
Posts Tagged ‘USDA’
Whistleblower to Maker of Pink Slime: “Quit Harassing Me”
This past week, the media woke up to the shocking reality that our meat supply is in fact industrialized. Long gone are the days of your friendly local butcher grinding meat for your kids’ hamburgers. Taking its place is a corporate behemoth you probably never heard of called Beef Products Inc.
SNAP: the Other Corporate Subsidy in the Farm Bill?
As Enrollment Increases, USDA Should Require Purchase Data from
Food Stamp Retailers to Better Evaluate Nutrition Intake
This week Congress begins hearings on the 2012 farm bill, the massive piece of legislation that gets updated about every five years and undergirds America’s entire food supply, but that few mortals can even understand. As nutrition professor Marion Nestle recently lamented, “no one has any idea what the farm bill is about. It’s too complicated for any mind to grasp.”
Sorry Mrs. O, But Jumping Jacks Won’t Cut It
At a recent summit on childhood obesity, the first lady announced a shift in her well-known Let’s Move campaign — away from food reform and toward an increased focus on exercise. Instead of “forcing [children] to eat their vegetables,” she told her audience, “it’s getting them to go out there and have fun.” Yes, you heard that right. The first lady actually said that eating vegetables is a chore. And that playing is a preferable focus for her campaign because it’s easier. Read rest at Grist…
School food politics: What’s missing from the pizza-as-vegetable reporting
Over the last couple of days, news outlets have been having a field day with a proposal from Congress that pizza sauce be considered a vegetable to qualify for the National School Lunch program. Headlines like this one were typical: “Is Pizza Sauce a Vegetable? Congress says Yes.” (The blogs were a tad more childish; for example LA Weekly: Congress to USDA: Pizza is So a Vegetable, Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah.)
Will Germany Crisis Affect USDA Policymaking?
Thanks to Food Safety News for allowing me to cross-post my articles; here is my first.
In the midst of what has tragically become the deadliest E. coli outbreak in history, serious questions are being raised about the need to step up testing here to protect the American public from a similar calamity. Food safety experts and consumer groups have for several years now recommended that USDA require testing in ground beef beyond the most commonly tested E. coli strain, 0157:H7.
As recently reported by Food Safety News, the USDA has at last drafted a notice of rulemaking (how agencies promulgate laws) to expand the definition of “adulterant” to include 6 non-0157:H7 STECs (Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli), which would force industry to test for these other strains. But now the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) appears to be holding things up.
The question is, why?
USDA Replaces Pyramid with Plate: New Illustration, Same Problems (guest post by Andy Bellatti)
Having written about the previous USDA pyramid update in my book, I was less enthused this time around. So I am happy to cross-post this take by my colleague Andy Bellatti, budding nutritionist and blogger, whose sentiments I share and without whom I’d have no one to exchange exasperation with on Twitter.
Since last week, the arrival of the United States Department of Agriculture’s new “food icon” (aka “My Plate” or “the new food pyramid”) has been the hot topic in nutrition and public health circles. Alas, this morning, the much-speculated-about illustration was finally revealed.
Monsanto’s Hostile Takeover of the USDA
If you had any lingering doubt about who controls the food supply, the answer was made painfully clear yesterday when the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced its “Decision to Fully Deregulate Roundup Ready Alfalfa.” For years, a fight has been waging over Monsanto’s desire to plant genetically-engineered alfalfa seeds. (Most alfalfa is fed to cattle, which is why it’s so lucrative.) The court battle even found its way to the US Supreme Court, that’s how much is at stake. Thanks to organic food advocates fighting however they could, Monsanto has thus far been stymied.
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