The Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been a deliberate disaster from the beginning. But don’t take my word for it—just look at the facts. Continue reading
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Category Archives: Agriculture
Yes, these drugs are in US meat
Thanks to animal welfare groups, most people are now aware of “factory farms.” Concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs abuse workers, animals, the environment, human consumers and even our tax dollars. (How? Price supports and government bailouts when diseases occur.) Thanks to greedy CAFOs crowding, diseases killed one-tenth of all US pigs and millions of chickens and turkeys a few years ago. Continue reading
New report details how EPA is promoting ‘worst of the worst pesticides’
From 2017-2018, the agency approved 69 new pesticide products containing an ingredient the EPA recognizes as a “known” or “likely” carcinogen. Continue reading
The latest livestock pandemic that Big Meat doesn’t want you to know about
There’s a lot the industrial factory farm industry prefers to keep consumers in the dark about, including what happens when millions of confined, stressed out animals with weakened immune systems are exposed to disease. Continue reading
A new disease Big Meat doesn’t want you to know about
Have you ever heard of African swine fever (ASF) caused by the African swine fever virus (ASFV)? A fourth of the world’s pigs have died from it just this year—half of all of China’s pigs—but like previous food animal pandemics, Big Meat has managed to keep it out of the news. Continue reading
Trump to small farmers: Get lost
As hundreds of Wisconsin dairy farms go under, the White House is telling them to clear out for the big guys.
Donald Trump’s idea of a good farm program seems to be “Hee Haw.” Continue reading
‘Unacceptable’: Family farms, ag advocates hit back after Sec Perdue Says small dairy farms destined to die
‘Five years of plunging farm prices, increasing bankruptcies, and climbing suicide rates were not discussed by Perdue. His message to them was basically, stop whining, your demise is inevitable.’
Furious family farmers flamed Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue Wednesday after comments he made on the future of the dairy business that cast doubt on the future of small farms during a stop in Wisconsin Tuesday. Continue reading
Consumers losing the war against antibiotics in meat
Farmers continue to use antibiotics on animals, which is not good for people who eat that meat. A war is in progress, and consumers are losing the war against meat antibiotics. Continue reading
Fake food, fake meat: Big Food’s desperate attempt to further the industrialisation of food
Food is not a commodity, it is not “stuff” put together mechanically and artificially in labs and factories. Food is life. Food holds the contributions of all beings that make the food web, and it holds the potential of maintaining and regenerating the web of life. Food also holds the potential for health and disease, depending on how it was grown and processed. Food is therefore the living currency of the web of life. Continue reading
Taking farmers for a ride
Trump’s trade disruptions are inflicting real pain, but they’re also exposing the frailty of an agriculture economy built for big business.
Over the last year, President Trump has taken farmers on a roller coaster ride that’s finally gone off the rails. Continue reading
Trump hates farmers
He tweets odes to America's small farmers, but his actions are tearing them apart.
Have you noticed how often Donald Trump prefaces his comments and tweets with phrases like “frankly,” “to tell the truth,” and “believe me”? Continue reading
Silicon Valley’s next target: America’s farmers
They're building robots to siphon farm profits out of local communities and into the pockets of rich investors.
How’re you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen… Angus? Not the cattle breed, but the 1,000-pound “farmer of the future.” Continue reading
What turkey producers don’t want you to know
As Turkey Day approaches, animal lovers cringe, food safety advocates become vigilant and industrial turkey producers hope you aren’t reading the news. Continue reading
Hazardous to health GMO foods and pesticides
The danger is indisputable. Independent scientific studies exposed the hazards long ago—suppressed by Washington and US media, supporting corporate profits over human health. Continue reading
What would it take to ‘win’ the drug war?
After decades of warfare, the federal drug war has become a predictable cycle. Continue reading
The Bayer-Monsanto merger is bad news for the planet
Two new studies from Europe have found that the number of farm birds in France has crashed by a third in just 15 years, with some species being almost eradicated. The collapse in the bird population mirrors the discovery last October that over three quarters of all flying insects in Germany have vanished in just three decades. Insects are the staple food source of birds, the pollinators of fruits, and the aerators of the soil. Continue reading
America’s farmworkers face poverty, neglect, and now deportation
Up to 70 percent of the people who put food on America's tables may be undocumented.
