Food Safety
Do you know what's in your food?
With all of the problems in our food system, it can be hard to find the information we need to make smart choices about the food we eat. Use this page to keep up to date on food safety issues, including pesticides, aspartame, flouridation, irraditation, toxic sludge, mad cow disease, and more.
It could be nearing high noon for the soda industry. After years of repeated battering over the issues of childhood obesity and tooth decay, sugary beverages have suffered an unprecedented backlash. The New York Times reported last week that soft drink sales are down for the first time in 20 years, and sales of bottled water, juices and energy drinks are continuing to eat into the soda market.
Into this anti-carbonated climate comes a potentially bigger bombshell that could spell disaster for the industry. Last month, the FDA quietly revealed that some soft drinks were found to
Read moreWASHINGTON, DC, March 13, 2006 (ENS) - Mad cow disease has been found in the carcass of a cow from an Alabama farm, the third case of the fatal brain wasting disease to be detected in a U.S. animal.
The diseased cow did not enter the human or animal food chains, said U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) Chief Veterinary Medical Officer John
Clifford in a statement today.
"We received a positive result on a Western blot confirmatory test conducted at the USDA laboratories in Ames, Iowa, on samples from an animal that had tested 'inconclusive' on a rapid screening
Read moreA. Farm Bill
Scott Kilman and Roger Thurow <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114230602645097413.html?mod=todays_us_page_one>, provided an in depth look at the future of U.S. farm policy in today's Wall Street Journal.
"A movement to uproot crop subsidies, which have been worth nearly $600 billion to U.S. farmers over the decades, is gaining ground in some unlikely places -- including down on the farm.
"In Iowa, one of the most heavily subsidized states, a Republican running to be state agriculture secretary is telling big farmers they should get
Read moreAs officials confirm that a cow in Alabama had the disease, public-interest groups urge more systematic monitoring.
This week a cow in Alabama became the third confirmed case of mad cow disease in the US since December 2003. But what appears to be a relatively isolated incident points out the difficulty of preventing - or even detecting - such cases under the current voluntary testing regimen. The news also makes it more difficult for US officials to convince overseas consumers that American beef is safe.
The cow in question, discovered on an unidentified farm, initially
Read moreDespite the confirmation of a third case of mad cow disease, the government intends to scale back testing for the brain-wasting disorder blamed for the deaths of more than 150 people in Europe.
The Agriculture Department boosted its surveillance after finding the first case of mad cow disease in the United States in 2003. About 1,000 tests are run daily, up from about 55 daily in 2003.
The testing program detected an infected cow in Alabama last week, and further analysis confirmed Monday that the animal had mad cow disease.
Still, a reduction in testing has been in
Read moreWASHINGTON -- President Bush's call for Americans to use less oil and more agricultural waste to meet the nation's fuel demands is about to get a lift from the farm lobby.
In an unlikely alliance with the environmental movement, farm groups are seeking federal incentives for forms of renewable energy such as cellulosic ethanol -- a gasoline additive made from farm byproducts -- and electricity from farm wind turbines.
The target for the effort is a farm-support bill that Congress expects to pass in 2007. Two former farm-belt Senate majority leaders, Democrat Tom Daschle of
Read moreThe discovery this week of a third case of mad cow disease in the U.S. is renewing worries that, contrary to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's claim last summer that mad cow "is on its way out," the fatal brain illness may actually be getting a foothold in America. The new case is also raising fresh concerns that should an outbreak occur, the Agriculture Department will be unable to contain it because it has no efficient way of tracking where sick cattle picked up the disease.
In this week's case, which was discovered on an Alabama ranch, record-keeping was so poor that
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