Author: Erin Elizabeth

Some of the largest food producers in the US have successfully petitioned Congress to propose a change to the Freedom of Information Act that would shield their communications with boards overseen by the US Department of Agriculture from the scrutiny of the public, the Guardian has learned. The move follows a series of stories that showed the government-backed egg promoter, the American Egg Board, had attempted to stifle competition from Silicon Valley food startup Hampton Creek, in direct conflict with its mandate. Several agricultural lobbyists including United Egg Producers, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the National Pork Producers...

Magic mushrooms, those well known hallucinogenic marvels from the 1970s, have shown to lift severe depression in a dozen volunteers in a clinical trial and scientists hope they might someday become mainstream medicine. The clinical trial, published in the Lancet Psychiatry Journal, took years and was funded by the Medical Research Council. The study cost a significant amount of money and due to the stringent regulatory restrictions imposed around the class 1 drug, has found that two doses of psilocybin, the active substance in the mushrooms, was able to lift resistant depression in all 12 volunteers for three weeks...