Antibiotic resistance is a concern worldwide - scientists and public health officials are finally beginning to agree about the use of low dose antibiotics as growth promoters in livestock feed: It needs to stop immediately. 

No more evidence is needed than recent, troubling reports about the appearance of a new gene in both pigs and humans in China.

Chipotle, which has promised to remove GMOs (from soybean oil anyway - the meat, cheese and soda remained evidence-based) and claimed it was going to be more ethical than anyone else by only sourcing local ingredients and produce now has a much bigger problem on its hands - its stores are a ghost town because they have caused not different types of foodborne illnesses in different parts of the country.

The Obama administration really wanted the Environmental Protection Agency's legally suspect Waters of the United States rule (the fuzzy-wuzzy named Clean Water Rule) to get a groundswell of public approval - so they used government employees and taxpayer money to blitz social media endorsing it.

That's called lobbying, and it is illegal for the government to lobby for the rule it bypassed lawmakers to enact. Not only did they break the law, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found, they engaged in “covert propaganda” because they did not disclose that the messages they were promoting across social media were written and foisted off by the same group engaging in the unprecedented power grab over state and city government. 

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's $300 million Akatsuki ("Dawn") probe fired its small attitude-control thrusters for 20 minutes Sunday evening at 6:51 p.m. EST in a second (and final) attempt to enter Venus orbit. 

The first attempt was exactly five years ago, on Dec. 6, 2010, but it failed when the probe's main engine conked out during the orbit-insertion burn, sending the spacecraft sailing off into deep space.

However, this time they had a win. Let's do some science!

Image: Akihiro Ikeshita/JAXA

Want to be made to feel like you are a bad mother? Defend ordinary food among a crowd of people who buy organic. They self-identify as not only being more educated than ordinary shoppers, but more ethical people as well. Especially if it is for the children.

Why don't men get the same social and gender pressure as women? Men may be less easy to manipulate with the 'you are a bad parent' marketing techniques used by organic marketing groups and the pressure groups like SourceWatch and U.S. Right To Know that they fund.

As Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders watches his Presidential hopes fade, supporters are rushing to defend him. Though he has never campaigned as a Democrat in his entire career, he expected Democrats to embrace him because he always caucused with them in Congress; instead, he is a Democrat-Socialist campaigning for the nomination in the same party as a guy who got a standing ovation for killing Osama Bin Laden and will leave office with America in three wars and who let the AquAdvantage salmon get approved. That is going to be a struggle for acceptance in mainstream America when they see a guy coming from a state that says GMOs must have warning labels and has actively campaigned against the very thing the sitting President is taking credit for improving - the economy.

Greenpeace is again trying to stop the Philippines from using genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to solve hunger and vitamin deficiency. The group believes, without evidence, that GMOs are “contaminating non ‘GE’ environments and future generations in an unforeseeable and uncontrollable way.”

If shade-grown, fair-trade organic no longer gets coos of wishful self-identification from your friends in Malibu, here is a way re-establish your elite credentials: Dog food that is locally grown. 

Farm-to-table pet food is all the rage. If you want your dog's food to 'explode with flavor', it takes an executive chef to design the meals. If you are on a Paleo diet, your dog can even copy it, though your dog would probably prefer that anyway.

Are you more likely to buy produce if it's picked by hand? Do labels such as local and organic conjure up imagery of small-scale farmers keeping money in the community and sustainable living and no pesticides or fertilizer?

It's a myth created by organic trade groups. There is a reason you see few small-scale farms run by anyone over the age of 40. While young idealists may initially invest in them, the reality is there is no substitute for the hard work and it is a lousy retirement plan. Picked by hand? I have to tell you, as someone who actually grew up on a farm that was small scale and the non-technological Idyll created by organic trade groups, there is a reason I got a scholarship to go to college, and that reason was to stop picking things by hand