The Washington Post By Rick Weiss, Staff Writer Factory farming takes a big, hidden toll on human health and the environment, is undermining rural America’s economic stability and fails to provide the humane treatment of livestock increasingly demanded by American consumers, concludes an independent, 2 1/2 -year analysis that calls for major changes in the… Read more »
Search Results for: meat
Mushroom Hunting With the Pros
Huffington Post By Langdon Cook In early August I got a call from a producer for the PBS TV series Food Forward. He had seen a review copy of my new book, The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of an Underground America, and wanted to film itinerant mushroom harvesters for an episode on wild foods…. Read more »
The Organic Conversation Begins Anew (again)
GreenMoneyJournal.com By Bob Scowcroft Consider the word “organic.” I suspect that readers of this journal would conjure up an incredibly wide range of images. Maybe it was the restaurant patronized last night. How about nutritionally superior and locally farmed produce? Others might find themselves going right to what their youthful consumption of heavily processed, pesticide… Read more »
National Organic Program: Proposed Rule for Animal Welfare Standards
Herbruck’s massive “organic” operation in Michigan managing nearly two million birds (Click on image for larger version) Almost a decade after The Cornucopia Institute brought public scrutiny to the issue of giant “factory farms” producing organic eggs and poultry, the USDA has finally released its long-awaited draft rule to constrain abuses in the industry. Cornucopia… Read more »
Public Health Still Threatened as Toothless FDA Antibiotic Plan Slammed
CommonDreams.org By Andrea Germanos Credit: USGS The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s newly unveiled “voluntary plan with industry” to curb the use of antibiotics in livestock does too little, too late to address the public health crisis posed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, critics charge. In the U.S., 80 percent of all antibiotics are used on food animals in… Read more »
Dairy Farmer Acquitted on Three of Four Charges
Raw milk trial Milwaukee Journal Sentinel By Rick Barrett Baraboo — Dairy farmer Vernon Hershberger was acquitted on three of four criminal charges early Saturday morning in a trial that’s drawn national attention from supporters of the raw, unpasteurized milk movement. Jurors in Sauk County District Court deliberated about four hours, until nearly 1 a.m…. Read more »
Maine Farmers Tap Technology to Grow Organic Mushroom Business
BDN Maine Business By Lori Valigra, Mainebiz SPRINGVALE, Maine — A new type of clean room, complete with employees wearing protective bunny suits, is situated amid the rolling hills and farms of Springvale, in York County. But instead of manufacturing semiconductors or other electronic devices, a startup company called Farming Fungi LLC is growing organic,… 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 »
FDA Was Aware of Dangers To Food
Outbreaks Were Not Preventable, Officials Say Washington Post Elizabeth Williamson The Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history,… Read more »
Consumer Reports Poll Finds Doctors Concerned About Animal Antibiotic Use
Food Safety News Source: Alex Prolmos Physicians are concerned about the agricultural practice of giving antibiotics to healthy animals for growth promotion and disease prevention, according to a poll conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center poll. The national poll, conducted last month, questioned 500 family practice and internal medicine physicians and found that… Read more »
