FERN’s Friday Feed: The ‘hunger cliff’

Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.

Who’s heading toward the ‘hunger cliff’?

FERN

“Anti-hunger advocates worry that the nation may be approaching a ‘hunger cliff,’ as emergency SNAP benefits are ending even as demand at food pantries—and Covid case numbers—are rising again,” writes Bridget Huber in FERN’s latest story. “A small but growing number of  states have effectively opted out of these extra benefits already. Iowa is one of 12 states — all led by Republicans — that have ended their pandemic emergencies without putting a narrower public health emergency declaration into place that would let them continue to provide these additional benefits from the federal government. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds justified recent cuts to unemployment and other supports as a necessary step to get people back to work, warning that ‘the safety net has become a hammock.'”

The violent cost of conservation

Audubon Magazine

“Colombia … is one of the most biodiverse nations on Earth, and by far the world’s richest country in terms of avian life. Its tapestry of ecosystems hosts nearly 2,000 bird species, many of them migrants that spend summers in North America. The nation also has the distinction of being the most dangerous place on Earth to defend the environment, with an average of more than two defenders killed each week in 2020,” writes Tom Clynes. “A similar devastating pattern is playing out in countries around the world, where anti-environmentalist violence and intimidation are on the rise. Growing numbers of park managers, rangers, Indigenous forest guardians, and anti-mining activists are being threatened, run out of protected areas and ancestral lands, and, in many cases, murdered.”

The FDA’s ‘F’ in food oversight

Politico

“By the time FDA officials figured out it was spinach that was making people sick in 10 states – sending three people into kidney failure – it was too late. It was mid-November 2021 and the packaged salad’s short shelf life had passed. There was no recall. By the time FDA officials got inspectors on the ground, spinach season was over,” writes Helena Bottemiller-Evich in Politico. “Many consumers would be surprised to learn this anemic, slow response is typical for an agency that oversees nearly 80 percent of the American food supply, but slow is what insiders in Washington have come to expect from FDA, regardless of administration. A monthslong POLITICO investigation found that regulating food is simply not a high priority at the agency, where drugs and other medical products dominate, both in budget and bandwidth – a dynamic that’s only been exacerbated during the pandemic.”

The elephant (dung) in the room

Eater

“I have children, two daily reminders of the connection between what we ingest and what we evacuate: last night’s dinner in today’s diaper,” writes J.J. Goode. “After seven years submerged in the toilet bowl of parenthood, co-authoring cookbooks by day and wiping butts by night, it began to strike me as somehow both perfectly sensible and utterly strange that a product of ordinary bodily function remains a societal third rail, that for almost two decades I’ve written about eating and never even considered acknowledging the aftermath. I’m certainly not alone. Food sites, sections, and magazines are as clean of poop as a bidet devotee. While we all fawn and fuss over dinner, we ignore the elephant dung in the room.”