Supersized Food News Feed, April 30, 2010

Cross-posted from The Green Fork.

Roundup Ready Alfalfa Hits the Supreme Court Monsanto has taken a ruling against the deregulation of genetically engineered alfalfa (pending the results of an environmental impact study, which sounds pretty reasonable) to the Supreme Court, which will rule on the case by the end of June.  Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has recused himself from the case because his brother, a judge in San Francisco, issued the initial ruling, but Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who worked as a lawyer for Monsanto back in the 1970s, apparently didn’t feel that was a conflict of interest.

Bring the Heat! No, Don’t! A few friends of ours, including Family Farm Defenders and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, have put together a damning report that outlines industrial agriculture’s role in climate change, calling out industry giants like Dean Foods, Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill and Monsanto for their (gigantic) contributions to the problem.

Industrial Food vs Military Industry, on the Playground Kate Adamick, a home-cooked school lunch consultant, brings a fresh look at school lunch to The Atlantic.  My favorite quote: “In other words, the industrial food complex is threatening the military industrial complex, and, as a result, the commoditization of our food supply may be forced to take a back seat to the commoditization of our children.”  Oy.

Viva la (Food) Revolucion! IATP’s Food and Society Fellows took a trip down to Cuba awhile back and released a report on their trip last week.  Deb Eschmeyer investigates the state of school food in Havana and don’t miss Roger Doiron’s video on the history of food, both local and imported, in Cuba.

Food Safety Killed vs Local Farmers? Salon ponders the effects of proposed testing regulations on small producers.

Move Over Greenwashing, Enter Hungerwashing In one of the most mind-boggling publicity stunts of all time, KFC will donate the buns they replaced with slabs of fried chicken in their artery-clogging Double Down to food pantries.  In other words, you can feel better about ingesting an entire day’s worth of animal-derived protein (the USDA’s DRI for men ages 19-70 is 56, for women it’s 46, the sandwich contains 53) in one sandwich because hungry folks around the country are getting an extra dose of refined flour.

In Case You Can’t Find a Pepsi Vendor This week, Foursquare, the location-based social networking platform, announced plans to partner with Pepsi.  According to the New York Times, Foursquare’s GPS program would notify Pepsi when a user was in the vicinity of a business where its products were sold and in turn, push discount notifications to the user as part of its “loyalty program.”  Sounds pretty creepy.

Don’t Know Your Farmer A couple of United States senators (hi Saxby Chambliss, John McCain and Pat Roberts) have issued a letter to USDA secretary Tom Vilsack, condemning the agency’s Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food program.

Where’s the Trust? New antitrust rules are on their way for the meat industry.  Will they have teeth?  Stay tuned to find out.

Natural Growth Organics outpaced other sectors of food market growth — again — last year.

Show Them the Money! Still no justice for black farmers who won a class action lawsuit against the USDA back in February.

Land Ho…No A troubling new survey from the Natural Resources Inventory reports that millions of acres of prime farmland were lost over a 25-year span (1982 – 2007).  The losses were felt in every state in the union.