On Aug. 3, federal and county law enforcement agents raided a Venice, Calif., raw-food club, searching for raw milk. The YouTube video of the raid showed officers, with guns drawn, working their way through the facility in what critics called “government-sponsored terrorism” and “an attack on food freedom.” Every few months, it seems, TV news...
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Three years ago, Alma Hasse walked purposely, head down, toward a red brick building. The Jerome County Courthouse held a mountain of files on the county’s dairy CAFOs, or concentrated animal feeding operations, and Hasse wanted a look at them. She and her agricultural watchdog group, Idaho Concerned Area Residents for the Environment believed...
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It’s easy to get all Dickensian when looking at what’s happening across the agriculture landscape. As the spring growing season begins, there are plenty of examples sprouting that suggest that, in terms of food and farming, we are indeed living in the best of times and, if not the worst of times, some pretty...
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The recent rains and sunny weather have got me thinking about spring, planting vegetable gardens — and the water footprint of food production. This time of year, as farmer’s markets open up after a winter hiatus and Idaho starts to offer fruits and vegetable again, I’m reminded that producing food in much of Idaho...
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MONTESANO, Wash. – Northwest artisan cheese makers say the F.D.A. just doesn’t get their craft. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been getting tough on food companies after years of incidents like last August’s nation-wide egg recall. President Obama signed a new food safety law this month expanding the F.D.A.’s authority. But two...
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“This was formerly the Smith’s Dairy,” says Bill Stoltzfus of the building he bought in 2007, just a block south of Buhl’s town square. “The place had been in the Smith family for 70-some years.” This modest cream-colored bottling plant and the soft-spoken man who now runs it hardly look like players in a...
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America is in the midst of a cheese making renaissance. Small-scale, artisans have set up shop in virtually every state. The Northwest is particularly well represented. Oregon has over 20 professional cheese making businesses — Washington twice that. Idaho has less than six so far. But, as correspondent Guy Hand finds...
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