Food

"The extent of the world’s land affected by excess salt is set to increase rapidly with potentially devastating impacts on food production, research has found."

"The explosion of crisp, commercial apple varieties in the last century doomed many other breeds into obscurity. But in a field in Kent in the UK, some of them live on."

"In the waning days of the Biden administration, a long-fought battle over a cancer-causing food additive is again in the spotlight as consumer advocacy groups and lawmakers demand federal regulators ban Red Dye No. 3, a chemical used to give popular candies, foods and drinks their cherry-red colors."

"For decades, a little-known company now owned by a Goldman Sachs fund has been making millions of dollars from the unlikely dregs of American life: sewage sludge."

"The U.S. government on Friday ordered testing of the nation’s milk supply for bird flu to better monitor the spread of the virus in dairy cows."

"US regulators made “significant” errors in adopting a new rule four years ago around the release of genetically modified crops, and must now strengthen oversight, a federal court ruled this week."

"California researchers say the world may be just one genetic tweak away from human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 bird flu virus — a worrisome mutation that could open the door to widespread human infections and possibly even a pandemic, according to some experts."

"Supplementing the diets of grazing beef cows with seaweed in pellet form could cut their methane emissions by almost 40 percent, a new study has found."

"The long and winding regulatory road for a pesticide known to be harmful to developing babies took another turn on Monday as the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it was planning to only partially ban the insecticide chlorpyrifos in farming."

"Negotiations over the first legally binding UN treaty on plastic pollution collapsed in the final stage of discussions, after oil-producing nations led by Saudi Arabia and Russia blocked efforts by 100 countries to place limits on new production."