Now, a new study reveals that soda companies have been targeting black and Latino children in high numbers, diminishing parents’ attempts to encourage their kids to eat right:

A new report from Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has found that beverage companies are aggressively targeting black and Latino kids with ads to promote sports, fruit and energy drinks. The products that are promoted to kids of color happen to be among the least healthy of the 644 products studied by researchers at the university.

Black children and teens saw 80 percent to 90 percent more ads compared with white youth, including more than twice as many for Sprite, 5-hour Energy, and Vitamin Water.

From 2008 to 2010, Latino children saw 49 percent more ads for sugary drinks and energy drinks on Spanish-language TV. Latino preschoolers saw more Spanish-language ads for Coca-Cola Classic, Kool-Aid, 7 Up, and Sunny D than older Latino children and teens did.

Colorlines notes that the two largest soda companies, Pepsi and Coca-Cola, have repeatedly promised to market less to children, who are more susceptible to advertising: “Coca-Cola, for example, has previously stated publicly that they wouldn’t market ads in TV, radio and print programming aimed at kids under the age of 12.”

But the report found that soda companies have just shifted to using more sophisticated and insidious forms of advertising that promise kids rewards for purchasing sugary drinks. Kids are exposed to these messages “often without their parents’ awareness.”

Companies’ targeting of minority children is a social justice issue as well as an economic one. Just like mortgage companies that focused their predatory lending on minority communities, soda companies are preying on a particularly vulnerable group (poor children) who are already suffering the ill effects of their product and have the most to lose from consuming more. For instance, these children are less likely to have health insurance to cover the numerous medical problems associated with obesity.

This is not a problem that’s going to happen someday, and this is not a problem that’s just going to impact some industries. If you drink beer now, the issue of climate change is impacting you right now.

“For our brewery, growth depends on abundant clean water and quality barley and hops—and climate change puts those ingredients at risk. Our supply chain—including barley, hops and water—is especially vulnerable to weather in the short-term and to climate change in the long-term,” Orgolini told Forbes.

Heavy rains in Australia and drought in England have hurt malting barley crops this year.

Climate change has caused the quality and yield of Saaz hops — the key ingredient in Czech pilsner lager — to decline. Global warming pollution will cause further declines, scientists found in 2009. Yields of malting barley will also decline in coming years as droughts increase because of carbon pollution.

17.2 million: The number of households that were food insecure in 2010, the highest number on record. They make up 14.5 percent of households, or approximately one in seven.

48.8 million: People who lived in food insecure households last year.

3.9 million: The number of households with children that were food insecure last year. In 1 percent of households with children, “one or more of the children experienced the most severe food-insecure condition measured by USDA, very low food security, in which meals were irregular and food intake was below levels considered adequate by caregivers.”

6.4 million: Households that experienced very low food security last year, meaning “normal eating patterns of one or more household members were disrupted and food intake was reduced at times during the year because they had insufficient money or other resources for food.”

55: The percentage of food-insecure households that participated in one or more of the three largest Federal food and nutrition assistance programs (SNAP, WIC, School lunch program).

19.4: The percentage of food insecure households in Mississippi, which had the highest rate in the nation last year.

3.6 percent: The amount by which food prices increased last year.

30 percent: The amount by which food insecurity grew during the Great Recession.

44: The percentage increase in households using food pantries between 2007 and 2009.

20 million: The number of children who benefit from free and reduced lunch per day.

10.5 million: The number of eligible children who don’t receive their free and reduced lunch benefits.

$167.5 billion: The amount that the U.S. lost in 2010 due to hunger (lost educational attainment + avoidable illness + charitable giving to fight hunger). This doesn’t take into account the $94 billion cost of SNAP and other food programs.

8: The number of states (FL, TX, CA, IL, NY, OH, PA, GA) where the annual cost of hunger exceeds $6 billion.

Last year, “nearly half of the households seeking emergency food assistance reported having to choose between paying for utilities or heating fuel and food. Nearly 40 percent said they had to choose between paying for rent or a mortgage and food.” This Thanksgiving, as you sit down to enjoy a meal with family and friends, please spare a thought for those who, due to the country’s continuing economic woes, may not have enough to eat.

