Here’s a quixotic scenario: a secretary of agriculture who is cozy with farmers, not corporations. Instead, we are preparing for the return of Tom Vilsack, who served as secretary of agriculture in the Obama administration between 2008 and 2016. Most recently, Vilsack worked in the private sector, as president and CEO of the US Dairy… Read more »
Conventional Cattle on Organic Dairy Farms [This article was previously published in the spring issue of The Cultivator, Cornucopia’s quarterly newsletter.] by Kestrel Burcham, JD Director of Domestic Policy at The Cornucopia Institute The organic dairy industry is in a state of crisis. A glut of organic milk in the market is putting economic strain on… Read more »
Making It Hard for Small Family Farms to Survive [This article was previously published in the fall issue of The Cultivator, Cornucopia’s quarterly newsletter.] by Kestrel Burcham, JD Director of Domestic Policy at The Cornucopia Institute Patty and Brian Wilson own a 600-acre farm in Vermont where, with the help of family, they have milked… Read more »
by Jason Cole In December of 2014, Cornucopia released its latest report, Culture Wars: How the Food Giants Turned Yogurt, a Health Food, into Junk Food. The report accuses marketers such as Dannon, Yoplait, and Chobani of misleading consumers into purchasing yogurts with very high levels of sugar and a wide variety of potentially unsafe… Read more »
Selling seeds, selling out democracy: US State Department does biotech industry’s bidding Common Dreams By Jacob Chamberlain The U.S. State Department does the bidding of biotech giants like Monsanto around the world by “twisting the arms of countries” and engaging in vast public campaign schemes to push the sale of genetically modified seeds, according to… Read more »
[For more on this subject, please read The Cornucopia Institute’s recently released report, Protecting Children’s Health: Choosing Organic Food to Avoid GMOs and Agricultural Chemicals.] The New York Times by Nicholas Bakalar Source: USDA Researchers have found that when children eat organic fruits and vegetables, the amount of pesticides in their bodies declines significantly. Most organophosphorus… Read more »
Cornucopia’s Take: Although CRISPR technology is more precise than previous attempts at gene modification, scientists still do not have enough knowledge to determine whether there will be unintended consequences within the organism or the ecosystem it inhabits. It is shockingly easy to wield the power of gene editing: the equipment to perform CRISPR edits is… Read more »
truthout by Maryam Henein, HoneyColony Dr. Jonathan Lundgren, a respected expert on the risk assessment of pesticides and genetically modified crops, worked for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research (ARS) for more than a decade. But when his findings on the ill effects of systemic pesticides and RNAi on pollinators began to gain… Read more »
A UK biotechnology company has applied for permission to carry out the first field trial in Europe of a genetically modified insect. BBC If it receives approval, the company will carry out a small-scale test of GM olive flies in Spain. The aim is to combat this olive crop pest by releasing male flies that… Read more »
Cornucopia’s Take: Tom Vilsack, USDA Secretary during the entire Obama administration, recently met with Sonny Perdue, the Trump administration nominee for Secretary of the USDA. Under the Bush administration the USDA monkey-wrenched the organic program (mostly through numerous delaying tactics in terms of rulemaking and enforcement). But under the Obama/Vilsack administration they perfected the game… Read more »
