"Marla Spivak sat on the curb outside an emergency room in Arizona nearly four decades ago holding a jar with a lone honeybee buzzing around inside. She was 22, and on her way to a summer job with a renowned bee researcher."

"On May 6, 2014, as I read through the morning's incoming email, a Food Safety Alert from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announcing a "voluntary recall of mangoes due to possible health risk" from the bacteria Listeria caught my eye. This grabbed my attention because at the time, a handsome sunset-hued mango, purchased several days before at my neighborhood market in Portland, Oregon, was ripening on the kitchen counter."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed stricter requirements to avoid exposure to pesticides on farms, leaving farmers and officials divided about whether they go too far or provide needed protection."

"The Obama administration on Thursday announced measures to tackle the growing threat of antibiotic resistance, outlining a national strategy that includes incentives for the development of new drugs, tighter stewardship of existing ones, and improvements in tracking the use of antibiotics and the microbes that are resistant to them."

"Banamichi, Mexico - Liseth Mendez and Judas Barrios milk two cows covered in a cloud of tiny persistent flies as the sun taints in red the surrounding mountains near a ranch less than a kilometre from the Sonora River."

"The Agriculture Department has approved the commercial planting of corn and soybeans genetically engineered to survive being sprayed by the herbicide known as 2,4-D, according to documents it posted on a federal regulatory website on Wednesday."

"Government inspectors all over the country are supposed to ensure the meat we eat is safe. But according to a growing chorus of current and former inspectors - and a number of watchdog groups - the U-S meat inspection system isn’t doing its job."

"Agriculture experts raised a number of concerns with genetically modified crops, including safety and spreading weed resistance, at the first public meeting of a U.S. government sponsored study of genetically engineered crops held Monday."

"Nearly 400 years after French voyageur Jean Nicolet arrived with a bang on the banks of lower Green Bay — he fired two pistols skyward to announce the white man's arrival in the world's largest freshwater estuary — the same stretch of shoreline was the scene of another fateful landing."