Dan Charles

Outbreaks of foodborne illness are ruining the holiday spirit for Chipotle. The latest cases erupted over the past few days among students at Boston College.

The U.S. doesn't grow many vegetables indoors. We have California, Arizona and Latin America to supply us in winter instead. But entrepreneurs are betting on greenhouses to supply more fresh food.

A warming climate is likely to disrupt global food production, which has Big Food companies worried. Some, like Mars, are becoming increasingly vocal advocates for action on greenhouse gas emissions.

Ever been caught telling different stories to different people? It's awkward.

Dow AgroSciences, which sells seeds and pesticides to farmers, made
contradictory claims to different parts of the U.S. government about its latest herbicide. The Environmental Protection Agency just found out, and now wants to cancel Dow's legal right ...

More than half of America's sweet potatoes were lifted by hand from the soil of North Carolina. It's some of the most back-breaking farm work to be found, and migrant laborers do most of it.

In a long-awaited ruling, the agency said that a salmon created to grow faster is fit for human consumption. Environmental and food safety groups vow to fight the decision.

Five years ago, Congress promised an overhaul of the nation's food safety system, passing the Food Safety Modernization Act.

It took much longer than expected, but the Food and Drug Administration has now released the centerpiece — or at least, the most contested — part of that overhaul. These are ...

Glyphosate, widely known by its trade name, Roundup, probably gets more attention than any other herbicide. It's one of world's most-used weedkillers, and it is also closely linked to the growth of genetically modified crops.

Monsanto invented Roundup, and also invented crops that grow well when it's used on them. ...

Rinderpest, or cattle plague, was declared eradicated in 2011. But many research institutes still have samples of the rinderpest virus in storage. Disease experts want those samples destroyed.

Some Chipotle restaurants now sell pork from pigs that received antibiotics to treat illness. It's a move that acknowledges the drugs can be used responsibly on farms.

It's apple-picking time. For some of us, that's casual recreation. For tens of thousands of people, though, it's a paycheck — and one stop in a migratory life.

The parade of fast-food companies promising to sell meat from animals that never received antibiotics just got significantly longer. Subway, the ubiquitous sandwich chain, is following the lead of Chipotle, Panera, Chick-fil-A and McDonalds, with its promise Tuesday that its meat suppliers gradually will go antibiotic-free.

In one respect, ...

Kids in America's schools are eating more local food, although it makes up only a small part of the average meal. Advocates say local food doesn't have to cost more, but buying it does take more time.

A new study of drinking water in areas where fracking is used to extract natural gas found that contamination is not common and it probably did not come from deep underground.

Many alternative food brands have been swallowed by big food companies. Recently, Perdue bought Niman Ranch, which sells "natural" meat. But after a sale, will shoppers feel the product is the same?

If you've never tasted a pawpaw, now is the moment.

For just a few weeks every year in September and October, this native, mango-like fruit falls from trees, everywhere from Virginia to Kansas and many points westward. (We discovered them several years back along the banks of the Potomac ...

The Environmental Protection Agency has released a final version of updated rules intended to keep farmworkers from being poisoned by pesticides. The previous "worker protection standard" for farms has been in effect since 1992.

The new rules require farms to make a host of changes. Employers will have to ...

On a remote Arctic island, there's an underground vault filled with seeds. Now, for the first time, scientists are about to retrieve some of those seeds to replace a collection trapped in Syria.

The federal government collects money from farmers to finance ad campaigns for beef, pork and more than a dozen other commodities. Critics say this turns government into a servant of industry.

Former Peanut Corporation of America CEO Stewart Parnell's sentence is by far the harshest U.S. authorities have handed down in such cases. Emails revealed he and others knowingly sold tainted food.