The Agriculture Department finalized a new rule to bring the meals more in line with federal dietary standards.School meals will soon contain less salt and sugar, but can still include chocolate milk, under new nutrition guidelines released by the Biden administration.The Agriculture Department on Wednesday finalized the regulation it had first proposed in February 2023, having weakened several provisions after feedback from food companies, school nutrition professionals and over 136,000 public comments.“All of this is designed to ensure that students have quality meals and that we meet parents’ expectation that their children are receiving healthy and nutritious meals at school,” Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, said in a call with reporters on Tuesday.The new guidelines, which seek to better align school meals with federal dietary standards, build on a 2010 law that aimed to make cafeteria breakfasts and lunches healthier. That law, championed by Michelle Obama when she was the first lady, became embroiled in political debate almost immediately. The Trump administration tried repeatedly to roll back nutrition standards, and the Biden administration relaxed certain provisions to provide more flexibility during the coronavirus pandemic.When the Agriculture Department proposed updates to the standards last year, school nutrition professionals called the guidelines unrealistic to enforce and dairy groups expressed concerns over what they called a push to limit milk.The final rule reflects some of those concerns.Under the rule, schools will need to limit the amount of added sugars in cereals and yogurts beginning in the 2025-26 academic year and gradually step up reductions in other foods.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

The Agriculture Department granted approval to cultivated meat producers for the first time in the United States, representing a watershed moment for the alternative protein industry.The Agriculture Department approved the production and sale of laboratory-grown meat for the first time on Wednesday, clearing the way for two California companies to sell chicken produced from animal cells.It will likely be years before shoppers can buy lab-produced meat in grocery stores. But the government’s decision will eventually allow the sale of lab-produced meat across state lines after passing federal inspections.The decision is a milestone for companies making cell-grown meat, along with consumers looking for alternatives to chickens bred in a factory farm and slaughtered.Supporters of alternative proteins along with the companies that sought federal approval — Upside Foods and Good Meat — celebrated the news as pivotal for the meat industry and the broader food system at a moment of growing concern about the environmental impact of meat production and its treatment of animals.“This approval will fundamentally change how meat makes it to our table,” Dr. Uma Valeti, the chief executive and founder of Upside Foods, said in a statement. “It’s a giant step forward towards a more sustainable future — one that preserves choice and life.”The decision will make the United States the second country in the world, after Singapore, to authorize the production and sale of lab-grown meat. Bruce Friedrich, the president of the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit focused on cell- and plant-based meat, said U.S. approval was a critical step for the industry, adding that “the world does look to the United States’ food safety approval system, and now lots of governments will follow.”Supporters of cultivated meat say the product has better outcomes for the environment, food safety and animal welfare. But skeptics are wary of scientific and safety risks and say the purported environmental benefits are unproven. Difficulties remain over how to increase the product for mass consumption.About 100 companies worldwide, including dozens in the United States, focus on the production of cultivated meat, according to Mr. Friedrich. The industry was valued at about $247 million in 2022, according to the market research firm Grand View Research, and could grow to $25 billion by 2030, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company projected.Lab-grown meat begins with cells taken from an animal. Those cells are then fed water and salt and nutrients like amino acids, vitamins and minerals. The cells then multiply in large tanks called cultivators or bioreactors. When harvested, the product is essentially minced meat, which is then formed into patties, sausage or fillets. The meat contains no bones, feathers, beaks or hooves and does not need to be slaughtered.Upside Foods and Good Meats declined to elaborate on their current production capacity, but Dr. Valeti said last year that the company will eventually grow to “tens of millions of pounds of product.”That’s chicken feed compared with the 350 million tons of meat consumed around the world — a number that is only expected to grow.Both companies will begin selling chicken to American consumers through partner restaurants: Upside Foods at Bar Crenn in San Francisco, and Good Meat at an undisclosed location operated by the chef José Andrés in Washington. The model allows both consumer education and feedback, spokesmen for the companies said.After the initial trial run, both companies also anticipate scaling up production and expanding to other types of meat. (Beef, with its higher fat content and more complex flavor, is harder to replicate.)Still, questions linger over the regulatory framework around cultivated meat and consumer attitudes toward the products.Many cattlemen and agriculture groups have cried foul over calling the lab-grown variety “meat” and have been lobbying legislators to safeguard the word. The Food Safety and Inspection Service, the Agriculture Department agency tasked with inspecting conditions at processing facilities, is still drafting regulations on how food products derived from animal cells should be labeled. For now, the two California companies will call their products “cell cultivated chicken,” a label that the agency approved last week.Semantic and consumer opinion battles aside, Mr. Friedrich warned that the cultivated meat products, when they eventually hit grocery shelves, will be expensive compared with conventional sausages and patties — similar to how renewable energy was initially costlier than oil and gas.Nonetheless, he is confident that “cultivated meat will sell itself.”

