NOTE: The feeding of animal byproducts to livestock is explicitly prohibited in organics offering a significant margin of safety to organic consumers. This should be the safety standard for all meat and dairy production in the United States…. Other Words By John Stauber Our government must stop relying on an inadequate testing system and outlaw… Read more »
Without GE Labeling, Certified Organic is a Safe Choice
Vermont Digger by Dave Rogers Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Dave Rogers, policy adviser for the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT). By the end of April, when members of the Vermont House Agriculture Committee finally concluded weeks of testimony and discussion on H.722, a bill that would require foods made with genetically… Read more »
The War Between Organic and Conventional Farming Misses the Point
The Atlantic By Ari LeVaux The real dispute is over valid but competing priorities. On April 23, the science journal Nature published a paper titled “Comparing the yields of organic and conventional agriculture,” by Verena Seufert et al. The mainstream press waded into the paper’s implications but had a hard time packaging them in a… Read more »
Want to Stop Banks Gambling on Food Prices? Try Closing the Casino
Neither debate nor dictum have stopped bankers betting on the world’s food supply, leaving criminalisation as the only option The Guardian by Frederick Kaufman Recent price spikes in global food commodities – most notably the bubbles of 2008 and 2010-11 – have exposed a fundamental fault of economic analysis: although speculation in the world’s food… Read more »
America’s Mad Cow Crisis
[Don’t panic. Go organic! Organic farmers are legally prohibited from feeding animal byproducts to livestock. This is the accepted pathway for the prion disease in humans, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or “Mad Cow”. — Mark Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst, The Cornucopia Institute] by John Stauber Americans might remember that when the first mad cow was… Read more »
Arsenic in Our Chicken?
The New York Times By Nicholas D Kristof Let’s hope you’re not reading this column while munching on a chicken sandwich. That’s because my topic today is a pair of new scientific studies suggesting that poultry on factory farms are routinely fed caffeine, active ingredients of Tylenol and Benadryl, banned antibiotics and even arsenic. “We… Read more »
Sustainable Farming Can Feed the World?
The New York Times, Opinion By MARK BITTMAN The oldest and most common dig against organic agriculture is that it cannot feed the world’s citizens; this, however, is a supposition, not a fact. And industrial agriculture isn’t working perfectly, either: the global food price index is at a record high, and our agricultural system is… Read more »
Thoughts on the Raw Milk Debate at Harvard Law School: Getting Some Ideas into the Open; Is It Fair to Declare “Outbreak” At Claravale?
The Complete Patient It’s a tad awkward writing an assessment of a debate in which I was a participant…so here are a few random reactions to the raw milk debate at Harvard Law School Thursday evening. (If you missed it, you can view the recording on YouTube; it should be up shortly.) The two opponents–Heidi… Read more »
Local Food and The Farm Bill: Small Investments, Big Returns
Environmental Working Group – Agriculture Posted by Kari Hamerschlag For too long, funding provided by the United States’ most far-reaching food and farm legislation has primarily benefited agri-business and large scale industrial-scale commodity farms that aren’t growing food. Instead, they’re growing ingredients for animal feed, fuel and highly processed food — at a high cost… Read more »
Organic Practices a Better Option
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution By Jay Feldman “First do no harm,” a concept central to medical ethics, is important in an age when indicators of agricultural pesticide (including herbicide) pollution represent a serious threat to environmental sustainability. It’s an unnecessary threat given the productivity, profitability, and environmental and health benefits of organic agriculture. The return on… Read more »