This holiday season, please consider donating to a local food bank. You can find one nearby or donate online through the Feeding America website. You can also give to Operation Homefront, a group that provides assistance to military families.

In a heartbreaking report, CBS chronicles the plight of “America’s new poor” — many of whom used to be the very people who donated to food banks. But with millions out of work, foreclosure rates still high, and the country’s economic outlook as bleak as ever, yesterday’s givers have become today’s takers.

Take Forsyth County, near Atlanta. Despite having the highest average household income in Georgia, hundreds of these “newly-needy” file into local food banks:

“People lost their jobs and went from great incomes to no incomes,” said Sandy Beaver [who] leads The Place, Forsyth County’s biggest non-profit center for social services. She calls those who visit The Place “the new poor.” The Place’s main mission: Feed the hungry. [...]

“Many of our people who have come for assistance used to be our donors. And they’ll say, ‘I never thought I’d have to do this, never in my wildest dreams.’” [...]

People like these married retirees in their 70s, too embarrassed to appear on camera…They retired comfortably in their early 50s. But now, after bad investments, a ruined portfolio, and costly medical issues, they qualify for food stamps – and could lose the house.

“Taking the food was really tough,” the woman said. “The hard part was, we used to give it, and now I’m taking it back, you know?” she said, crying.

At one Forsyth high school, 8 percent of kids now get free lunch, double the number three years ago. And unfortunately, the situation Forsyth is not unusual. One in six Americans — 49 million people — isn’t sure where their next meal will come from. A record 15 percent of Americans are now receiving food stamps — a jump of about two-thirds since 2007.

Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, who are returning from combat to face higher unemployment rates than nearly any other group, are also struggling to get by. Raymond Price, an Afghanistan vet, says “All I want is a job. I don’t really want anybody’s handouts.” But with a family to feed, he came by a food bank last week for a box of non-perishables.

This holiday season, please consider donating to a local food bank. You can find one nearby or donate online through the Feeding America website. You can also give to Operation Homefront, a group that provides assistance to military families.

The year 2011 has been one of the most extreme ever for weather disasters. Below, ThinkProgress Green discusses a few examples of how our increasingly dangerous weather, poisoned by hundreds of billions of tons of greenhouse pollution, is jacking up the costs of the traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

TURKEY

Retail turkey prices are up 23 percent, an average $1.35 a pound instead of $1.10 last year. Wholesale prices on the East Coast for turkeys are up 26 percent this year to a record $1.18. The super-hot summer killed turkeys and slowed weight gain. The two main commodities that go into a turkey are feed corn and soybeans, and prices for both have gone up sharply. The U.S. is “reaping its smallest corn harvest in three years” after a drought and the hottest summer since 1955 in the Midwest damaged what was a record crop as recently as July, driving annual prices to record highs. Average temperatures in the Midwest were as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal in July, and a stretch from Illinois to Indiana had its driest ever conditions for that month.

PECAN PIE

The average retail price for a pound of pecans rose from $7 in 2008 to $9 last year, and it’s expected to be about $11 this year. Drought in the Southeast has dramatically reduced the pecan crop. Production in Texas, which has had a record drought, dropped the most, from 70 million pounds last year to an estimated 40 million pounds this year. In Louisiana, production plunged from 20 million pounds last year to an estimated 9 million pounds this year. The entire U.S. crop is expected to be less than 252 million pounds this year, roughly 14 percent smaller than last year. “I’ve been farming for 60 or more years, and this is the driest I’ve ever seen,” said Ben Littlepage, a grower in the central Louisiana town of Colfax.

PUMPKIN PIE

The cost of canned pumpkin is up more than 13 percent this year from last. Hurricane Irene wiped out pumpkin crops in flooded fields throughout the Northeast. Flooded fields meant not only waterlogged pumpkins that rotted on the vine but also fungus, mold and mildew.