State and local health authorities ignored the risks of raw sewage for residents in a rural county, the Justice Department has found; the officials have agreed to change their practices.The Justice Department said it had reached an interim agreement with the health departments of Alabama and one of its rural counties over practices found to discriminate against generations of Black residents.Under the agreement announced Thursday, the Alabama Department of Public Health and the Lowndes County Health Department said they would improve wastewater infrastructure, measure the health risks associated with raw sewage exposure, and stop penalizing residents who cannot afford adequate treatment systems.The agreement represents “a new chapter for Black residents of Lowndes County, Ala., who have endured health dangers, indignities and racial injustice for far too long,” said Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division.Catherine Coleman Flowers, an environmental activist who grew up in Lowndes, said that residents of the county, like those in many other rural communities, use wastewater systems installed on the grounds of homes and businesses rather than a centralized sewage treatment plant operated by a local government. But the county stood alone in penalizing residents for sanitation issues that were outside their control, she added.“On-site septics are failing across the country, but Lowndes County is the only place I’ve seen where it’s dealt with in a punitive manner,” said Ms. Flowers, who was awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2020 for her work raising public awareness about water sanitation in rural areas.In a statement, the Alabama Department of Public Health, which cooperated with the investigation, denied conducting its programs in a discriminatory manner.Lowndes County, home to about 10,000 people in rural Alabama, is nearly three-quarters Black, and its poverty rate is more than double that of the national average. Unincorporated areas of the county are not connected to the municipal sewage system, leaving about 80 percent of residents to rely on on-site wastewater systems like septic tanks. Forty percent use failing home systems or none at all.But because these systems are incompatible with the dense soil that is prevalent in central Alabama, residents have for generations used pipes to guide fecal matter and wastewater to holes and ditches in backyards and open areas. Given the heavy rainfall and nonporous soil, the waste festers, exposing residents to health risks. A 2017 study found that 73 percent of residents had been exposed to raw sewage in their homes and a third tested positive for hookworms, an intestinal parasite.“All these years we’ve been here, my kids have never — name a year — been able to go out there and play in the yard. And even when it wasn’t flooded, let me tell you something: the ground stays so soft, you could walk out there and like you sinking,” a resident whose yard has routinely flooded with waste for three decades told “60 Minutes” in 2021.Alabama health authorities then fine these residents for sanitation violations caused by the raw sewage exposure, levying in essence a “double penalty of being criminalized for these injustices,” Ms. Clarke said.Ms. Clarke added that the authorities were aware of the disproportionate burden placed on Black residents, but had failed to remedy the situation.The investigation was the Justice Department’s first environmental justice inquiry, carried out over nearly 18 months. The department will reopen the investigation if the Alabama Department of Public Health fails to comply with the terms of the agreement.

WASHINGTON — Prominent social media users and conservative voices have amplified a baseless theory promoted by Russian state media accusing the United States of funding biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine.There is no evidence to support the claims, which President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department have all unequivocally denied.There are biological laboratories inside Ukraine, and since 2005, the United States has provided backing to a number of institutions to prevent the production of biological weapons. But Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, and others have misleadingly cited remarks from American officials as proof that the labs are producing or conducting research on biological weapons.“Out of nowhere, the Biden official in charge of Ukraine confirmed the story,” Mr. Carlson said on his program Thursday night. “Victoria Nuland, the under secretary of state, casually mentioned in a Senate hearing on Tuesday that actually, yes, the Biden administration does fund a series of biolabs in Ukraine.”Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, characterized Ms. Nuland’s remarks as a “serious admission.” Donald Trump Jr., the son of the former president, tweeted that her comments propelled the claim from “conspiracy theory to fact.”Mr. Carlson also pointed to an interview with Robert Pope, the director of the Pentagon’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which helps countries in the former Soviet Union secure or eliminate nuclear and chemical weapons.“As Pope put it, scientists are scientists, they don’t want to destroy all the bioweapons,” Mr. Carlson continued in his segment. “Instead, they’re using them to conduct new bioweapons research — that’s what he said.”Mr. Carlson mischaracterized those remarks from Ms. Nuland and Mr. Pope.In congressional testimony this week, Ms. Nuland, the under secretary of state for political affairs, was asked by Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, whether Ukraine has chemical or biological weapons.“Ukraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of,” she responded. “So we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”If there were a biological or chemical weapon attack inside Ukraine, Mr. Rubio asked, would there be any doubt that Russia was behind it?“There is no doubt in my mind, senator, and it is classic Russian technique to blame the other guy what they’re planning to do themselves,” Ms. Nuland responded.The State Department said Ms. Nuland was referring to Ukrainian diagnostic and biodefense laboratories during her testimony, which are different from biological weapons facilities. Rather, these biodefense laboratories counter biological threats throughout the country, the department said.Mr. Rubio made the same clarification in another congressional hearing on Thursday, noting that “there’s a difference between a bioweapons facility and one that’s doing research.”In referring to Mr. Pope on Thursday, Mr. Carlson was distorting a February interview Mr. Pope gave to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit organization and publication.Mr. Pope had warned that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may damage laboratories in the country that conduct research and disease surveillance and are supported by the United States. He noted that some of the facilities may contain pathogens once used for Soviet-era bioweapons programs, but he emphasized that the Ukrainian labs currently did not have the ability to manufacture bioweapons.“There is no place that still has any of the sort of infrastructure for researching or producing biological weapons,” Mr. Pope said. “Scientists being scientists, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these strain collections in some of these laboratories still have pathogen strains that go all the way back to the origins of that program.”In a March interview with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Mr. Pope also echoed Ms. Nuland’s concerns about the laboratories falling into Russia’s hands. He spoke specifically about the Pentagon’s support of 14 veterinary laboratories that provide Ukraine with sampling and diagnostic abilities to detect infectious diseases.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4On the ground.