As Tom Brown leads a pair of young, aspiring homesteaders through his home apple orchard in Clemmons, North Carolina, he gestures at clusters of maturing trees. A retired chemical engineer, the 79 year old lists varieties and pauses to tell occasional stories.
Read more
Alarming toxic PFAS levels revealed in new report raise concerns that the chemicals are contaminating vegetables
Sewage sludge that wastewater treatment districts across America package and sell as home fertilizer contain alarming levels of toxic PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals”, a new report has revealed.
Read more
I got an article this week. It appeared in Civil Eats, and it had quotations from Linley Dixon, Kathleen Merrigan, and others about COVID, farm scale, and feeding people. It raised very important questions.
Read more
A new study published Tuesday found that after switching to an organic diet for just a few days, people could cut the levels of a pesticide linked to cancer found in their urine by more than 70 percent.
The researchers collected a total of 158 urine samples from four families –seven adults and nine children – and examined the samples for the presence of the weed killer glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Roundup and other popular herbicides. The participants spent five days on a completely non-organic diet and five days on a completely organic diet.
“This study demonstrates that shifting to an organic diet is an effective way to reduce body burden of glyphosate… This research adds to a growing body of literature indicating that an organic diet may reduce exposure to a range of pesticides in children and adults,” states the study, which was published in the journal Environmental Research.
Read more
Most avocado oil sold in the United States — including that labeled “pure” or “extra virgin” — is either stale before its expiration date or mixed with other oils, according to a study published recently in the journal Food Control. In fact, some of the samples tested in the study contained almost no avocado oil.
Read more
Total organic fresh produce sales were up 22% for the month of March. In May, Thrive Market’s CEO Nick Green told the New York Times that his company was experiencing a level of demand that it was expecting to see in 2022 or 2023. Some organic brands received such big orders that they have had to ration products to retailers.
Read more
The time has finally arrived. Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC), the new certification that we have been writing about for the last few years, is finally set to open its doors to all interested brands.
Read more
The Organic Consumers Association has sued Smithfield Foods Inc. in Superior Court for the District of Columbia over allegedly “deceptive food safety marketing representations about pork products.Smithfield, VA-based Smithfield Foods is accused of making marketing and advertising representations to convey to consumers, including consumers in the District of Columbia, that Smithfield brand pork products are the “safest” possible U.S. pork products.
Read more
The Brave Little State Versus Godzilla.
We know how that movie ends.
Vermont is the Brave Little State.
In this case, Godzilla is Monsanto and the Organic Trade Association.
That is an odd pairing. How did that happen?
For years there was a huge national effort to require labeling for products containing GMOs. And there was an even more intense effort to defeat those labeling requirements.
Read more
The action is being pursued by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), which says that the firm has used misleading advertising claims in using the term pasture raised. The claim has now been lodged in court in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.
Read more