WHIPPED CREAM, BUTTER, MILK

Dairy prices are extremely volatile, but have risen considerably, primarily because of the extreme hay shortage in the nation. Hay prices have nearly doubled because of drought in Texas, Florida, and the rest of the Southeast.

COFFEE

The sustainability director of Starbucks, Jim Hanna, said that the company’s coffee bean suppliers, “who are mainly in Central America, were already experiencing changing rainfall patterns and more severe pest infestations” because of global warming pollution. “Even in very well established coffee plantations and farms, we are hearing more and more stories of impacts,” with worse droughts, storms, and floods. Extreme weather has damaged crops from Colombia to Indonesia this year.

OTHER FACTORS

Commodity volatility is being grossly amplified by that rampant and unregulated speculation in commodity markets and their derivatives, as Wall Street financiers have sought profit-making schemse after the housing bubble collapsed. Better Markets does a good job laying out how index funds are running amok, distorting commodity markets.

The demand pressure on corn to produce ethanol is not a major factor in the extreme price spike, since that demand is known ahead of time, allowing farmers to plant enough. The biofuels mandates do help set the floor for corn prices, and speculators exploit the situation of the commodity having a price floor but no ceiling.

Sadly, the American Farm Bureau Federation — which claims to represents the interests of American farmers — is run by global warming deniers.

This meal is chock full of vegetables, according to the House GOP.

Earlier this year, the USDA made an attempt to bolster the nutrition guidelines for the federal school lunch program. Under the new guidelines, for instance, school lunches would be limited to one cup of starchy vegetables a week and the ability of schools to count tomato sauce on pizza towards their fruit and vegetables requirement would be scaled back. But House Republicans, in a new spending plan unveiled yesterday, have done away with those changes:

The spending bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. The department’s proposed guidelines would have attempted to prevent that.

The changes had been requested by food companies that produce frozen pizzas, the salt industry and potato growers. Some conservatives in Congress have called the push for healthier foods an overreach, saying the government shouldn’t be telling children what to eat.

According to a bill summary released by Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee, these provisions are meant to “prevent overly burdensome and costly regulations.” What they will actually do is ensure that a steady flow of dollars continues toward certain favored food manufacturers, at the expense of children’s health.

“We are outraged that Congress is seriously considering language that would effectively categorize pizza as a vegetable in the school lunch program,” said Amy Dawson Taggart, the director of Mission: Readiness, a group advocating for healthier school lunches. “It doesn’t take an advanced degree in nutrition to call this a national disgrace.”

This is hardly the first time that the GOP has attacked attempts to boost the nutritional content of school lunches. Back in May, House Republicans derided the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which was signed into law late last year, as a “massive and costly” federal intrusion. They did this despite the fact that escalating obesity rates cost the nation $147 billion per year in direct medical costs.

As education policy analyst Theodora Chang has written, “student nutrition programs ensure that students are ready to learn and are not stymied by hunger. Schools are ideal locations for social services like healthy meals because they have unparalleled access to low-income students and their families.” Instead, the GOP has decided to roll back what little progress has been made in terms of school lunch nutrition.

[I]n moments of desperation, a lie can seem like the only option. Anita McLemore, a Mississippi mother of two, faced one of those unfortunate moments when filling out her application for food stamps — and now she’ll pay the price, by spending three years of her life behind bars in federal prison.

Thanks to a federal ban on food stamps for people with felony drug convictions, people like McLemore are out of luck when it comes to getting assistance with putting food on their tables. Though states can opt out of the ban, those that don’t (like Mississippi) deny food stamps even to individuals who have already served their sentences or overcome previous addictions. It’s true that McLemore’s past isn’t perfect — she has four felony drug convictions and one misdemeanor, which place her firmly in the category of people the federal government has declared unfit to receive public benefits. Hence, faced with the prospect of being unable to feed her family, McLemore lied on her application.

In a compassionate nation, the penalty for drug use is not starvation. In a just nation, the penalty for drug use is not that your two children must be hungry as well. There is no excuse for a federal drug policy that punishes anyone by taking away their ability to put food on the table — and that punishes them so severely for the crime of needing to eat.

