Two companies, Upside Foods, and Good Meat, say they have received final U.S. Department of Agriculture approval to sell lab-grown meat, paving the way for the nation’s first-ever sales of the product.
With the approvals, the United States will become the second country after Singapore to allow the sale of so-called cultivated meat, derived from a sample of livestock cells that are fed and grown in steel vats.
The companies are the first to complete the multi-step U.S. approval process for cultivated meat. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has already determined that the meat is safe to eat.
“It is a dream come true,” said Uma Valeti, CEO of Upside, in an interview. “It marks a new era.”
The companies, which both make cultivated chicken, plan to first serve their product at high-end restaurants before scaling production to reach a lower cost for grocery stores.
Upside chicken will first be served at Bar Crenn, a restaurant in San Francisco owned by chef Dominique Crenn, the company said. Good Meat will sell its first batch of chicken to the Jos?ndr?Group, owned by the humanitarian and chef, Good Meat said.
Spain-based Iberdrola has announced that it will help deliver renewable offshore wind power from the Long Island grid to New York City and Westchester County.
By by Adnan Memija, OffshoreWINDbiz
The company said it will add approximately 90 miles (about 150 kilometres) of new high-voltage transmission lines that will run the distance underground and underwater.
The project will be developed by Iberdrola, through Avangrid, together with Edison Transmission, National Grid Ventures, and Central Hudson Electric Transmission.
A significant portion of this offshore wind generation will be connected to the Long Island grid, but in order to supply clean, local power to the rest of the state’s consumers, additional grid connections are needed, Iberdrola said.
Avangrid is currently developing Vineyard Wind in Massachusetts waters, which with 806 MW of capacity, is the largest commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the country.
The wind farm is expected to generate electricity for more than 400,000 homes and businesses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, create 3,600 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) job years, save customers USD 1.4 billion over the first 20 years of operation, and is expected to reduce carbon emissions by more than 1.6 million metric tons per year, the equivalent of taking 325,000 cars off the road annually.
Iberdrola said that the United States is the company’s main destination for investments, allocating USD 21.5 billion up to 2025, a figure that will lead to a renewable capacity of approximately 10,000 MW, with a 70 per cent growth in a decade, according to the press release.
Breweries across New Jersey are bracing for another year of regulations that some argue are detrimental to their businesses. Last year, new rules were implemented that banned breweries from serving food and limited the number of events they can host to 25 per year.
Chuck Garrity, owner of Death of the Fox Brewery in Clarksboro, said the rules go beyond what is necessary. He said hosting events could generate significant revenue for breweries to help some stay in business.
“There’s already been nine breweries that have gone out of business just over the last year. And so, my guess is that if something isn’t done, that number might double,” Garrity said.
The restrictions are set to be reinstated on July 1 unless lawmakers pass new legislation. The state Senate was scheduled to address the bill on Monday.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills is threatening to veto legislation governing how the state builds and operates offshore wind projects, citing concerns over pro-union labor provisions.
The Democratic governor championed an earlier version of the bill, but said this past week that she opposes a commitment to use project labor agreements (PLAs), pre-hire deals that set a floor for wages and can help build union power.
Mills argued that mandating a PLA would create a “chilling effect” for non-union companies, discouraging them from bidding on construction.
Supporters of the PLA provision say that is a far-fetched objection, since the agreements do not ban non-union contractors from vying for jobs. (In fact, that’s one reason some more radical unionists say PLAs do too little to advance labor’s cause.)
On Friday, state lawmakers wrote to Mills with a proposed compromise, suggesting new bill text to meet her concerns about potential workforce shortages.
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NEW YORK — You might have seen an affable, 6-foot-5-inch older fellow pacing the paths of Central Park recently, talking to himself. Well, that was no ordinary man. Among his accomplishments: a Rhodes scholarship, a flawless jump shot, even a seat in the Senate. And of late — surprisingly — a moment in the footlights.
