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As a media event, the Egyptian uprising has been exhilarating.
In all the hoopla and celebrating, though, it’s easy to lose sight of some fundamentals. One is the important role of food lurking in the background. Egypt has been wracked by food riots in the recent past–most notably in 1977 and again in [...]

Well, surprise, surprise, no one came forward to take up my challenge to explore the data on illnesses from raw milk cheese during the period after 2005. In my Feb. 6 post about the big push by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to trash the minimum 60-day aging requirement for [...]

Suppose the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and its various local ag and public health minions had to show detailed laboratory evidence before declaring food contaminated.
Suppose the authorities needed to demonstrate that the bacteria being labeled as unfit for human consumption really were.
And suppose the presence of certain bacteria couldn’t automatically be [...]

When large government agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration want to make controversial policy changes, they often use the major media to launch trial balloons to see how different options play with key constituencies.
That helps explain why both the New York Times and Washington Post came out Saturday with [...]

Ed Shank of The Family Cow in Pennsylvania, reported “good news” to his customers  this afternoon.
“We just got the test results back from the lab literally minutes ago.  Both samples taken different dates came back negative for Campy!  Praise the Lord!”
Shank said he hopes to have milk back on the shelves tomorrow [...]

During the question-and-answer period following my talk at the Northeast Organic Food Association-NY conference in Saratoga last month–about the government-industry campaign to rid us of raw milk–a man piped up to say he ran a herdshare operation in New York, and was wondering about the Meadowsweet Dairy case.
A herdshare in [...]

A little over a year ago, I described Edwin Shank’s conversion of The Family Cow from feedlot to the East’s largest raw dairy. It took more than three years, and required extraordinary commitment to producing high-quality nutrient-dense food.
I’ve communicated with Shank on and off since then, seeing him most recently last [...]

There is lots not to like about the new web site about raw milk from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. It is nearly totally one-sided in painting raw milk as dangerous. It is intellectually dishonest in not acknowledging large-scale journal-published research that demonstrates raw milk’s health benefits in reducing the incidence [...]

I was just opening a container of raw milk kefir I purchased about three weeks ago, to make a smoothie with some mango and blueberries, when there was this explosion. A pop, like a small firecracker. The kefir was everywhere, on the kitchen cabinets, the counter…and on my clean shirt. [...]

Relax. No one’s in control.”
A Buddhist teacher, speaking about our insatiable desire for predictability, made that off-hand remark during a talk I attended recently. He was arguing that such a desire for guarantees is unattainable, a mirage in a world that is always changing. Instead, life is just the opposite, [...]