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Portable Food Factories
Can the word “factory” ever be used in a food-related context in a way that doesn’t sound like a criticism? Can an chemical company ever produce something that could be welcomed by fans of local,...
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In Praise of Industrialized Food
Check out this piece, by Rachel Laudan, in the Utne Reader: In Praise of Fast Food. (It’s worth noting right up front that the title of the piece is misleading. It’s not a defense of fast food, in the...
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Prince Charles on Impending Agricultural Doom
Prince Charles — heir to the throne of England — has made a hobby of expressing opinions on everything from architecture to nanotechnology. For the most part, he lacks the requisite expertise to...
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A (Uniquely?) Ethical Dairy Farm
When it comes to marketing food these days, few buzzwords seem to carry more weight than that simple 6-letter word, “ethics.” See this story, from the BBC: A new ethical farm opens at Bhaktivedanta...
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Children, Food, and Indoctrination
A few weeks back, this video of a precocious kid talking about the ethics of food made the rounds. I wasn’t sure what to say about it. I guess it’s finally time. I don’t like to pick on kids, but child...
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Using, Regulating and Testing for Antibiotics in Milk
Here’s an interesting story about efforts to regulate competitive behaviour in the food industry: By William Neuman, for the NYT: F.D.A and Dairy Industry Spar Over Testing of Milk Each year, federal...
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Things that Matter: Drug Residue in Chinese Pork
You could tell a lot about your average foodie or food-safety advocate by asking them to list food-related issues by level of importance. Some people tend to focus on the latest feel-good trend (e.g.,...
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Is Smaller More Ethical, or Less?
The food world’s fascination with small-scale production of bespoke edibles shows no sign of waning. See, for example, this piece by Emma Sturgess, for The Guardian: From small seeds grow big ideas...
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Bigger Birds
Innovation isn’t always good for everyone. See this blog entry about how artificial insemination has allowed the turkey industry to triple the average size of a turkey over the last 50 years: Give...
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Ethics of the World’s First Synthetic Burger
So, the world’s first synthetic burger has been cultured, minced, fried and consumed. (Mark Post, the scientist who conceived of and grew the synthetic burger, had announced a year and a half ago his...
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