Blogs
by Danielle Nierenberg on May 18, 2007 There’s a battle taking place on U.S. grocery store shelves that most consumers don’t know about: Monsanto, the St. Louis-based agribusiness company, is again petitioning the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prevent sellers of organic and sustainable milk from listing their products as rBGH or rBST free. Monsanto claims that these labels letting consumers know what’s NOT in their milk are misleading. But who is misleading whom?
by Danielle Nierenberg on May 15, 2007 For years, the pig industry has said that gestation crates—concrete stalls that don’t allow pigs to move much, turn around, or perform other natural behaviors—are the most economical way of meeting demand for pork products. But recent Iowa State University research that compares the economic costs of raising sows (female pigs) in gestation crates versus alternative structures says otherwise.
by Danielle Nierenberg on May 14, 2007 With gasoline topping $3 a gallon in the U.S., biofuels seem to be on everyone’s mind. If you listen to the industry’s most ardent proponents, you might think they’re a silver bullet, giving us a clean, cheap, environmentally friendly source of energy. But not everything about biofuels is so rosy. In addition to making fuel out of plant sources, such as corn, sugar cane, and rapeseed, the industry is trying to “make a silk purse out of a sow's ear” by using the waste of factory farms and slaughterhouses and the methane generated by livestock to produce fuel.
by Danielle Nierenberg on May 10, 2007 The European Union passed new rules this week it says will ease the suffering of the billions of chickens raised in Europe each year. Broilers, or meat birds, have been reared for decades in tightly packed sheds, a.k.a. factory farms, that can hold up to 50,000 chickens. These crowded, filthy conditions can lead to a range of diseases affecting humans and chickens alike, including avian respiratory problems and salmonella.
by Danielle Nierenberg on May 2, 2007 In March, Menu Foods, Nestle Purina Pet Care, and Hill’s Pet Nutrition recalled more than 60 million cans of U.S. dog and cat food because they were contaminated with melamine—a nitrogen-based industrial chemical that is used as a binding agent, as a flame retardant, and, most surprisingly, as a fertilizer in the developing world.
by Brian Halweil on April 12, 2007 As the U.S. Congress debates the latest version of the Farm Bill, it can be hard for someone who isn't a farmer or doesn't live in a farm state to understand what's at stake.
by Brian Halweil on April 12, 2007 A couple of recent studies indicate that climate change is already reducing crop yields around the world, and has reduced the global food harvest by about 40 million tons a year over the last 20 years. This is a small fraction of the 2 billion tons harvested in total. But it still represents a few billion dollars and is even more costly to the farmers who are hardest hit by drought, flooding, or extreme heat and cold.
by Danielle Nierenberg on March 22, 2007 On Tuesday, the U.S. food service giant Bon Appétit Management Company announced that it will start sourcing only all-natural, antibiotic-free beef. Store representatives said the move was prompted by concerns that "the heavy use of [antibiotics] in agriculture has resulted in [their] declining effectiveness against common bacterial infections in humans."
by Brian Halweil on March 15, 2007 A must-read report by Ussif Rashid Sumaila and Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia's Fisheries Center, entitled "Catching More Bait: A Bottom-up Re-estimation of Global Fisheries Subsidies," estimated "conservatively" that governments give fishing fleets between US$30–34 billion per year, nearly double the prevailing World Bank estimate of US$14–20 billion.
by Danielle Nierenberg on March 14, 2007 On March 12, six Asian countries (China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam) participated in a simulation to predict what might happen if an easily transmissible form of avian flu started spreading among humans. Because these nations share borders and a history of migration, a pandemic could move easily within the region.
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