Special episode: A collaboration with the Unconfined podcast

In 2006, a recently created ICE cracked down on undocumented labor in meatpacking plants. Large meat companies were desperate for workers, and so they turned to a new source of vulnerable labor – refugees. This shift transformed the nation’s food economy and the cities and towns that feed us. Greeley, Colorado, home to the U.S. headquarters of JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, was transformed by refugee workers – a change with deep cultural and political ramifications. This episode was produced in collaboration with 99 Percent Invisible, and with funding from the 11th Hour Food and Farming Fellowship at UC Berkeley.

Veteran food policy journalist Tom Philpott, one of the hosts of the Unconfined podcast from the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University, joins Helena and Theodore in a unique collaboration. Unconfined is a monthly interview show focused on the public-health implications of industrial meat production. They talk about why RFK Jr. rejected the UN Declaration on Noncommunicable Diseases, how the MAHA movement has – and hasn’t – transformed our food system, and, finally, what they’re all reading.

In this episode, FERN Editor-in-Chief Theodore Ross talks food and power in the West. There’s Ted Genoways on a JBS meatpacking plant in Colorado; Jeremy Miller on how large pecan growers are strangling a declining Rio Grande; and Paisley Rekdal on the history of Chinese oppression and resistance through food in the United States. This episode is part of FERN’s special issue on food and power, produced in collaboration with High Country News.

The MAHA Commission has made big promises about what it would do to fix the nation’s food system and health. Its new strategy document includes 128 proposals for change – but little evidence that those changes can be made real. Helena and Theodore go through the report and ask: Did RFK Jr. bow to pressure from Big Ag? Is he more interested in cracking down on vaccine injury than high-fructose corn syrup? Also: Whole milk is back!

The impact of the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown is starting to show up in new preliminary census data, and that poses major problems for all parts of U.S. society, but particularly in our food system: Nearly half the country’s food system workers are immigrants. In this episode, Helena and Theodore go through the numbers, and explain why the chances of immigration reform are going down. Also: FoodNet gets a haircut at CDC, and Kansas fights USDA over SNAP data.

In this episode, Helena and Theodore talk about the MAHA commission’s leaked strategy report. Turns out that there’s more talk than action. Also: a former FDA chief challenges RFK Jr. to put up or shut up on ultraprocessed foods. And finally – MAGA vs. MAHA.

In this episode, Theodore and Helena discuss why the (non-vaxx) ideas of the MAHA movement are popular, but the movement itself is less so.. That split presents a major problem for Democrats, who can’t resist the Trump administration when it’s pushing for things they want. Also, does Coke taste better with cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrup? The answer: they taste about the same, and people prefer Pepsi (as long as they don’t know what they’re drinking – then they like Coke).

In this episode, FERN contributor Lisa Morehouse reports on the Anderson Valley Grange Hall in California’s Mendocino County. She finds an organization, and a community, trying to adapt to a changing social landscape – and finding help at the Grange. “Whether it’s doing a holiday dinner or … hosting a local food bank, it’s a place where people can do what’s most natural to us, which is focus on our cooperative dynamics and community,” says Erich Jonas, a member of the Anderson Valley Grange. This episode was produced in partnership with “California Foodways” and KQED’s California Report Magazine podcast.

The major companies that produce and sell ultraprocessed foods are making big changes, or at least they are promising to. The Trump administration has celebrated “wins” over companies as varied as PepsiCo and Steak ‘n Shake. It’s not clear whether decisions from these companies to change their products – out with synthetic dyes and in with beef tallow – are coming from pressure at the federal level, new state laws, changes in the marketplace – or if anything meaningful is happening at all.

Helena and Theodore explain why Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski flipped to cast the deciding vote on Trump’s Big Beautiful Act: an exemption that rewards her state’s highest-in-the-nation SNAP error rates. They also take a look at how the law creates barriers to food assistance and healthcare, with paperwork, work requirements, and pushing administrative costs to the states. Finally, RFK Jr. has talked a big game about banning artificial dyes in foods – but it’s places like West Virginia that have taken action. Do people really want beet-flavored red M&M’s?