NEWSBYDANNY JENSEN

Forget food recalls, a bigger safety danger lurks — budget cuts. Congress recently proposed a federal budget that threatens to eliminate critical funding for food safety and clean water programs, placing the health and safety of all Americans at risk.

If passed, the outlined budget would also undermine the hard-won success of the recently passed Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510), which aims to improve our country's food safety system and reduce the incidence of foodborne illnesses. President Obama's proposed budget also fails to provide enough funds to adequately safeguard our food and water resources. To that end, the non-profit Food & Water Watch has launched a campaign demanding that Congress take immediate action to allow sufficient funding for vital food and water programs that help keep us safe.

Looking for a free pass to pollute drinking water in California? Well, if you're a large-scale dairy farm, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board (CVRWQCB) seems content to look the other way while cow waste contaminates groundwater with high levels of dangerous nitrates.

A new report from Food & Water Watch reveals that CVRWQCB, the regional agency responsible for protecting groundwater in the Central Valley, has failed to effectively enforce water regulations established for dairies. Without the threat of enforced regulations or fines, factory farm dairies are polluting drinking water in the region with harmful levels of nitrates generated by enormous amounts of concentrated animal waste. Co-written by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, the report calls upon California Governor Jerry Brown to nominate strong appointees to the Water Board.

Many of California's largest dairy farms are found in the Central Valley, where they produce enough fecal waste to rival a city of 21 million people. This staggering output of pollution is often left untreated and seeps into nearby waterways where it poses a serious threat to human health and the environment. According to the report, 60 percent of the roughly 1,500 dairies in the Central Valley have groundwater on their property that is contaminated with nitrates above the drinking water standard.

Hidden cameras on reality shows rarely reveal any profound secrets. Undercover filming on factory farms, however, is a horse of a different color (sometimes literally). This type of footage oftentimes reveals unsanitary conditions that threaten human health as well as the atrocious conditions that some animals are kept in.

Florida Senator Jim Norman (R-Tampa) recently proposed legislation (SB 1246) that would make it a first-degree felony to photograph or film a farm or other “legitimate agricultural operations” without the owners' consent. Instead of improving food safety and increasing much-needed transparency on industrial-scale farms, the bill would severely obstruct reporters and activists from informing consumers about dangerous, industrial farm conditions that could harm their health. Whether it’s antibiotic-resistant bacteria, arsenic contamination, or groundwater pollution, the public needs to be alerted to the dangers that many factory farms pose so that they can make informed choices about where they buy their food.

There's no business like pig business, and thanks goodness because it's an ugly one. The new documentary, Pig Business, aims to uncover the horrendous impact that factory pig farming imposes on human health, the environment, small farmers, and of course, the animals themselves.

To help spread the word about this international farming crisis to U.S. lawmakers, the film will be screened on March 9th at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center in Washington D.C., an event hosted by the Center for Food Safety, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Congressman Dennis Kucinich, and a panel of other experts. Pig Business investigates the hidden costs of an industrialized farming system that is destroying communities and threatening consumers here in the U.S. and abroad, and explores what can be done to improve the current situation. The screening and panel discussion is open to the public, and whether or not you can attend, you're encouraged to invite your representatives.

Tracy Worcester, director of Pig Business and activist and mother of three, set out four years ago to trace the origins of cheap, imported pork in British supermarkets. She found herself on a trail that connects factory farms in the U.S. to small farmers in Central Europe. The film exposes how Smithfield Farms, the world's largest and most notorious pork producer, has exported its intensive farming model to Europe, exporting the disastrous effects of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and taking advantage of lax environmental and labor laws. Beginning in Poland and Romania, Smithfield plans to spread its destructive farming practices and products across Europe and the U.K.

The city of Gainesville, Florida recently served up a 130-meals-a-day limit to area soup kitchens, forcing providers to cease offering food to the hungry once the facility has reached the absurdly inhumane cut-off.

Fortunately, some of the candidates running in the upcoming Gainesville City Commission elections are voicing their opposition to the restriction, an encouraging sign that this cruel and unjust rule is headed for a change.

To find out where they stood on important local issues, including the soup kitchen meal limit, The Gainesville Sun posed a series of questions to the City Commission candidates. Of the thirteen candidates aiming for the three available positions on the March 15th elections, four of them spoke out against the meal limit, while five believe it should remain (the rest are presumably playing safe politics).