Yes, Bill Bradley decided the new world he wanted to conquer, after distinguished careers as a New York Knick and a U.S. senator, was that of a storyteller onstage, like Mark Twain. And that is how “Rolling Along” came to be, and why Bradley made mumbling loops around the park, the way he used to spend hours by himself, practicing layups. Only now, he was practicing his lines.
“Rolling Along” is the show he’d written over the past several years about his extraordinary life, going back to his days as a gangly basketball wunderkind from Missouri, on his way to Princeton and the Olympics. Before the coronavirus pandemic began, he recited it, script in front of him, before small audiences in 20 cities. Last December, he did it again, but this time from memory, for four nights in a theater on West 42nd Street. There, in the room with an audience and five cameras, documentarian Michael Tollin (“The Last Dance,” “Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream”) put it on film.
“Rolling Along” had its premiere on June 16 at the Tribeca Film Festival — a 90-minute movie as unvarnished as a weathered porch on the Mississippi, the river that inspired the film’s title. It’s just Bradley onstage with a chair, table and glass of water, candidly recounting his biography, a guy seemingly at ease and eager to explore this new terrain as a public figure. In an interview, he confesses as much, about why he made the show: part of a lifelong quest, he says, to “belong.”
“It’s me as an only child,” Bradley declares, “wanting to give myself to a larger family.”
All politicians are performers of one sort or another, the lucky ones by dint of natural gifts. Others lean heavily on the skills of speechwriters. Still others just seem to be (too) in love with the sound of their own voices. You can see in “Rolling Along” that Bradley falls into another, rarer category, one defined by a need to pull himself off the pedestal, to express his feelings in lyrical musings, to reveal a vulnerability underlying his achievements.
“My hope was that people will feel a connection because of the humanity of the piece, and in elements of it people will see their own life,” Bradley says in an interview.
One person who felt a connection was filmmaker Spike Lee, a Knicks fan of rabid dimension, who’s been friends with Bradley for years. Running into each other before the pandemic at Clyde Frazier’s Wine and Dine, the now-closed Manhattan restaurant of another ex-Knick, Walt Frazier, Bradley told Lee: “I’d like to do this thing for you to get your opinion.” Lee invited him to his Brooklyn office, where Bradley read to him “Rolling Along.”
“At the end, he has tears in his eyes,” Bradley says. “And I think, ‘Oh, whoa, that’s confident confirmation of something.’”
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She Helped Bring Long-Gone Wild Oysters Back to the Jersey Shore
She’s also working to protect 160 crucial islands in the Barnegat Bay watershed.
Angela Andersen is the sustainability director for Long Beach Township on LBI. She recently secured an $87,000 grant to fund the restoration of habitats on New Jersey’s bay islands—and she’s happy to take you on a kayak tour of it all. Photo: Dave Moser
Angela Andersen wears many hats. They include a full, brimmed sun hat and a beanie, depending on the season when she is out on the bay.
Andersen, 54, is the sustainability director/field station manager for Long Beach Township on Long Beach Island.
Her career has included roles with the American Littoral Society, which promotes the study and conservation of marine life and habitat, and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, as well as coproducing three locally based documentaries.
Of all her work, Andersen’s legacy will likely be her role in the return of the wild oyster, a staple harvest of our Shore waterways, long since erased. It’s been an overwhelming ecological success story.
“Oysters grow on hard structures, traditionally on the back of their dead ancestors,” Andersen says. “As we were filming our documentary The Oyster Farmers, the ecosystem told us it was healthy enough to support a renewed industry of sustainable shellfish growth and harvest, but also complete habitat restoration. That cycle can’t happen in an unhealthy system.”
Andersen was integral in building oyster reefs by implementing a system that brings together environmental, municipal, academic, business and aquaculture groups to collect oyster shells from restaurants, introduce them to millions of oyster larvae (called spat), and then place them into lease areas on the bay floor.
Oysters are now growing on the reefs, as well as in an increasing number of commercial oyster farms, and have even been found in the wild for the first time in 50 years. The reefs filter microplankton and absorb carbon from the bay—both dangerous in overabundance. Moreover, the well-publicized projects educate residents and create jobs for a new generation of bayworkers.
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