Articles by Steven Gilchrist

From 1932 – 1933 a famine occurred in the Ukraine. Also known as the Holodomor, the famine resulted in the deaths of millions of Ukrainians. Holodomor means to “kill by starvation” or “death by hunger.” The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932 – 1933. The number of people who died in the Ukrainian famine is not completely known. The causes of the famine continue to be debated by historians. Arthur Koestler, a Hungarian-British journalist, described the Holodomor with the following quote: “At every train station there was a crowd of peasants in rags, offering icons and linen in exchange against a loaf of bread. The women were lifting up their infants to the compartment windows – infants pitiful and terrifying with limbs like sticks, puffed bellies, big cadaverous heads lolling on thin necks.” On November 10, 2003, at a United Nations convention, 25 countries signed a joint statement on the 70 th anniversary of the Holodomor. The preamble of this statement reads: “I...

  In a report that was released in January 2019, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund found that food recalls had increased 10% in the United States between 2013 – 2018.   During this five-year period, meat and poultry recalls increased 67%. Processed food and produce recalls increased by 2%. Researchers were not able to identify the reasons for the increase in the food recalls. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approximately 48 million people become ill, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne contaminates each year in the United States.    In 2018, there were 703 food recalls in the U.S. During the five-year period of 2013 – 2018, the highest number of annual food recalls occurred in 2016, when 905 food recalls were documented. During this five-year period poultry had the most recalls (168), followed by beef (137), and pork (128). As a result of the food recall study, PIRG is recommending ...