Tag: food
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15 Indigenous Vegetables that are Nutritious and Delicious
The incredible variety of the planet’s plant life is disappearing. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that approximately 75 percent of the Earth’s plant genetic resources are now extinct. Another third of plant biodiversity is expected to disappear by 2050. Unfortunately, most investment in agriculture is for crops such as wheat, rice, and maize,…
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Monsanto’s Genetically Engineered Sweet Corn a Flop?
A genetically engineered sweet corn that is biotech giant Monsanto’s first direct-to-consumer product appears to be a flop in the U.S. market, says a first-of-its-kind investigation. For four months beginning last June, Friends of the Earth tested 71 samples of fresh, frozen and canned sweet corn from eight areas in a nationwide sample, using a highly sensitive…
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Comment Period Extended for Food Safety Rules, Show Support for Local, Organic Foods
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has extended the comment period to Nov. 22 for its proposed produce and preventive-control rules that are part of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). The agency decided to extend the deadline because the web page where comments were being collected had bouts of being offline, out-of-service or not accepting…
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New Label Tells Consumers if Meat is Free of Growth-Enhancing Drugs
A new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) certification program for livestock producers would permit them to market their products with a special label saying the meat contains no drugs called beta agonists—which some estimates say are fed to up to nearly 80 percent of U.S.-raised livestock. Beta agonists are feed additives used to increase muscle mass and…
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Gaining Ground on Fight to Label Genetically Engineered Foods
“The ground we gained in Washington, in the form of votes, is nothing compared with the ground—in the form of soil and farms and fields—we plan to take back from Monsanto in the months and years ahead. Watch out, Monsanto. We have plans. And those plans include taking back our seeds, our food, our farms,…