Dairy Farms Contaminate Water And Get Away With It

According to the EPA, agricultural runoff is single largest polluter of the nation’s rivers and streams. However, thanks to years of paltry EPA authority and the lax legislation imposed during the Bush administration, their hands are pretty much tied when it comes to stopping it. There are laws in place that have big [...]

September 21, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Health, Politics  One Comment

Time Magazine Takes A Bite Out Of Cheap Food

Usually when the mainstream media talks about the plight of factory farmed animals and their deleterious effect on the environment, they do so in passing.  It’s almost a casual afterthought to the story about why eating red meat will kill you faster, if it gets mentioned at all.  Enter Times (online) magazine.  The article Getting [...]

August 24, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Health, Politics  One Comment

Lab-Grown Meat, The Future Is Soon

Flipping to the resources page of the New Harvest website, a non-profit whose mission is to promote and advance meat substitutes, you find twice as many popular articles on the subject of lab-grown meat as there are technical articles on it.  Test-tube meat, in vitro meat, cultured meat or whatever name you call it may [...]

July 20, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Science & Technology  No Comments

Grass-Fed Beef Have Reduced E. coli Presence

The fact that grass-fed beef helps reduce the incidence of extremely injurious E. coli is actually really old news.  Scientists have known since 1998 that cattle fed on grass, even if just for the last few days before slaughter, have severely reduce the rates of E. coli contamination.  Michael Pollan details the causal linkage between [...]

March 2, 2009  Tags: , , , , , ,   Posted in: Health, Politics, Science & Technology  No Comments

A Beef Cartoon-A Cut Above The Rest?

Yesterday’s flowchart about the hidden costs of industrial beef production focused on the creation the beef itself, not the consequences of actually eating the beef.  This cartoon does a handy job of expressing some of those other concerns in a suscint and humorous manner.
What will you be having today?

February 27, 2009  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Health  One Comment

True Cost of Beef Flowchart

Reading Omnivore’s Dilemma, one realizes that something is missing. Something that could tie many of Pollan’s points into something greater…Something one could understand at a glance…What the book needs is pictures!  More specifically: flowcharts!  Pollan discusses the hidden costs of cheap beef creation via factory farming.  While the paragraphs he devotes to the topic [...]

February 26, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Health, Science & Technology  8 Comments

I Don’t Care About Cloned Meat

I don’t care about cloned meat. What I do care about is what this “fiasco” exemplifies. You see a year ago the FDA approved the sale of cloned meat, and much later the USDA found out about it and disapproved.  The USDA wanted to ban cloned meat quickly, but the FDA regulation made it impossible [...]

December 15, 2008  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Politics  No Comments

EPA Causes Stink Over Cow Stink, Farmers Opposed to Tax on Farm Animals

The cap-and-trade system may not be limited to the traditional grimy industries like the coal processors and car makers.  New discussions have surfaced about the possibility of targeting greenhouse gas emissions caused by our four-legged, mooing friends.  Yes, environmentalists have recognized for some time that cows are the predominant emitters of methane, a greenhouse gas [...]

December 14, 2008  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Politics  One Comment