Omega Protein employs 250 people in Reedville, VA, mostly factory workers and fishermen who net Atlantic menhaden, taking whole schools of the small, oily fish from the ocean and grinding them into meal, oil and solubles. Some of those jobs are in peril, but they shouldn’t be. Omega Protein warned last year that catch limits …
Editor’s Note: Until 2009, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) published an important weekly digest of news called “Integrity in Science Watch.” Journalist Merrill Goozner aggregated the most important conflict-of-interest stories from around the web in order to raise awareness about how these conflicts affected regulation, legislation, patient care, and academic research. …
Experts who helped the State Department draft a report that downplayed the environmental impact of the Keystone XL pipeline were found to have previously worked for TransCanada, the company attempting to build the pipeline. The State Department hid these ties from the public, redacting the work histories of the contractors in official documents. Mother Jones Chromium, …
Maryland lawmakers are debating a bill that could amount to a pollution pass for farmers in the state. The “Agricultural Certainty” bill would excuse participating farmers from new state and local environmental regulations for ten years. In return, farmers would agree to meet existing pollution reduction goals set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and …
Modern-day pirates might not look like Captain Jack Sparrow from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, but they do charter ships across the world’s oceans, stealing and plundering a valuable resource that billions of people depend on for food. Bills introduced in House and Senate committees this month aim to eliminate “pirate fishing,” a global scourge that threatens the …
Washingtonians might not realize it, but a 150-million-year-old species is slipping into oblivion right under their noses. Atlantic sturgeon, the pointy-snouted giant that can reach lengths of 14 feet and weigh up to 800 pounds, once swam with dinosaurs. The prehistoric fish was tenacious enough to survive the mass extinction more than 60 million years …
