Gristmill (Free subscription) | yesterday
by Tom Philpott When my info-larder gets too packed, it’s time to serve up some choice nuggets from around the Web. ———————— Get ‘em while they’re hot. • Grist contributor Tom Laskawy did us proud with his participation in this New York Times “Room for Debate” forum on food stamps. Here’s how he starts:...
One Old Vet (Free subscription) | 12/02/2009
Vets Shielded From Health Care Reform Tom Philpott Military Beneficiaries, Vets Shielded From Health Reform The national health reform bill passed by the House last month and the Senate version to be debated in early December pose no threat to current health care benefits provided to military families, retirees or veterans, say advocates for these beneficiaries as well [...]
Grist Magazine (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
by Tom Philpott Martha Stewart is easy to caricature. But the sister values good ingredients—and has realized that industrial agriculture churns out flavorless crap. That has caused her to ask second-order questions about the food system—and use her immense popular appeal to shed light on the horrors of factory meat farming. She has devoted her latest episode to the topic of “vegetarian...
Gristmill (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
by Tom Philpott I’m prepared to fight for this fake snow, damn it. Media hype aside, John McCain was always a self-important blowhard. But didn’t he used to care a little bit about substantial issues—and even once sponsor climate legislation in defiance of an oil-satuarated White House? As Grist’s Jon Hiskes recently pointed out, McCain has completely crumbled on the...
Grist Magazine (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
by Tom Philpott Palm-oil trees in the making, Ivory Coast.In his Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis teases out the mechanisms of famine in British-ruled 19th century India. When a drought would wipe out a grain harvest in one region of India, the price of grain would spike. People all over the subcontinent would suddenly find themselves priced out of grain markets—even in places where...
Grist Magazine (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
by Tom Philpott In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. ————- Ever since evolution of the swine flu virus accelerated in 1998, virologists and veterinary-science have warned (PDF) that factory hog farms create the ideal conditions for generating novel viruses. They worried that three things would happen: That a novel swine...
Grist Magazine (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
by Tom Philpott This post marks the launch of “Plate Tectonics,” a new feature that highlights ways that citizen action can move the food system in more sustainable directions. ————————- How do we stop this thing?Like many people, I applauded when Michelle Obama broke ground on her organic garden—and jeered when Croplife America,...
Grist Magazine (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
by Tom Philpott When my info-larder gets too packed, it’s time to serve up some choice nuggets from around the Web. ———————— Get ‘em while they’re hot. • For years, Barry Estabrook reported on food politics for Gourmet Magazine and its Web site. In a sense, he played the role of the conscience of the foodie set—at the...
Grist Magazine (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
by Tom Philpott In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. ——— USDA chief Tom Vilsack, with special friends: Will this guy ever get serious about the swine flu/swine farm link? Why isn’t the federal government seriously investigating the possible CAFO-swine flu link? I’ve posed that question several times recently, most...
Conservation Value Notes (Free subscription) | 11/13/2009
Grist's Tom Philpott takes us for a journey back to 2003 , when an article in Science described a new strain of swine flu that had started hitting North Carolina pig farms in 1998: For years before the current outbreak, scientists openly worried that CAFOs (concentrated animal feedlot operations) provided excellent arenas for the generation and spread of dangerous new flu varieties. Yet another...
the irresistible fleet of bicycles (Free subscription) | 11/12/2009
we love tom. and the holler of maverick where he rambles. Community Gardens A small farmer on how the government can help rebuild the infrastructure he needs to survive. By Tom Philpott | Newsweek Web Exclusive Nov 11, 2009 Five years ago, I gave up a career as a business writer in New York City to take over a small farm [...]
Grist Magazine (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
by Tom Philpott “Since last spring and the onset of the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza outbreak in humans, USDA has consistently asked that the media stop calling this “novel” pandemic virus “swine flu.” By continuing to mislabel the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza virus that is affecting human populations around the world, the media is causing undue and undeserved harm...
La Vida Locavore - Front Page (Free subscription) | 11/13/2009
... things zucchini. Why is it that everyone always ends up with way too much zucchini??) LVL friend Tom Philpott had a major break with an article in Newsweek about what he learned about U.S. ag policy when he gave up a career in New York City to become an organic farmer. He says: We quickly found ourselves in a paradox: we were growing great food for the rich-which is not what we set out to...
Why Now? (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
I was going to do this on Veterans Day, and then decided to avoid that. This is about all of the lip service that the Republicans pay to military, and then turn around and stab them in the back. The Pensacola News Journal ran a Tom Philpott piece, Senator puts hold on veteran’s caregiver bill, [...]
U.S. Food Policy (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
... a similar manner. The H1N1 flu in swine has been covered by David Kirby at the Huffington Post , Tom Philpott at Grist , and, just today, the New York Times blog Green Inc .
