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Russia has banned fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, milk and dairy imports from the US, the European Union, Australia, Canada and Norway. Dmitry Medvedev said the ban was effective immediately and would last for one year. The agriculture minister, Nikolai Fyodorov, said on Thursday that greater quantities of Brazilian meat and New Zealand cheese would be imported to offset the newly prohibited items. He added Moscow was in talks with Belarus and Kazakhstan to prevent the banned western foodstuffs being exported to Russia from the two countries. The Kremlin's move comes in response to the grounding of the budget airline subsidiary...

(CNSNews.com) - When asked if marijuana-infused food products should require federal labeling, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said consumers want accurate information “to make smart choices”. Currently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t enforce federal food safety standards on marijuana-infused food products that are available in the few states where marijuana has been legalized.During a conference call with lawmakers on FDA food labeling on Tuesday, CNSNews.com asked: “Given that the FDA currently doesn’t enforce any federal food safety standards on marijuana-infused foods and with a lot of states obviously changing their marijuana laws  -do you think they should require nutritional...

A pizza vending machine takes convenience food to a whole new level, delivering fresh pies to customers in just three minutes 24/7. The Let's Pizza unit invented by Claudio Torghele, an entrepreneur from Rovereto, Italy, mixes flour and water together and presses the dough flat to create a 10.5 inch base. Desired toppings are then added and the meal is flash-cooked in a high temperature infrared oven at 380 degrees Celsius. While the baking process is underway, a takeaway box is prepared. The finished pie is then placed in the cardboard container and delivered through a slot. As they wait...

Conakry — Medical teams struggling to curb Ebola in West Africa have been discouraging bush meat consumption, believed to have caused the outbreak, but some rural communities dependent on the meat for protein are determined to continue their traditional hunting practices. While meat from wild animals such as fruit bats, rodents and forest antelopes have largely disappeared from market stalls in main towns like Guéckédou (in southern Guinea and the epicentre of the disease) or the capital Conakry following campaigns to avoid contamination, it is still being eaten in remote villages despite the risks. "Life is not easy here in...

Dish named for China’s capital has its origins in Nanjing, hundreds of kilometres to the south.Beijing: Where does Peking Duck come from? It is a trick question: the dish named for China’s capital has its origins in Nanjing, hundreds of kilometres to the south. The tidbit is one of the revelations in a museum opened earlier this month to mark the 150th anniversary of the Quanjude restaurant, now the seven-storey flagship of a chain with franchises as far away as Australia. Statues of roasters, photos of officials dining and menus going back 100 years trace the duck’s route from humble...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...

The food nazi with the big *** tells the children what they must eat. Enjoy the mocking - graphics and limerick

Moscow is preparing a bill to prevent Russian troops from posting selfies and other photographs on social media sites, according to July 29 reports. The proposed legislation came after soldiers published images on social media sites with captions saying they had been firing artillery into Ukraine. “We shelled Ukraine all night long,” Russian soldier Vadim Grigoryev wrote beneath a picture of weaponry he published last week on Vkontakte, Russia’s most popular social media network.

American diets are being bombarded with genetically modified foods. Big seed companies initiate it. Big government enables it. Big food business loves it. But Americans are the ones paying the price through their pocketbook and especially their health. And worst of all, as the old song goes, it may be "killing you softly." For those who may be unaware, genetically modified plants are grown from genetically modified or engineered seeds, which are created to resist insecticides and herbicides so that crops can be grown to withstand a weed-killing pesticide or integrate a bacterial toxin that can ward off pests....

Leslie Baehr and Skye GouldJuly 28, 2014Many factors could drive certain food costs up radically in the future. It could be as simple as soaring demand from new markets. It could be as complex as the effects of climate change rendering farm fields too hot or try or spreading plant-destroying pests to new areas.(snip)

While New Yorkers like to think of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as the epicenter of the American hipster, it's hardly the only place in the country where vegan, handlebar-mustachioed trustafarians ride their single-speeds to nanobreweries inside organic farm-to-table restaurants inside abandoned artist lofts tricked out with rooftop gardens where they grow only kale. Pretty much any US city, short of maybe Birmingham, AL, has some elements/neighborhoods of hipster culture at this point (you really just need a fixed-gear bike shop, right?), but these 10 cities are vying for the title of hipster-est. Behind Williamsburg, of course....

