Special episode: A collaboration with the Unconfined podcast

In this episode, Helena and Theodore look at how the federal government shutdown is pushing the SNAP program toward a fiscal cliff. Will either party do anything about it? Also, the Truth Social post from President Trump to America’s ranchers, calling on them to lower their prices, has spurred an America First maelstrom. And finally — peanuts are back! (Or, research shows that introducing children to peanuts and other potential food allergens at a young age actually helps prevent serious food allergies.)

In February, FERN senior editor Ted Genoways investigated how JBS, the world’s largest meat producer, had come to rely heavily on Haitian migrants and other refugees at its plant in Greeley, Colorado. His reporting shined a light on a burgeoning food economy in the United States, one that is shifting away from undocumented labor and relying on immigrant workers with legal, but often tenuous, status. Despite a series of court challenges, legal status for Haitians is now set to expire early next year, and JBS has already begun firing workers—as many as 400 in the last nine months, according to union officials. In this podcast update, produced in partnership with Reveal, Genoways describes a scramble by some Haitian workers to remain in the country, and JBS’s efforts to replace them with Somali refugees, a population whose legal status is still active.

Theodore and Helena discuss a kind of chaos that is almost becoming normal: painful layoffs and firings at a federal agency, which are then mostly undone not long after. This time it was the CDC, with the nation’s “disease detectives” going out the door and then back in before it even closed (among other layoffs.)  The context here is the shutdown of the federal government, which means talking about what’s getting support – food assistance for women, infants, and children – and what’s not: a bailout for soybean farmers. Finally, there are good vibrations in California, as the Golden State passes a law to phase out ultraprocessed foods in school lunches.

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).