And, unlike thousands of Wall Street bankers who helped plunge America’s economy into a catastrophic recession, McLemore actually paid back the $4,367 she received.

Industrial agriculture is a major part of the global ponzi scheme. By continuing to fool ourselves into thinking we can infinitely produce more fossil-fuel laden food with limited resources, we’re setting ourselves up for a major catastrophe.

And that fooling happens on every level. Take the disturbing ways in which we create flavors for foods.

The “all natural” label applied to food means absolutely nothing by federal standards. And yet, food companies prey on growing consumer demand for wholesome healthy food by slapping the label on anything they can. The Food and Drug Administration, which is charged with protecting and promoting our health through regulation and oversight of the food industry, has not developed a definition for the “all natural” label. However, “the agency has not objected to the use of the term if the food does not contain added color, artificial flavors, or synthetic substances,” according to the FDA’s website.

People have a false perception that our food industry is well regulated, when it simply is not. To shed some light on what is in our food and what concoctions can even be labeled as “all natural,” Bruce Bradley, a former food marketer at companies like General Mills, Pillsbury, and Nabisco, keeps a blog about the food industry. In 2008, he left the corporate world and decided to devote the rest of his life to promoting healthy food and criticizing the Big Food industry.

Because our food has become so highly processed and because by FDA law, food companies can list spices and flavorings as natural or artificial flavors, unbelievably strange and disgusting things are being added to our food:

• Beaver anal glands, known as castoreum (I guess anal glands was a hard sell), are typically used in vanilla and raspberry flavoring and can legally be labeled natural flavoring
• L-cysteine or cystine is used a dough conditioner. It’s sometimes made from human hair, but more and more from duck feathers and can be found in breads and baked goods.
• A red food coloring additive that goes by many names (Carmine, Crimson Lake, Cochineal, or Natural Red #4) is made from insects like the cochineal beetle.

This is just one more example of how distorted our food system is. To see a longer list of the strange food additives that can be grouped under “natural flavors,” go to Bruce Bradley’s blog.

— Cole Mellino is an intern with the energy team at the Center for American Progress

SESSIONS: No program in our government has surged out of control more dramatically than food stamps. And nothing is being done about it. [...] Multimillion dollar lottery winners are getting food stamps because the money is considered to be an asset not an income. One of the fast and furious gun buyers –

HOST: But hold on, for ever lottery winner that has food stamps, there’s probably a lot more people who really need them who have them, right?

SESSIONS: Well look, do you think there are four times as many people who need food stamps today as in 2001. That answers itself. [...] We cannot do this. We do not have the money. Congress doesn’t understand that we can’t afford to double the program every three years.

Watch it:

It’s shockingly ignorant at best and dishonest at worst for Sessions — the ranking GOP member of the Senate Budget Committee — to completely ignore the role the economy has played on food stamp usage. The cost of the program has jumped because more Americans are out of work and wages are down, thus more people need assistance. Food prices have also gone up, adding additional costs. But the cost of the program will come down on its own as the economy recovers and more people can afford to feed themselves.

In fact, the food stamp program has been critical for reducing poverty and pumping money into local economies during the down economy, so cutting it now would not only take food out of peoples’ mouths, but could slow down the recovery. No one is trying to “double the program every three years” as Sessions claims. (Currently, nearly one in five Alabamians is on Food Stamps.)

And while the senator suggests the program has grown due to fraud, in fact, errors in the food stamp program — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) –are currently at an all-time low, accounting for less than three percent of the program’s cost. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities:

To ensure that benefits are provided only to eligible households and in the proper amounts, SNAP has one of the most rigorous quality control systems of any public benefit program and, in recent years, has achieved its lowest error rates on record. In fiscal year 2009, even as caseloads were rising, states set new record lows for error rates. The net loss due to errors equaled only 2.7 percent of program costs in 2009. There is no evidence that program errors are driving up SNAP spending.

It’s worth noting that while Sessions claims the country can’t afford to feed the hungry, he has fought to preserve the Bush tax cuts for wealthy, subsides for big oil companies, and demanded new tax cuts for corporations, all of which also contribute to the deficit.

