Understanding Government

Another day, another food recall. A California slaughterhouse is voluntarily recalling 1 million pounds of ground beef after seven people sickened by E.coli contamination had their illnesses traced to the meat.

According to an Associated Press brief in The New York Times, the recalled ground beef was processed by (more…)

They may be preliminary, but the results are nonetheless shocking: Nearly 70 percent of the 19 different brands of foreign and domestic extra-virgin olive oil tested by researchers at UC Davis weren’t what they claimed.

Despite the assurance of labels and premium prices, much of the oil was adulterated with cheaper refined oils, pressed from olives already past peak, damaged by heat or light or just plain old and stale, (more…)

Regulations intended to boost the safety of meat produced at the nation’s industrial slaughterhouses could prove so onerous and expensive that they will put small processors out of business, undermining a nascent movement that’s rebuilding links between small farmers and America’s dining room tables. (more…)

Here is a positive example of money from the $787 billion stimulus bill that’s had an instant impact. The New York Times’ Michael Cooper reports that the stimulus bill gave $100 million to food banks, a sizeable addition to the $250 million the Ag Dept. hands out each year to food banks. Already all this has been spent and gone to food pantries and soup kitchens. With requests for emergency food assistance up by 30 percent from 2008, according to one survey Cooper cites, this seems a sensible, humane way to combat the recession.-MB