Sustainability

For a group of farmers and consumers around the country, the term “organic” just doesn’t go far enough. They say the U.S. Department of Agriculture has weakened standards for food that is supposed to be raised organically.

Jessica Saturley-Hall knew she wanted to start her own business, and she got hooked on the concept of compost. She knew that food scraps produce significantly more methane, a greenhouse gas, when tossed in a landfill, rather than breaking down on their own. So she wondered, what if you could reward people for separating their food waste from their trash.

Lobster conservation techniques pioneered by Maine fishermen helped drive a population boom that’s led to record landings this century. That’s the conclusion of new, peer-reviewed research published today.

Thirty years ago, four people died from amnesic shellfish poisoning after eating cultured mussels from Canada’s Price Edward Island. The mussels contained domoic acid, a neurotoxin produced by a class of algae called pseudo-nitzschia. The toxin turned up in PEI mussels the next year, but for decades after that wasn’t heard from again on the Eastern Seaboard.