In response to sharp questioning from the moderators and his fellow contenders about the effects of his plan, which would raise taxes on common food items to pay for a massive corporate tax cut, Cain seemed to have settled on a simple solution: the poor should just eat used food and buy used goods.

Asked to “explain why under your plan all Americans should be paying more for milk, for a loaf of bread, and beer?” Cain noted that under his plan “there is no tax on used goods.” Cain repeated this “used goods” suggestion in two interviews after the debate, insisting that his plan is not regressive. Instead, he explained, the new tax structure would give families the “flexibility to decide on how much they want to spend it on new goods [and] how much they want to spend it on used goods.”

Watch it:

In a Bloomberg interview, Cain claimed that under 999, “prices don’t go up” because “consumers have the option to stretch their dollar because of buying used goods instead of new.” Cain failed to explain how this solution would apply to food, which families might have difficulty buying “used” unless they rummage through garbage. Clearly he considers relying almost entirely on secondhand items for everyday life a perfectly reasonable idea for poor families.

As a former CEO of a pizza company, Cain should know that a hike in taxes on food products will be a heavy blow for the millions of families who are already having a hard time making ends meet. Thirty-one states charge no sales tax on food, and others tax food at a lower rate than other goods or provide rebates for lower-income families to offset the tax. Only two states, Mississippi and Alabama, charge full sales tax on food.

As ThinkProgress has explained, 999 would slash taxes on the wealthy, drive up deficits to their highest levels since World War II, and force low-income Americans to pay nine times their current tax rate.

The Good Wife is all about image, innocence, and blaming the victim as half of Lockhart/Gardner, including Will and Alicia, are stuck in a hotel for a court-ordered mediation—with the defense lawyers are led by Will’s ex, Celeste. The show gets into issues of regulation and patent law as Lockhart/Gardner negotiate on behalf of a woman disabled by pain caused by the malfunction of an unapproved medical device of her doctor’s own invention. He didn’t tell her the device had not been FDA approved, and the patient thought he was using her as a test subject without her consent. Celeste first tries to blame the victim by claiming that the problem would have been recognized before permanent damage was done if the patient hadn’t been overmedicating, but when that fails, Celeste turns to a defense that centers on the device’s regulatory status. She claims that the device is a minor modification of an existing device, and therefore doesn’t need to be approved by the FDA, but Kalinda finds a patent application made in which the doctor says his device is original work, not a modification. In this case, regulation and governmental oversight of medical technology is presented as an unqualified good.

Lockhart/Gardner win this case on the facts – the mediator says as much – but the techniques they use to get there offer some insight into what the firm, and especially Will, will and won’t do to win. He will neither sleep with Celeste nor bet the outcome of the case on a card game with her – he insists he’s grown up – but he will use that game to figure out what the defense is willing to pay. And when he realizes that Celeste plans to play Alicia by making her jealous of Celeste’s past with Will, Will and Alicia gleefully use this supposed jealousy to play upon the mediator’s sympathies. After two seasons of Alicia’s public stoicism in the face of Peter’s infidelities, it was delightful to watch her play-act storming out of a room in a jealous huff. The mediator knows he’s been played, but he seems to admire Lockhart/Gardner for it, rather than hold it against them, and says he’d hire them himself if he needed representation. Once again, virtually everyone in the world of this show expects everyone else to be operating in a moral gray area, and it’s refreshing that the show doesn’t waste time on people getting unrealistically outraged about these things.

While Will and Alicia are stuck in mediation, Eli takes on the case of the Wisconsin State Dairy Guild, whose cheese is implicated in a listeriosis outbreak in a Chicago elementary school. Eli makes the Guild hire Lockhart/Gardner as temporary counsel so that they can speak under attorney/client privilege, but he gets more than he bargained for when Diane insists on actually getting involved in the case. Eli, exasperated, tells her that she was just supposed to be “window dressing,” which he should realize is not something you ever say to a woman like Diane Lockhart, who has given up so much in order to get into her current position of power and to pave the way for other women to follow. Her legal advice contradicts Eli’s PR advice, and since one of the defining characteristics of this world is that Eli always sees what others can’t, the language Diane tells the cheese company’s CEO to use comes across just as badly in the press as Eli says it will. And the CEO does his own version of blaming the victim by repeatedly asking what else the ill children might have eaten.

