-By Lester Aldrich Dow Jones Newswires KANSAS CITY (Dow Jones)–Creekstone Farms Premium Beef on Monday confirmed in an email that it had filed its reply to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s opposition to the firm’s desire to test all of the cattle it slaughters at its Arkansas City, Kan., plant for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or… Read more »
Locally Grown or Organic?
By Martha Filipic, OSU Extension Ohio Farm Bureau Federation Columbus, OH — It may be beneficial for organic farmers and local food distributors to market their products differently to different types of consumers, according to Ohio State University research. The study, “A Comparison of Attitudes About Local and Organic Foods, Health and Farming,” was led… Read more »
Our Daily Bread
The Chicago premiere of a new film on industrial food Our Daily Bread is a wide-screen tableau exposing the brave new world of industrial food production and high-tech farming. As evocative and (seemingly) futuristic as any sci-fi work, the film looks at how food is now produced for the developed world: an industrial environment in… Read more »
The Vegetable-Industrial Complex
The Way We Live Now The New York Times By MICHAEL POLLAN Soon after the news broke last month that nearly 200 Americans in 26 states had been sickened by eating packaged spinach contaminated with E. coli, I received a rather coldblooded e-mail message from a friend in the food business. “I have instructed my… Read more »
When ‘Organic’ Defeats its Own Purpose
How the Wal-Marting of organics hurts us all By Cliff Bostock Creative Loafing I was lucky to do my two years of training as a psychotherapist in Sonoma County, arguably the birthplace of the nation’s growing taste for organic and local food. Indeed, the facility where I worked had its own organic vegetable garden and… Read more »
Pro-Wal-Mart Travel Blog Screeches To A Halt
What do you call a phony blog that’s actually a front for a huge corporation? A “flog”? by Tom Siebert MediaPost Publications, New York A pro-Wal-Mart blog called “Wal-Marting Across America,” ostensibly launched by a pair of average Americans chronicling their cross-country travels in an RV and lodging in Wal-Mart parking lots, has been reduced… Read more »
Coalition Calls on USDA to Revise Bird Flu Plan
Plan Protects Big Business, Leaves out Poultry Farmers, Workers, Contract Growers and the Public Washington, DC — A broad coalition of stakeholder groups issued a statement today criticizing the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s plan for responding to a U.S. outbreak of bird flu and called for revisions to adequately protect the public and poultry farmers…. Read more »
A Milk War Over More Than Price
The New York Times By MELANIE WARNER Many organic foods have been popping up on the shelves of Wal-Mart in recent years, but none have been as popular as organic milk. For many shoppers, particularly mothers with small children, it is the first organic product they try. Now organic milk is about to become much… Read more »
USDA Awards More Than $4.5 Million for Integrated Organic Research
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced today USDA is awarding more than $4.5 million in research grants to address organic agricultural issues and priorities, including global competitiveness. “To succeed in organic agriculture, producers must be creative and willing to take certain risks – attributes that American farmers have exhibited since the early days of… Read more »
Mean or Green?
The Nation Liza Featherstone A laughing baby is covered in baby food. He’s making a gushy mess, as babies do, but having a grand time. A magic word reassures us–before we’ve had a chance to worry–that the food itself is wholesome. That word, of course, is “organic.” More surprising, to many viewers of this advertisement,… Read more »
