Free Talk Live

Children in nearly two dozen Boston public schools ate meals in cafeterias cited for conditions so severe - including mouse droppings, peeling paint and a rusty oven - that one inspector said they would shutter a typical restaurant.

Making matters worse: The central food facility that feeds another 21 Hub schools without cafeterias also has been tagged by health inspectors, records show.

US Senate offices are experiencing a huge backlash of grassroots opposition to the bill -- called the Food Safety Modernization Act -- as virtually every health freedom organization, family farm group and even dietary supplement companies have aligned to oppose this new bill.

Louisiana state health inspectors destroyed 1,600 lbs of deer meat donated by hunters to a local homeless shelter. The agency received a complaint that deer meat was being served at a mission. State regulations bar food establishments from serving hunted deer meat. Late January, the department discovered the deer meat — which had been appropriately processed at an area slaughterhouse — and destroyed it in a dumpster by dousing it in bleach. The Shreveport-Bossier Rescue Mission had been serving deer meat donated by area hunters for decades.

Whether it’s for an extravagant proposal or just a sing-a-long surprise, entertaining flash mobs typically lift people’s spirits. However, a flash mob in Florida on Saturday night was decidedly more sinister. A gang of about 300 teenagers mobbed a Wal-Mart in Jacksonville where they ran wild, destroyed $1,500 of property, started a food fight and fired gun-shots, according to police reports. Investigators suspect that the massive group could have come on from a party that the police broke up earlier in the night.

The underground market seeks to encourage food entrepreneurship by helping young vendors avoid roughly $1,000 a year in fees -- including those for health permits and liability insurance -- required by legitimate farmers markets. Here, where the food rave -- call it a crave -- was born, the market organizers sidestep city health inspections by operating as a private club, requiring that participants become "members" (free) and sign a disclaimer noting that food might not be prepared in a space that has been inspected.

A Minnesota man accused of violating the state's raw milk laws was just the middle man in a voluntary arrangement of people sharing food, his attorney argued Wednesday.

Alvin Schlangen, an organic egg producer in central Minnesota, is charged with three misdemeanor counts including distributing unpasteurized milk, operating without a food handler's license and handling adulterated food. Minnesota law prohibits raw milk sales except directly to consumers on the farm when it's produced.

Joel Salatin calls Abraham Lincoln our “worst president,” not because he destroyed states’ rights or Southern identity, but because he created the United States Department of Agriculture. “There is not another agency that has been so successful at annihilating its own constituency,” he says.

A health food store in PEI Canada is getting leaned on for selling non government approved eggs. This is part of a campaign to put small producers out of business. Last year a B&B was leaned on for serving non-graded eggs to customers. And shortly before that there was a move afoot to change the size of flocks that would fall under health regulations, from 300 to 50.

The health food store proprietors have chosen disobedience by selling the cartons and giving the eggs away for free. It takes guts to do something like this in a region where government spends 62% of gdp.

3rd Party Candidate Debate: Gary Johnson is the Libertarian Party's nominee. Jill Stein is the Green Party's nominee. They joined moderator — and host of weekends on All Things Considered — Guy Raz for a debate focusing on domestic issues: the economy, health care and the role of government.