Food Rights Network

Food News You Can Use

January 17, 2012

Hello again, Food Rights Network, and happy new year! There’s been a lot of food news in the last two weeks, more than can fit in one post, so here are the highlights of what’s been happening:

• “EPA Weighs Nixing ‘Non-Crop’ Term To Better Tailor Pesticide Risk Studies“ (Inside EPA, 1/13/12)
• EPA Lists Gulf Waters as Impaired for Low Oxygen Levels, Iowa Department of Agriculture Says Move Undermines ‘Credibility’ With Big Farm Groups (Inside EPA, 1/13/12)
• CDC Says Shale Gas Drilling a Danger to Public Health and Food Supply (Slope Farms blog, 1/9/12 (full text of CDC email), and AP, 1/5/12). See the Center for Media and Democracy’s Fracking Portal on SourceWatch for more.
• Farm Land Grabs by Foreign Investors May “Compromise” Australia’s Food Security (Daily Telegraph, 1/4/12)
• “Ubiquitous Bisphenol A Linked to Adult Obesity, Insulin Resistance“ (Environmental Health News, 1/4/12)
• “FDA Takes a Baby Step on Factory Farm Antibiotics“  (Mother Jones, 1/4/12, and Guardian UK, 12/29/11)
• “FDA Sued Over Lack of Nanotech Petition Response“ (Food Navigator, 1/3/12)
• “Saudi Firm Buys Dairy Farm Land in Argentina as Anger Grows from Activists, Farmers Alike“ (Bikya Masr, 1/2/12)
• “Black Farmers Angry at Obama Administration” for No Appeals and Capped Compensations in Pigford II Case (WMC TV, 1/2/12)
• Jurors to Decide if Nitro Residents Should Be Medically Monitored at Monsanto’s Expense After Unsafe Dispersal of Dioxin (Charleston Gazette, 1/1/12)
• “Occupy Our Food“: Occupy Wall Street Farmers March celebrated “community power to regain control over the most basic element to human well-being: food.” (The Nation, 12/28/11)
• “Despite Obesity Crisis, Government Slow to Rein in Fast Food Industry“ (Inter Press Service via Common Dreams, 12/23/11)
• “Big Corn, Big Sugar in Bitter US Row on Sweetener“ after Corn Refiners Association “Rebrand” of High Fructose Corn Syrup as “Corn Sugar” Last Year (AFP, 12/17/11)
• Cornell Scientists Find Listeria Activity Inhibiter that May Control Pathogen Transmission (mBio (journal of the American Society for Microbiology), 11/29/11)

Filed under: In the News

Tags: antibiotics, argentina, australia, BigAg, bigcorn, bigsugar, blackfarmers, dioxin, fastfood, FDA, foodshed, GulfofMexico, Iowa, landgrabs, livestock, Monsanto, nanotechnology, NonCrop, obesity, OccupyFood, pesticides, PigfordII, saudiarabia, shalegasdrilling, WestVirginia