Barry Estabrook’s latest

Covering feedlots, sea urchins, and dioxins

By Culinate staff

January 19, 2012

Activist reporter Barry Estabrook (Tomatoland) has been busy lately. First up is a post on his blog, Politics of the Plate, comparing how meat is produced in feedlots and on the open range, complete with unintentionally amusing photos.

Next up is an OnEarth story about sea urchins, which, in 25 years, have gone from ubiquitous to overfished on the Eastern seaboard. (Thanks, sushi industry.)

Finally, there’s a post on the Atlantic blog chastising the EPA for failing to crack down on dioxins, those unpleasant chemicals that, unfortunately, are common in our food supply. Sure, the EPA recently announced that it might do something about dioxins, after a decade of pondering them — but Estabrook’s skeptical that the agency will be able to withstand the collective might of the Food Industry Dioxin Working Group, a food-industry coalition.