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An environmental breakthrough has never sounded so….delicious. Today, candy giant Mars Inc, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and IBM announced that they have mapped a preliminary genome sequence for the cacao plant, which produces the crucial ingredient for making chocolate, and placed it in the public domain.
I don’t eat bacon cheeseburgers. About three years ago I gave up red meat and pork. I am American, and brother do I love bacon cheeseburgers. But I decided that as part of the imperfect project of trying to live a decent, moral life, I could no longer chow down on bacon cheeseburgers. I could [...]
Hot enough for you? If you live in one of the more than 15 states that were suffering under a heat advisory or excessive heat warning on Tuesday, I’m going to guess the answer is yes, God, please make it all stop. The oppressively high temperatures that gripped much of the U.S. during June—the hottest [...]
A furor erupted in Britain this week after The New York Times reported that an unnamed British dairy farmer had sold milk from a cow produced from a cloned parent. Britain’s food watchdog, The Food Standards Agency, launched an immediate investigation and announced yesterday that it had found that, in fact, meat from the offspring [...]
I had the chance to go on the Leonard Lopate show on WNYC yesterday afternoon to talk about the renewed push to regulate antibiotics used for growth promotion in farm animals. With the Food and Drug Administration now urging meat producers to limit the amount of drugs they give their animals—over concern about the rise [...]
Over in the Wellness blog, TIME’s Alice Park asks how safe Gulf seafood is? And the answer is: pretty safe, although oysters might take a while longer to bounce back. Read her post here.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—gingerly, gingerly—took a step on Monday towards addressing one of the most fundamental but unknown threats to public health: the overuse of antibiotics in animal food and water. The FDA said in a new policy document that the uses of antibiotics for agriculture should be limited to treated sick animals, [...]
Horror at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC) as The Daily Telegraph reports that one of Wimbledon’s greatest traditions—strawberries and cream—is under threat. Apparently, the mass decline in bumblebees and other pollinators will cause “wonky” strawberries—perfectly shaped strawbs are created only when every single ovary has been pollinated by an insect. During [...]
Alarm bells have been sounding for a long time about the perilous state of the world’s fish supplies. Species are collapsing and once-fertile fishing areas are growing barren as global consumption—driven in part by the exploding popularity of sushi—is slowly strip-mining the seas. One answer is aquaculture. Farm-raised fish—like farm-raised cattle or chickens—can yield an [...]
Given that it’s World Cup month, even soccer-phobic Americans are getting into football of the non-padded variety. Part and parcel with the World Cup sporting experience—especially in the first round of matches—is an acceptance of ties. Ties are not something we like to do in American sports, especially in baseball, where two cellar-dwelling teams—like the [...]