Eli and Kalinda finally met and realized they were kindred spirits last week, but this week, the fundamental difference between them becomes obvious: Kalinda deals in facts, while Eli uses facts as tools to affect the higher truth of image and perception. When Kalinda’s investigation shows that the cheese company’s culpability is far from clear, Eli is frustrated, and explains that it’s not that he wants their client to be guilty – it’s that he wants it to be over so he can pick up the pieces, fix things, and move on. And when Kalinda goes to Cary for information on the mediation case, he finally calls her on the way she uses people’s feelings for her to further her investigations. Cary sees through Kalinda’s manipulation of others’ feelings, but he has obviously bought into her illusion of having no feelings herself. That one is going to really blow up in her face one of these days.

A plot strand involving a reporter serves as this week’s reminder that the disparate cases on this show take place within the same world. The reporter has a possible leak that will affect the mediation case, but she doesn’t really care about that and uses it as leverage to make Will to leak to her about Eli and the cheese case. In return, she tells Will that the investigation leak is actually not from the FDA, but rather the State’s Attorney’s office – they’re siding with the doctor rather than prosecuting him for fraud. There’s never any overt suggestion that Peter himself is behind this, or is doing it for personal reasons rather than political, but the possibility lingers, as it must any time Lockhart/Gardner and the State’s Attorney’s office go up against each other.

Back at home, Alicia’s brother Owen is babysitting while she’s stuck in mediation, and he does his own version of blaming the victim – though not in a wholly disapproving way – when he assumes that Alicia finally left Peter because she was sleeping with Will. Alicia, interestingly, doesn’t correct him, and it’s Zach who eventually mentions that the actual reason for the split was another affair that Peter had. Image and innocence are again juxtaposed as Owen calls Alicia “the most prudish wanton woman I know.” Meanwhile, Jackie, never the biggest fan of Owen, shows up at the house looking suspicious just as he happens to have his boyfriend over – what’s she up to, and how much does she know about the state of Peter and Alicia’s marriage? At the end of the episode, Alicia assures Owen that she doesn’t love Will. Do we believe her, or is she falling into Will and Kalinda’s trap of repressing her feelings by insisting that they don’t exist at all?

Kate Linnea Welsh is a New Hampshire-based writer and taxonomist. (No, that doesn’t involve dead animals.) She’s a senior editor at TheTelevixen.com, on staff at Vampire-Diaries.net, and writes about other TV shows, books, and more at her blog (http://katelinnea.blogspot.com). She’d love to talk to you on Twitter: @katelinnea

Inspectors from the Food and Drug Administration are searching fields in Colorado’s Rocky Ford region for clues as to how cantaloupes grown there this summer caused at least 100 illnesses and 18 deaths. But if a new law had been in place, they might have been there before the outbreak. [...]

Under the current FDA food-inspection system, facilities are inspected fitfully—if at all. In fiscal 2010, the FDA inspected about 15% of U.S. food production facilities, about 0.1% of foreign import facilities and essentially no farms. Farms such as Jensen Farms, which grew the cantaloupes linked to the deadly outbreak of listeria, don’t get inspected unless contamination is suspected.

Now, the FDA is writing a set of rules that will require farms and food facilities to identify hazards over the next two years, with the goal of preventing disease outbreaks in the first place. The rules will be based on scientific research and the outcomes of investigations, the FDA says. For example, now that the agency has learned that listeria can appear in fruit, it is expected to craft a rule requiring farms to minimize the risk of that occurring.

The law was the biggest upgrade of the nation’s food safety regime in decades, but Republicans fought its passage, calling it a “government takeover” of food. And even after Obama signed it, House Republicans threatened to defund the law through the appropriations process. They say the law is just another burdensome government regulation and that the food industry does a good enough job policing itself. The tainted melon outbreak, alongside other outbreaks of contaminated food, shows that’s clearly not true.

