pandemic
Q&A: A rural Montana school district scrambles keep kids fed during pandemic
Like school nutrition staff across the country, Marsha Wartick, food service director for the Ronan School District in tiny Ronan, Montana, spent the last six months feeding hungry kids and their families under a USDA emergency meals program. Now, as kids head back to school, Wartick is scrambling to react to mixed signals from the administration and hoping the emergency program is allowed to continue through the entire school year. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>
While Congress fiddles, a critical tool to address child hunger is about to expire
A critical tool for fighting child hunger is set to expire at the end of the month, despite persistent need among millions of children due to the pandemic. The Pandemic-EBT program was created in March to give families funds to buy groceries in lieu of free or reduced-price breakfasts and lunches their children would otherwise have been getting at school. Unless Congress renews the program before Sept. 30, eligible families will lose access to the benefit until at least after the presidential election. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>
Federal funding barrier: Billions more for farmers
One-year extension of hemp pilot is on congressional agenda
Climate change, migration, and the future of pandemics
In the late 18th century, a French zoologist visiting South Africa documented a deadly local livestock disease known as bluetongue. Today, some 240 years later, the disease can be found virtually worldwide. In FERN's latest story, produced with Ensia, Carson Vaughan explores a new way of understanding emerging infectious diseases, showing how climate change and migration can cause pathogens to spread in new and virulent ways. <strong> (No paywall) </strong>
Half-a-billion dollars in additional trade-war payments
With harvest at hand, farmers’ coronavirus thoughts turn to marketing
Grocery prices fall for second month in a row
Lower prices for meat, poultry, fish and eggs were the driving factor for a slight decline in grocery prices during August, the second month in a row that supermarket prices were down, said the monthly Consumer Price Index. Despite the decreases, food inflation ran at 4.6 percent in the past 12 months, rising far more rapidly than the overall U.S. rate of 1.3 percent.
Pandemic paradox: As food poverty rises, so does obesity
The Covid-19 pandemic has limited trips to the grocery store, shut down neighborhood markets and generally made it harder for people struggling financially to find affordable healthy food, reports Bloomberg. As a result, more people are relying on cheaper and more easily accessible fast and ultra-processed food, driving up rates of obesity around the world.
Meatpackers ignored warnings to plan for a pandemic, report finds
Experts and federal agencies repeatedly urged meatpackers to prepare for a potential future pandemic as far back as the Bush administration, yet none of the major packers had stocked personal protective equipment or trained personnel on pandemic response before the novel coronavirus began to spread in 2020, an investigation from ProPublica found.
Beef slumps while pork exports surge
Few states release data about Covid-19 in the food system
Over the past six months, Covid-19 has spread rapidly through the workforces of farms, food processing facilities, and meatpacking plants in nearly every state, infecting tens of thousands. Yet determining the exact number of workers who have contracted or died from the virus is virtually impossible, because few states are publicly reporting case and death data in the food and farm sectors.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>
USDA to release coronavirus reserve funds, makes more products eligible
Opinion — Smithfield’s media attack shifts attention from its own lack of disclosure
In a full-page ad in the Sunday edition of the New York Times, Smithfield Foods, the nation's largest pork company, alleged that the media and other "critics" have targeted the company with "accusations fueled by misinformation and disinformation" about its response to the Covid-19 pandemic. In doing so, Smithfield is ignoring its own role in limiting public discourse about the pandemic and eluding its efforts to promote a more friendly regulatory environment. <strong> (No paywall) </strong>
Pace of coronavirus payments to farmers slows, reasons unclear
Lax rules, little accountability in Trump food-box giveaway, say House Democrats
FERN launches new map and analysis of Covid-19 outbreaks in the food system
Covid-19 cases appear to be slowing at meat plants. But companies aren’t releasing test results.
After many months of surging cases, the number of new Covid-19 infections reported at meatpacking plants appears to have slowed. Yet with limited information from the major meatpackers on new cases at their facilities, advocates say it isn’t clear whether the trend reflects a true decline.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>
Louisiana finds possible human case of bird flu
A resident of southwestern Louisiana was hospitalized with what appeared to be the state's first case of bird flu in a person, said state health officials. Sixty people in seven states have contracted mild cases of the viral disease this year, according to the CDC.