food

As a regular consumer of food, you would be reasonable to assume that food laws and agencies work to combat things like food waste, foodborne illness, inhumane livestock conditions, and disappearing fish stocks. However, some regulations do just the opposite.

Earlier this year, Italy adopted measures to reduce the quantity of food that's wasted in the country. The laws encourage the use of doggy bags, which are uncommon on the continent. More importantly, they eliminate longstanding rules that have made it difficult or impossible farmers and grocers to donate food to those in need. For those readers unfamiliar with the term, food waste means "food that completes the food supply chain up to a final product, of good quality and fit for consumption, but still does not get consumed because it is discarded, whether or not after it is left to spoil."

A trio of interesting stories aren't making national headlines. 

The push for organic food to supplant conventionally produced food (i.e., produced with pesticides, supplements and artificial fertilizers) has always been hampered by the claim that the organic production style couldn’t provide the volume of food needed to supply the US population. That claim was not really based in reality so much as a number of predictions about production costs, food costs, and backlash from invested corporations. With 100 million acres of prime US farmland being used to produce field corn, a crop that is diverted almost entirely to animal feed and ethanol pro