And now Iowa joins the list, where a pregnant woman had a miscarriage after contracting listerosis. The Iowa Department of Public Health said the woman, who has since recovered, “had been infected with a strain of listeria monocytogenes that matched the strain detected” in the tainted cantaloupes. According to the CDC, pregnant women are “are about 20 times” more susceptible to listeria and, as evidenced by this woman, “the complications can be quite serious”:

According to the CDC, pregnant women are about 20 times more likely than other healthy adults to get the bacterial infection, and roughly 17 percent of listeriosis cases occur during pregnancy.

“Pregnant women are much more susceptible to having symptoms and becoming severely ill from listeria,” Quinlisk said. “Once they have the infection, the complications can be quite serious.”

The deadly nature of food outbreaks should underscore the necessity for food safety regulations. Indeed, a federal food inspector in California recently prevented a new listeria outbreak in lettuce thanks to an FDA research program. However, House Republicans are blindly waging war on the very same food safety regulations that help prevent such tragedies. This summer, House Republicans slashed $87 million from the Food and Drug Administration and $35 million from the USDA’s food safety and inspection service, arguing that the food industry “self-polices.” GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN) railed against regulations on food supply as “overkill” that prevents job creation.

Even now, Republicans continue to block the necessary funds to implement President Obama’s landmark law that provides first significant upgrade to the nation’s food safety system since 1938. This kind of negligence will only result in greater tragedy. As the Department of Health and Human Services notes, one out of six Americans suffers from foodborne illness every year and 3,000 people die from such illnesses each year.

If Republicans want to continue calling itself the “party of life,” their first step should be to stop what they’re doing, and actually work to ensure that Americans — born and unborn — won’t die from what they eat.

Listeria rarely shows up in produce, but federal health officials say they’ve gotten better at detecting the germs that cause food poisoning, so they are seeing them in produce more often. [...]

The finding of listeria in romaine lettuce at the Salinas farm was a result of an FDA research program to understand the prevalence of the pathogen in fresh produce, especially in lettuce and leafy greens, [FDA spokeswoman Stephanie] Yao said. [...]

The FDA has isolated listeria in leafy green produce three times so far this year, Yao said.

Listeria is the same bacteria that caused the deadliest food outbreak in a decade last month when at least 16 died who had eaten tainted melons. Fortunately, thanks to the FDA’s food inspectors, the lettuce contamination won’t have the same deadly effect.

But as ThinkProgress has noted, even as these food outbreaks occur, Republican lawmakers are trying to gut food safety laws in the name of spending cuts and less regulation on businesses. In June, House Republicans attempted to kill the first significant upgrade in the nation’s food safety regime in more than 70 years, saying the private food industry sufficiently self-polices. Their plan would have imperiled the jobs of 3,000 food inspectors. Last month, presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) called for an end to food safety laws that she claimed were stifling job creation. One in six Americans is sickened by food-borne illness each year, and more than 3,000 die.

In the weeks following Bachmann’s statement, an outbreak of listeria tied to some Colorado cantaloupes has killed sixteen people — making it the deadliest foodborne illness outbreak in the U.S. in more than a decade — while four children in the district of Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) were stricken with E. Coli from tainted meat. Today, in the Minnesapolis Star-Tribune, a mother from Bachmann’s home state of Minnesota whose daughter had a stroke due to E. Coli poisoning appealed to Bachmann to change her position:

I caught it on the news that you visited a meatpacking plant in Iowa last week and promised to reduce restrictions that ensure food safety, so that small businesses could create more jobs.

I am adamantly opposed to this idea.

According to CNN, the European outbreak of E. coli has killed 16 people; the New York Times reports an even higher number. To loosen rules for the meatpacking industry invites danger to innocent victims — like my 4-year-old daughter, Rachel.

Thanks to E. coli, my daughter has lived in a hospital since June 11. Thanks to E. coli, she experienced acute kidney failure.

Thanks to E. coli, she has also suffered a stroke, resulting in a brain injury on both hemispheres. She has lost her ability to walk, talk and move in a normal way.

