FERN’s Friday Feed: The Forbidden Fruit wasn’t always an apple

The Forbidden Fruit wasn’t always an apple. Before the 4th century, when Pope Damasus ordered the biblical scholar Jerome to translate the Hebrew bible into Latin — a project that took 15 years — the word used to describe what Adam and Eve ate was “peri,” which could mean any fruit. “Rabbinic commentators variously characterized it as a fig, a pomegranate, a grape, an apricot, a citron, or even wheat. Some commentators even thought of the forbidden fruit as a kind of wine, intoxicating to drink,” says food history writer Robert Appelbaum. But Jerome opted for the Latin word “malus,” a pun that meant both “evil” and any fleshy, seed-bearing fruit from a fig to a pear. As time went on, though, and certainly by the point that Milton wrote Paradise Lost, “malus” came to refer to apples, specifically.

Case Farms: Where you don’t want to work

ProPublica

Case Farms isn’t a household name the way Tyson or Pilgrim’s Pride are. But the company sells a billion pounds of chicken each year to clients like Popeyes and KFC, as well as the federal school lunch program — and it just happens to be one of the most dangerous places to work in the country. “In 2015 alone, federal workplace safety inspectors fined the company nearly $2 million, and in the past seven years it has been cited for 240 violations,” with 750 workers receiving amputations since 2010, says ProPublica. Some workers wear diapers, because their supervisors won’t let them go to the bathroom. According to ProPublica’s investigation, the company knowingly hires undocumented workers — mostly from Latin America — going so far as to sell them new ID cards. But thanks to a 2002 Supreme Court case which said undocumented workers have the right to oppose labor abuses, but employers don’t have to rehire them or pay backwages, companies like Case Farms can ignore labor laws with impunity.

The Chinese are pushing the world’s fisheries to collapse

The New York Times

Around the world, fishermen in developing countries are pulling in near-empty nets as large Chinese trawlers, fueled by government subsidies, steal their catch. “West Africa, experts say, now provides the vast majority of the fish caught by China’s distant-water fleet. And by some estimates, as many as two-thirds of those boats engage in practices that contravene international or national laws,” says The New York Times. The large Chinese ships can pull in as much fish in a week as a single Senegalese boat could catch in a year. Ninety percent of the world’s fisheries are in a dire state, with many of them facing collapse from overfishing, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. In a place like Senegal, where fish provides the main protein source, poor fishing can trigger famine. “We are facing an unprecedented crisis,” said Alassane Samba, a former director of Senegal’s oceanic research institute. “If things keep going the way they are, people will have to eat jellyfish to survive.”

The people who protect endangered animals are endangered, too

The New Yorker

Kuki Gallmann, an environmental activist in Kenya and the author of I Dreamed of Africa, was shot three times in the stomach last month by poachers determined to take the wildlife that lives on her land. Gallmann survived, but many of her fellow activists have been killed, especially in Latin America, where in 2015, there were 122 advocates murdered. In the case of Berta Cáceres, who received the prestigious Goldman Award for her opposition to a dam in Honduras, military men were blamed for her shooting last year. Many of these murders, though, go uninvestigated in countries where the rule of law is weak and judicial corruption strong. “In everything but name, this is a war,” says The New Yorker.

Can your genes tell you what to eat?

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