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With information abounding on the health benefits of breast milk for infants, a growing number of under-producing mothers are eschewing formula and instead turning to online marketplaces to buy breast milk directly from other moms. In the past year, somewhere around 55,000 women sold their excess breast milk online, up from 13,000 in 2011. Business…

During a nationwide teleconference on Monday Chinese Premier Li Keqiang urged “strict market supervision and harsh penalties” to improve food safety and assure costumers that something like the melamine milk scandal will never happen again. “Perpetrators must pay such a high price that they can not afford,” said Keqiang, according to official news outlet Xinhua…

Agricultural ministers meeting in Brussels this week agreed that criminal activity stretching across the European continent is behind the horsemeat scandal.   In response, they’ve called for still more DNA testing of the continent’s meat and meat products. The accompanying infographic provided by the Australian Food Safety Institute shows the breadth and depth of the…

A man who misrepresented chemical fertilizer as organic has pleaded guilty in federal court, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California.

Peter Townsley, owner of California Liquid Fertilizer in the Salinas Valley, admitted to defrauding his organic farmer customers by saying his fertilizer, Biolizer XN, was approved for use in …

Harold Chase, 54,  of Springfield, OR is facing up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

His crime was one count of wire fraud for falsely labeling regular corn as organic corn in a $450,000 sale.  

He pleaded guilty to the offense and will be scheduled next Feb. 12.

The sale  of …

Fraud was the price of food safety in Connecticut after Hurricane Irene.

Over the past weekend, an angry Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said the state was investigating “multiple incidents of possible fraud” by state residents, including some state employees, who took money intended for low-income people to replace food spoiled in the aftermath of …

More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn’t exactly what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for Food Safety News.

The results show that the pollen frequently has been filtered out of products labeled “honey.”

The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make…

Although there’s no evidence that certain extracts falsely labeled as organic were sold in the U.S., the Department of Agriculture is nonetheless warning organic distributors and processors to be aware of a fraudulent organic certificate being circulated by an uncertified operation in China.

The certificate falsely represents hibiscus, jasmine and beet root extract powders as…