The Biotech Century

Playing Ecological Roulette with Mother Nature’s Designs We are in the midst of a great historic transition into the Biotech Age. The ability to isolate, identify and recombine genes is making the gene pool available, for the first time, as the primary raw resource for future economic activity on Earth. After thousands of years of […]

The Trouble With Meat

In 1992, when he was 11 years old, Damion Heersink of the southeastern Alabama town of Dothan attended a Boy Scout campout, and unwittingly ate a quarter-sized piece of uncooked hamburger. It’s certainly not unusual for kids to eat hamburgers:

Disparaging Meat

“Free speech not only lives, it rocks!” exulted Oprah Winfrey February 26 upon hearing that an Amarilllo jury had dismissed the “mad cow” case against her and co-defendant Howard Lyman of the Humane Society of the United States. The resounding victory came in the first test case of one of the nation’s 13 “food disparagement” […]

Swearing Off Swordfish

Marine Campaigns Spotlight Wasteful Fishing Practices Thirty miles off Cape Cod, Dr. Carl Safina of the National Audubon Society’s Living Oceans Program and pilot Charlie Horton circle desert-like stretches of blue water in a single-engine Super Cub. Their object: to locate schools of bluefin tuna, 500- to 700-pound fish that are highly prized by commercial […]

Food Porn

Organic Foods May Be Grown with Sewage Sludge and Drugs Last December, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman made a greatly anticipated announcement that at once had farmers, consumers and organic retailers across the country holding their breath, then raising their voices in astonished protest: The proposed federal organic standards for U.S. food crops included inherently […]

Jurassic Dump

A Universal Studios Theme Park in Japan Sits on Top of a Toxic Waste Site There were the usual men in suits, and there were also actors dressed as Woody Woodpecker, Marilyn Monroe, Herman Munster and Groucho Marx. The place was Osaka, Japan, two years ago, and the occasion was the signing of an agreement […]

Nicols Fox

Investigating a Food Supply Gone Haywire Like a lot of other Americans, journalist Nicols Fox, a former editor at the Washington Journalism Review and a correspondent for The Economist, first heard about the deadly E. coli O157:H7 bacteria in 1993. That was the year it attacked a group of Northwestern children, all of whom had […]

From Rainforests to Kitty Litter

Breathing Silica, Washing Vegetables and Saving Habitat What are the health effects of clumping cat litter on humans? Are there any negative side effects from breathing the actual litter? —Andy and Taeja Klukas, Maple Grove, MN Clay-based cat litters contain crystalline silica, the main component in sand, rock and mineral ores. A possible health threat […]

Yellowstone Wolves Revisited

Transferring a second group of wolves from Fort St. John, British Columbia to Yellowstone National Park and the Frank Church River of No Return National Wildlife Refuge in Idaho this January was a controversial move (See Latitudes, August 1995) that not only ignited sparks with ranchers near Yellowstone, but also with some Canadians, like the activist group Friends of the Wolf (FOW).

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