There is an unfortunate stigma attached to frozen meat, a widely held assumption that it’s inferior to fresh meat. This prejudice runs deep enough that fast-food chain Wendy’s tried to capitalize on it in 2008 with a promise that its burger meat was “Always fresh, never frozen.” This belief, and retail efforts to cater...
Onions can be tricky to grow, which is why a farmer’s onions have long been considered a litmus test for agricultural skill. Hence the expression, “he knows his onions,” which is like saying, “he knows the ropes.” Knowing one’s onions in a literal sense is a great thing to aspire to, and this applies...
In February, Amy Meyer became the first person charged under a so-called ag-gag law. Six states currently have such laws, also called “Farm Protection laws, which aim to stop video recording at slaughterhouses. The bills are largely industry-funded, and based on a template drawn up by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council. Another eight...
The massive fertilizer explosion in West, Texas made less of an impression than the relatively small Boston blasts two days earlier. But if terrorists are scary, the dangers presented by stockpiles of ammonium nitrate, aka nitrate fertilizer, should be even scarier. This material can be used with bad intentions, such as the gasoline-soaked fertilizer...
A neighbor in New Mexico once told me that it’s bad luck, not to mention bad form, to kill a rattlesnake. Unfortunately, he told me this after I’d already killed one. My neighbor had lived on that mountain most of his life, and he was at peace, if not in love, with its snakes,...
Anne Kapuscinski is a professor of sustainability science at Dartmouth College, who recently led a team of 53 scientists in writing a book on the subject of risk assessment science as applied to genetically modified fish. I recently interviewed her about her take on the FDA’s approval process regarding AquAdvantage salmon, a genetically modified...
Montana governor Steve Bullock recently signed a bill legalizing the salvage, consumption, and/or donation to charity of animals hit and killed by cars-aka roadkill. The law applies to deer, elk, antelope and moose, and puts the state in the company of Alaska, Illinois, Wisconsin, New York, Florida, and West Virginia in condoning the consumption...
Locavore fundamentalists might call it blasphemy, but there’s no reason a meal made with local foods can’t contain ingredients from the other side of the world. What’s wrong with imported oyster sauce on homegrown broccoli? Why not use curry powder on your homegrown lamb? Much less defensible are lamb from New Zealand (since we...
A kitchen garden is as much an act of self-expression as a means of growing food. But not all of a garden’s expressiveness is intentional. In the same way that pets and their owners can grow to resemble one another, gardens can reflect their gardeners’ personality, including how fastidious, lazy, and greedy they...
We’ve been told since the 1960s that animal-based saturated fats will give us heart disease, while their polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) counterparts, found mostly in vegetable oils, will prevent it. But a recent paper in the British Journal of Medicine suggests the exact opposite. The study compared the effects of saturated and polyunsaturated fats...