A journalist by trade, Cookson Beecher has  spent 10 years covering food science issues for Food Safety news.com, an international online publication. Before that, she worked as an agriculture and environment reporter for Capital Press, a four-state newspaper in the Pacific Northwest. She received her bachelors in political science from Hunter College in New York City, and before moving West, she worked for publishing companies in mid-town Manhattan. In the 1970s and '80s, she and her family lived in North Idaho, where they grew a huge garden, raised livestock, built a log home and lived a "pioneer life" without running water and electricity for almost 10 years. She currently lives in rural Skagit County, Washington.