NATIONAL
November 30, 2010 | By Andrew Zajac, Tribune Washington Bureau
After languishing for more than a year, a food-safety bill that has enjoyed strong bipartisan support passed the Senate on Tuesday, raising prospects for tougher and more extensive federal inspections and other safeguards. The bill, which President Obama supports, still needs to be reconciled with differing provisions in legislation passed by the House in July 2009. But the Senate's approval, by a 73-25 margin, was cheered by food safety experts and advocacy groups as a sign that the long delay could be nearing an end and the nation's food-safety laws will receive their first major overhaul in decades.
NATIONAL
July 13, 2010 | By Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times
Robert Downs leads the scientists who sniff at fish. Each day, his team of seven sensory experts dip their noses into large Pyrex bowls of snapper, tuna and other raw seafood to test for even a whiff of the pungent oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. This is not Grand Cru wine. "We use specific terms for the aroma," said Downs, who supervises the seafood smellers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's marine lab here. "Diesel oil. Bunker oil. Asphalt.
WORLD
June 6, 2002 | ANN M. SIMMONS, TIMES STAFF WRITER
On most days, Melina Jakasoni's three small children survive on a single meal of boiled and mashed pumpkin leaves. When her scrounging pays off, the young mother is able to make porridge from donated corn husks. On rare occasions, a neighbor allows her to forage in her yard for groundnuts. Once again, hunger is stalking Africa. The calamity here is one piece of a food crisis--partly natural and partly man-made--that is sweeping southern Africa.
FOOD
March 6, 2002 | DIANE KOCHILAS, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
The craving for souvlaki comes over me about once a month. I am usually in the center of town when that irresistible waft--the scent of grilled meat (either pork or lamb), garlic and oregano, coupled with the smell of warm, doughy pita bread--hits. The Greeks have a word for it: tsikna, the meaning of which encompasses both sound (i.e., the sizzle) and smell (that of pleasantly charred meat). I usually give in to temptation at one of several favorite holes in the wall.
NEWS
June 26, 2000 | MELINDA FULMER, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Philip Morris Cos., parent of Kraft Foods, on Sunday agreed to buy cookie and cracker giant Nabisco Holdings Corp. for $14.9 billion, making the nation's largest food company even more powerful with brands on virtually every supermarket aisle. The announcement comes at a time when many of the largest players in the slow-growing food business have been looking to consolidate in order to cut costs, boost sales and increase their clout with grocery retailers.
NEWS
July 23, 1996 | SONNI EFRON, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Public health authorities snapped into action Monday to tackle a virulent strain of bacteria that has sickened at least 6,333 people in southern Japan, most of them children believed to have contracted acute food poisoning from their school lunches. The culprit in Japan's worst food poisoning outbreak in a decade is the same strain of E. coli bacteria that tainted American hamburgers in the West in 1993, killing four people and making about 500 others ill.