Before E. coli, she was a perfectly healthy, active little girl.

The woman, Melissa Castino Reid, closed her letter by saying, “from one mother to another, I’m asking you to reverse your campaign promise and err on the side of safety. For my child. For your children. For everyone’s children. It’s just that simple.”

Every year, 3,000 people die from foodborne illness, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, while Georgetown University’s Produce Safety Project has found that foodborne illness costs the U.S. $152 billion annually. This month, the Agriculture Department announced that it “will ban the sale of ground beef tainted with six toxic strains of E. coli bacteria that are increasingly showing up as the cause of severe illness from food.” It’d be nice if Bachmann could see through her deregulatory zeal for just a moment to support these common-sense rules that protect families from going through the situation with which the Reids are struggling.

(HT: @JenniferJJacobs)

Half of the world’s cocoa comes from the West African nations of Ivory Coast and Ghana. An expected temperature rise of more than two degrees Celsius by 2050 will render many of the region’s cocoa-producing areas too hot for the plants that bear the fruit from which chocolate is made, says a new study from the Colombia-based International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).

“What we are saying is that if we don’t take any action, there won’t be sufficient chocolate around in the future,” said Peter Läderach, the report’s lead author.

“Already we’re seeing the effects of rising temperatures on cocoa crops currently produced in marginal areas, and with climate change these areas are certain to spread,” says Dr. Peter Laderach.

By 2030, there will be a massive decline in optimal cacao-growing regions in West Africa.

The fossil fuel pollution that is heating up the planet also threatens the production of coffee, beer, and wine.

Lost in the well-deserved focus on the listeria outbreak is the fact that another giant food-producer, Tyson Fresh Meats, was forced this week to recall more than 130,000 pounds of ground beef due to E. Coli contamination. And this particular breakdown in food safety should earn the attention of the man leading the GOP in its slash-and-burn approach to the budget, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), as four children in his district were sickened by the meat:

The recall of 65 tons of ground beef that might be contaminated with E. coli has hit close to home for House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio.

The meat, recalled today by Tyson Fresh Meats, was shipped to 16 states…WCPO, ABC’s affiliate in Cincinnati, reported today, “four children became ill after eating the meat with their family in Butler County, Ohio, in the second week of September.” “A 9-year-old child was hospitalized for about 10 days with severe diarrhea,” the station reported.

As we’ve pointed out time and time again, one in six Americans is sickened by food-borne illness each year, and more than 3,000 die. The annual cost to the country of food-borne illnesses is $152 billion, according to Georgetown University’s Produce Safety Project. However, the GOP has not only refused to fund the implementation of a landmark food safety law passed last year, but has said that the current rules on the books are too onerous, because the food industry “self-polices.” But as the current slew of recalls shows, that it clearly not the case.

The outbreak follows recalls of other tainted food products, including the third largest food recall in American history, when Cargill was forced to recall 36 million pounds of turkey due to a salmonella outbreak that killed one and sickened 80 others.

Even as these outbreaks occur, however, the Republican Party is continuing its efforts to gut food safety laws aimed at protecting Americans from these types of food-borne illnesses. In June, House Republicans attempted to kill the first significant upgrade in the nation’s food safety laws in more than 70 years, saying the private food industry sufficiently self-policed itself. Last week, presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) called for an end to food safety laws that she claimed were stifling job creation:

“That’s part of the problem, the overkill,” Bachmann told reporters during an appearance in which she posed with huge slabs of beef. “And when they make it complicated, they make it expensive and so then you can no longer stay in business.”

As Pat Garofalo has noted, one in six Americans is sickened by food-borne illness each year, and more than 3,000 die. And while the GOP cites the cost of new regulations, the annual cost of food illnesses is $152 billion, according to Georgetown University’s Produce Safety Project, and the cost of not overhauling outdated food safety laws far exceeds the cost of implementing the new policies the GOP opposes. House Republicans, however, refuse to approve the funding necessary to put those policies in place, all but ensuring that deadly and costly food outbreaks will continue to occur all too frequently.