April 8: Stories That Caught Our Attention This Week

Maybe you’re having a bad day, but at least your cattle haven’t been eaten by an alligator. A pair of Florida farmers spotted a nearly 800-pound reptile in the cattle pond on their property earlier this week. They believe it had been eating the cattle that went to drink. The gator was killed by hunters, but the staff at MF HQ have all agreed to avoid Florida ponds for now.

Would you want your kid to be a wine expert? A politician in Italy does. Italy is the world’s largest producer of wine and senator Dario StefÁ no believes six- to 13-year-olds should learn more about it. “It’s been shown that knowledge creates responsible drinkers,” StefÁ no told an Italian news source. “But this is just an extra subject that will enrich the education of our students. We make children study music in school without expecting them to become musicians.” Dude has a point.

Chicken: It’s what’s for dinner tonight, if the breast isn’t woody and fibrous. Hard, gummy, and tough-to-chew chicken breast is showing up in 5 to 10 percent of boneless breasts worldwide. Apparently, that’s what happens when the food industry tries to breed bigger and bigger chickens.

Lastly, HuffPo reports something that’s been grinding our gears for a while: Food systems as a a campaign issue have been ignored, for the most part, by each of the presidential candidates. Both FoodTank and HuffPost sent the candidates questions, such as “What would your administration do to address the lack of access to healthy, affordable food, a problem many communities in the U.S. share?“; both organizations have yet to hear back. Food: something both parties (and us!) actually have in common, yet it’s not being addressed by the Maybe Future Head(s) of State.