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Have a great Memorial Day! We’ll be back on Tuesday.

Vilsack on CAFOs, swine flu H1N1 Last week, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack stood up for industrial livestock operations, saying that the “‘vast, vast, vast majority of farmers who are raising livestock are very sensitive’ to the need to be careful about the management of their animals,” going on to reiterate the food safety point he made earlier this year about peanut butter, that the industry would gain nothing by killing their market. At Beyond Green, Tom Laskawy points out Vilsack’s refusal to talk swine flu.

Speaking of swine flu Tom Philpott reports at Grist that scientists from the Biotechnology Institute (a Big Pharma front group) are heading to La Gloria, where the outbreak first occurred, likely to try to pin the virus on backyard hogs, rather than those raised at the nearby Smithfield operation. The Mexican government is also investigating but we’ll just echo Tom here: Where’s the WHO with an independent follow up to the test Smithfield ran on hand-picked hogs?

NYC’s new food strategy Bloomberg, Paterson and Quinn have announced new strategies to get more grocery stores into underserved neighborhoods in the Big Apple.

FDA, BPA lobby in bed cozy Kudos to the unnamed investigative reporters who gained access to emails and attachments between the BPA lobby and FDA officials, the gist of which was that the FDA relied on the lobbyists to offset evidence of health risks associated with the substance.

A who’s who in food policy On Tuesday, Food & Water Watch’s Elanor Starner (also of Ethicurean fame) presented at the first of Civil Eats’ new Kitchen Table Talks series. We wish they were being held closer to us but are pleased just to get the rundown with this hugely helpful overview of the USDA.