VILLA PARK, Ill. — Comparing their campaign to the civil rights movement, fast food workers from across the country voted today to escalate their efforts for $15-an-hour pay and union membership to include nonviolent civil disobedience. More than 1,300 workers gathered in a convention in center in suburban Chicago to discuss the future of a campaign that has spread to dozens of cities in less than two years. Wearing T-shirts that said “Fight for $15” and “We Are Worth More,” the workers cheered loudly and said they would win if they stuck together. “People are just fed up,” said Cindy...

UPDATED: The Afro-Swedish national association has reported Swedish politician Eva Sidekrans to the police for selling chocolate balls labelled as "old fashioned unprejudiced negro ball" saying it incites racial hatred. She has since apologized. Business woman and Moderate party politician Eva Sidekrans sparked controversy by selling the items with the label which was widely picked up by social media. "We have this morning lodged a police notification against her for a hate crime against an ethnic group," Zakaria Zouhir, chairperson of the Afro-Swedish national association told the TT news agency. Zouhir added that there is, at present, no discrimination law...

July 26-2014 by oovgroov Did you realize that knowing just 4 wild edible plants could one day save your life? If there were any four categories of plants that I would recommend all people to know how to use and identify it would be these: Grass, Oak, Pine, and Cattail. For the knowledgeable survivor, knowing just these four plants can make the difference between life and death if stranded in the wilds – for each one is an excellent food source which can sustain you until help arrives. Throughout this week and part of the next, I’ll be going into...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...

In the early-1990s, political Washington moved to change the nature of the CPI. The contention was that the CPI overstated inflation (it did not allow substitution of less-expensive hamburger for more-expensive steak). Both sides of the aisle and the financial media touted the benefits of a “more-accurate” CPI, one that would allow the substitution of goods and services. The plan was to reduce cost of living adjustments for government payments to Social Security recipients, etc. The cuts in reported inflation were an effort to reduce the federal deficit without anyone in Congress having to do the politically impossible: to vote...

Shanghai (AFP) - A scandal involving expired meat sold by a China unit of US food supplier OSI Group spread to Japan Tuesday, as McDonald's confirmed that the now shut factory provided Chicken McNuggets to its restaurants. Shanghai authorities on Sunday shut an OSI plant -- a supplier to McDonald's and KFC in China -- for mixing out-of-date meat with fresh product, re-labelling expired goods and other quality problems following an investigative report by a local television station. A Tokyo-based spokesman for McDonald's Japan told AFP the restaurant chain had sourced about 20 percent of its McNuggets from the Shanghai...

<p>Fast food fans, we've got some bad news. Wholesale prices on a bunch of your favorite food products have seen sharp increases this year. Among those, beef and avocados are through the roof, hitting burrito-makers doubly hard.</p> <p>Because of huge price increases for beef and avocados, Chipotle is raising menu prices for the first time in three years. It's a reality that a lot of restaurants are facing due to rising food prices.</p>

McDonald’s Corp. and Yum Brands Inc. are facing a new food safety scare in China, denting the fast food giants’ efforts to shore up reputations and businesses that were hurt by a 2012 safety scandal in one of their biggest markets. McDonald’s and KFC-parent Yum apologized to customers on Monday after Chinese regulators shut a local meat supplier following a TV report that showed workers picking up meat from a factory floor, as well as mixing meat beyond its expiration date with fresh meat. The firms said they’ll stop using the supplier. The report, which focused on McDonald’s and Yum,...

July 16, 2014 (LocalOrg) - Corporate biotechnology monopolies like Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, and others have met increasing resistance to their attempts to patent and control global agriculture. They have spent untold fortunes attempting to sway the public but to no avail. Local, organic agriculture is growing in popularity and proliferating across all social-strata. The introduction of technology to automate and augment organic farming is making it as competitive and accessible or more so than the capital-intensive models of monopoly employed by big-ag. In response, big-ag has attempted several distasteful public relation stunts, including "super bananas for Africa" and "Golden Rice" to allegedly...