As I intend to dedicate the better part of my career to research, I am often confronted with the fear that even the highest quality data can end up out in the ether of peer-reviewed publications that never make their intended splash, seen by a limited few and impacting even fewer. Last Friday I attended [...]

Leadership at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made it abundantly clear last week that the low-dose usage of antibiotics in food animals, simply to promote growth or improve feed efficiency, needlessly contributes to the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria and poses a serious threat to public health. Despite the fact that the FDA [...]

Baltimore is currently in the process of revising its zoning code for the first time since 1971. Since this process only happens once every 30-40 years, this is your once in a lifetime chance to influence what development in this city is going to look like for the next 40 years. Here’s a little info [...]

Responding to Congressman Steve Israel’s (D-NY) proposed ban on roxarsone - an arsenical growth-promoting additive to swine and poultry feed - John Starkey, President of the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association, claimed use of the antimicrobial drug in poultry feed “…increases sustainability of production.”  Mr. Starkey’s use of the term “sustainability” requires clarification - is [...]

In an age where large scale industrial farming operations dominate our food system, a counterrevolution focused on local and sustainable agriculture is growing. Data collected in 2007 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicates that 12,549 farms in the United States reported marketing products through a community supported agriculture (CSA) arrangement. One of the [...]

It was meant to be the kickoff of a national conversation, but the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) sponsored meeting on chemical exposures and public health, held in Washington last week, felt more like an argument at times.
The meeting started off predictably enough—with Howard Frumkin, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, [...]

Watch a short interview with Dr. Robert Lawrence, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.
Lawrence discusses the nation’s water pollution and his involvement in the production of “Poisoned Waters,” a PBS FRONTLINE documentary that examines the increased hazards to human health and the ecosystem caused by decades of polluted runoff from agriculture, [...]

In yesterday’s New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristoff addressed President-elect Obama’s soon-to-be-made choice for Secretary of Agriculture, asking whether or not a “U.S. Department of Food” would better reflect the change our country needs to see realized in our food policy. 
Kristoff notes that “a Department of Agriculture made sense 100 years ago when 35 percent of Americans engaged [...]

The Huffington Post this week looks at U.S. food policy and how it could potentially change under the Obama Administration. ‘Yes We Can’ Create a Sane Food Policy in the U.S. calls for President-elect Obama to appoint “an independent-minded secretary of agriculture who shares his concern for our nation’s youth, our national health, global development, the environment, and [...]

This week, 88 prominent figures in sustainable food and agriculture signed a letter to the Obama transition team entitled “the sustainable choice for the next U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.” This letter offered up the top 6 picks for the new (and sustainable!) Secretary of Agriculture including Gus Schumacher (MA), Chuck Hasselbrook (NE), Sarah Vogel (ND, [...]