If you ate a tomato this winter in the U.S. eat a tomato today in the U.S., chances are almost certain that it was grown down in Florida. (Ed: Corrected because I forgot it was July, despite the 99 F heat.) The Sunshine State may be better known for oranges, but it’s also the source for about one-third of the fresh tomatoes produced …
Food
Can the U.S. Close Its Seafood Trade Deficit?
As I write in the cover story of TIME this week, we’re in the middle of a seafood transition. Once nearly all of our fish were caught wild—indeed, as Paul Greenberg has written, fish are the last wild food in a world where nearly everything else we eat comes from a farmer’s labor. But that’s changing—around half of the seafood …
Egg Producers and the Humane Society—Mortal Enemies—Come Together on Battery Cages
The corporate food system in America has come under intense pressure in recent years over its environmental and humanitarian standards—most recently when a pork producer in Iowa was filmed by undercover allegedly abusing its animals, as my colleague Alexandra Silver wrote about recently. Usually industrial producers and green …
A Must-Read Book on the Future of Fish
I have the cover story this week on the state of global seafood, examining the rapid growth in aquaculture—and looking at the challenges facing the fish farming industry as it begins to provide an ever larger proportion of our seafood. It’s a massive subject, as you can imagine, and I wasn’t able to go into depth on everything I …
Apples Can Be Tainted With Pesticides—But You Still Need Your Fruits and Vegetables
If the apple you had for lunch seems almost too perfect, you can thank the chemical industry. Conventional farmers use pesticides liberally in their orchards, in part to prevent blemishes that can hurt the value of their product. As a result, Americans have come to assume that apples should be as taut and unblemished as a …
Why Your Fish Is Foreign
I’ve been researching the global aquaculture industry—which included a trip to lovely Turner Falls, Massachusetts—for an upcoming magazine piece. I’ll have more on that later, but I wanted to point to the new national aquaculture policy—download a PDF here—that was released today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric …
Go Green: Eat McDonald’s Fish! (but only in Europe)
Should greens avoid eating at McDonald’s? I used to be one of those earnest environmentalists—raised on Fast Food Nation—who forswore McDonald’s entirely. But when I moved to the UK I noticed some changes at the Golden Arches. The restaurant chain introduced free range eggs. It started serving sustainably sourced coffee. So I made a …
Tropical Hotspots Face Food Woes in a Warmer World
Thanks to the spring from hell—in the U.S., at least—much of the concern about climate change has shifted to the fear of the violent weather that could become the norm in a warmer world. (See Sharon Begley’s sobering take in Newsweek.) But while tornadoes and hurricanes and floods may get our attention, the greater threat from …
As Europe Reels From E. Coli, Problems with Food Safety in the U.S.
As a scary E. coli outbreak spreads across Europe, health authorities in the EU are coming to grips with the fact that the transnational body may not be ready to investigate and stop a major foodborne illness. But surely we’d do better if a similar outbreak occurred in the U.S. Right?
Maybe not. We’re lucky to have the crack …
5 Questions With Farm Sanctuary President Gene Baur
A guest post from TIME’s Feifei Sun:
In 1986, Gene Baur started selling veggie dogs out of his aqua blue Volkswagen van to raise money for Farm Sanctuary, an animal rights organization he co-founded with his then-wife. This May, Baur hopped back into his van to embark on a road trip across America, called the Just Eats Tour (which
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