Taco Bell is taking great pains to beef up the fast food giant's defense that its "seasoned ground beef"  actually contains more meat than filling. Following the recent filing of a class-action lawsuit — which claims the chain's taco filling is only 36 percent beef while the rest is comprised of fillers, binders, and extenders — the company has launched a very public damage control campaign.

The new television commercials, radio spots, and other ads feature franchise owners and employees (who may actually be actors/fillers themselves) insisting that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" consists of "88 percent premium ground beef and 12 percent signature recipe." The chain is also attempting to lure customers into trying the Crunch Wrap Supreme for a symbolic, reduced price of 88 cents. And all of this after the company gave away 10 million tacos through Facebook and took out full-page newspaper ads that shouted, "Thank you for suing us!" You know, for a company that claims to be so confident about the amount of beef in its tacos, the fast food giant sure seems to be making an awful lot of noise. Taco Bell sounds a bit like the guilty suspect who can't stop running his mouth off about his "innocence."

Toxic chemicals found in baby bottles aren't usually fodder for comedic material. Unless, of course, you happen to be Maine's Governor, Paul LePage.

Last week, LePage blithely dismissed the dangers of bisphenol-A (BPA), a hormone-disrupting chemical found in everything from cash register receipts to canned foods to baby bottles. LePage claimed that he hasn't seen enough scientific evidence to support a ban on BPA in Maine. The governor then went on to callously joke that the only bad thing about BPA is that it might give women "little beards." Hilarious showstopper, right?

Wrong. BPA is no joke. Beyond being patently unfunny and inaccurate about the serious effects of BPA, LePage's comments reveal that he is determined to repeal Maine's recently passed ban on BPA. Even more concerning is the fact that his efforts may be motivated by pressure from lobbyists in the chemical industry and other notorious, out-of-state corporations.

Despite LePage's claims to the contrary, there exists a long and ever-increasing number of scientific studies linking BPA with reproductive problems, learning disabilities, breast and prostate cancer, early puberty in girls, diabetes, obesity, and a laundry list of other health issues. (You'll notice that "little beards" is not on the list.) The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention have all cautioned against the use of BPA in consumer products, especially those used by infants and developing children.

Some Arizona lawmakers are determined to ensure that nobody messes with the toys in unhealthy kids' meals. The state's House Commerce Committee recently voted to block local governments from imposing any restrictions on giveaways offered by restaurants, which includes everything from toys and games in fast food meals to coupons for seniors.

While there are currently no proposed bans in Arizona, the Arizona Restaurant Association, which helped draft the bill, is clearly shaken by the hard-won fast food toy ban for kids' meals high in fat, sugar, and salt that recently passed in San Francisco, as well as those underway in Nebraska and other states. But the preemptive legislation restricts the rights of local municipalities that may wish to encourage more nutritious options for children and curb the predatory marketing tactics that fast food restaurants use to lure kids to unhealthy fare. The bill, HB 2490, was approved 6 to 2, and is now headed for a full vote in the House.

If you think charity efforts run by college students only involve bake sales and car washes, think again.

Six Stanford University undergrads have pushed campus philanthropy to inspiring heights by proposing a local homeless shelter run by Stanford students.

The group has clearly done their homework. Interviewing potential service provider partners, unhoused individuals and school faculty, they've outlined a program that will meet the needs of the community.

But they need to hear from more supporters.

Jamie Oliver is quickly learning that the best lessons are oftentimes learned beyond school walls. Undeterred by the Los Angeles Unified School District's (LAUSD) stubborn refusal to allow the celebrity chef to film inside its schools, Oliver continues to push for school lunch reform on the streets of L.A. From outdoor cook-offs with students to cooking classes on wheels, Oliver's truancy looks to be helping to bolster his efforts to teach kids about nutrition and may even convince LAUSD to rethink his expulsion from its cafeterias.

Last weekend, 32 students from eight Los Angeles County high schools joined Oliver for a cooking competition on Santa Monica's 3rd Street Promenade to inspire healthy cooking amongst their peers. The culinary spectacle also featured seven local chefs serving as mentors to the kids, including school garden supporter Ben Ford. The large-scale cooking demonstrations Oliver hosted during Food Revolution's first season in Huntington, West Virginia helped garner tremendous public support for the campaign. And holding the junior Iron Chef-style competition on the country's second-most traversed stretch of walkway (allegedly after Main Street, Disneyland), the 3rd Street Promenade, will surely help heighten the scope of Jamie's efforts in L.A. Inviting local star chefs who can help carry the school lunch reform torch for L.A. was a wise move as well.