"The best news for wine growers Kevin and Karen Kohlman was this: Their vines did not get hit this season by pesticides drifting onto their property from surrounding private industrial forestlands. That’s a change."

"The struggle over huge livestock farms continues to roil in Missouri and Kansas, and no wonder -- a new report shows the two states in the middle of the growing concentration of factory farming."

A California state appeals court ruled that an organic farmer can seek damages from a pesticide company whose product was applied to neighboring fields and contaminated the organic farmer's fields by volatilization rather than spray drift.

"The House of Representatives gave final approval on Tuesday to a long-awaited modernization of the nation’s food safety laws, voting 215 to 144 to grant the Food and Drug Administration greater authority over food production."

"The Senate on Sunday night cleared a food safety package, curbing earlier fears the popular bill would die by the end of this session as a result of a procedural error by upper chamber lawmakers."

"Reacting to a French pledge to represent the 'common interest' in considering biotech foods, a former US ambassador recommended publishing a 'retaliation list' of European locations where genetically modified organisms (GMOs) were being grown in hopes that activists would destroy them and 'cause some pain' for officials, a leaked diplomatic cable shows."

"The state of Iowa is failing to warn people to cut back on eating locally caught fish contaminated with mercury and other pollutants at levels the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finds too risky, a study by The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism has found."

"The U.S.-raised animals we eat consumed about 29 million pounds of antibiotics in the last year alone, according to a first-ever Food and Drug Administration accounting of antimicrobial drug use by the American livestock industry."

"The overhaul of food safety laws recently passed by the Senate had the support of business interests, consumer groups and lawmakers from both parties, but the bipartisan legislation still generated plenty of work along the K Street corridor."

"At the same time that you're buttering your morning toast, you also may be slathering it with the tiny amounts of the flame retardant PBDE."

The food-safety bill passed Tuesday by the Senate does not cover meat, poultry, or eggs and does not sort out overlapping federal agency jurisdictions.

"The Senate passed a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s food safety system on Tuesday, after tainted eggs, peanut butter and spinach sickened thousands of people in the last few years and led major food makers to join consumer advocates in demanding stronger government oversight."

The Senate cleared procedural hurdles on Monday and took up a House-passed bill to improve food safety. Final passages was expected Tuesday. House leaders have said they will accept the Senate version, sending it to President Obama for signature. The Senate version now includes controversial exemptions for small farmers.

"A coalition of environmental and farmworker groups is urging California's Gov.-elect Jerry Brown to cancel the imminent approval of a controversial agricultural pesticide after he takes office, citing evidence that it is linked to cancer."

"Every day, a rising tide of foreign food makes its way onto Canadian grocery shelves, the vast majority of it entering this country untouched by federal inspectors."