Every decade or so, America’s mass media are surprised to discover that migrant farmworkers are being miserably paid and despicably treated by the industry that profits from their labor. Continue reading
Brave new food so safe it’s not even labeled
Almost every issue that food activists care about—unlabeled, dangerous ingredients and drug traces; crowded, polluted farms that harm workers and the environment; Agribiz cornering the food supply and destroying family farms; and animal suffering—is magnified when genetically modified (GM) or genetically engineered (GE) animals are added into the equation. Continue reading
Farmers face fields of rotted crops as Trump rounds up illegal immigrants
Valrico, Florida, is in the heart of the “Strawberry Capital of America” and the spring harvest of these popular berries is fully underway. However, the chilling effect of President Trump’s order to round up illegal immigrants, many of them farm workers, stands to do more damage to the strawberry industry than any winter deep freeze. Many undocumented farm workers, fearful of being arrested by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, are hunkered down in their trailers and manufactured homes. The region’s strawberries would rot in the fields if it were not for the largely Mexican workforce that ensures that the crop reaches consumers in short order. The fear that Trump has thrown into the farm work force has local businesses and politicians irate over the president’s detention and expulsion order. Many local residents, most of whom voted for Trump, now have voters’ remorse as the strawberry industry faces irreparable harm. Continue reading
Are cloned animals on the U.S dinner table?
It has been six years since the BBC, while reporting on a cloned cattle herd in Britain, said cloned products have been in the U.S. food supply for two years. Margaret Wittenberg, global vice-president of Whole Foods Market at the time agreed. Continue reading
Bayer-Monsanto merger is ‘five-alarm threat’ to food and farms: legal experts
White paper from two former Justice Department officials warns merger would violate antitrust laws and lessen competition
A new legal opinion penned by two former Justice Department officials bolsters warnings that the proposed merger between agroindustrial giants Bayer and Monsanto “is a five-alarm threat to our food supply and to farmers around the world.” Continue reading
Frankenfoods headed for the dinner table
Consumers, safety activists, Big Food, biotech companies and many of the US’s importing and exporting partners have been closely watching to see if the FDA would approve the genetically engineered AquAdvantage Salmon, which it did late in 2015. Of course unlabeled GE crops are eaten by millions and GE animals have been created to make human drugs largely under the public radar. Still the AquAdvantage Salmon is the first approved GE animal destined for the US dinner table. Continue reading
Thanks, McDonald’s, for your egg consciousness, but don’t stop there
Before the animal rights movement, the egg was a kind of droll and comic object—used in phrases like “laid an egg” and “egg on my face,” and thrown at buildings or public figures. The chicken itself was comic–everyone’s favorite synonym for cowardice and for gender stereotypes (“mother hen” and “hen party”). A silly, overprotective bird that lays eggs and can barely fly? What’s not to ridicule? Continue reading
Scotland bans growing GM crops
Independent evidence shows GM foods and ingredients harm human health. All nations should ban them. Continue reading
Monsanto’s land grab in Ukraine
There goes Europe’s bread basket
Long considered Europe’s “bread basket,” Ukraine’s agricultural potential is huge. It’s rich dark soil is highly valued. Ideal for growing grain. Continue reading
Elanco is the Monsanto of the animal drug industry
Big Biotech, the chilling combo of genetic engineering, Big Chem, seed giants and Big Ag, is forging ahead in its hopes of dominating global agriculture and even patenting food production. Successfully fighting GMO labeling at home, the well-funded makers of Frankenfoods are also desperate to open overseas markets for Biotech which most of the world does not want. Continue reading
Is the U.S. beef supply really free of mad cow disease?
When the first U.S. mad cow was found in late 2003, 98 percent of U.S. beef exports evaporated overnight. There was such national revulsion to cow “cannibalism” when described in the late 1990s as the presumed cause of the fatal disease, Oprah Winfrey said she would never eat a hamburger again and was promptly sued by Texas cattle producers. They lost. Continue reading
The social cost of GMOs
Ecological economists such as Herman Daly write that the more full the world becomes, the higher are the social or external costs of production. Continue reading
Five gross ways your meat is kept safe to eat
It is no secret that in the war against meat pathogens in commercial U.S. meat production, the pathogens are winning. The logical result of the tons of antibiotics that Big Meat gives livestock (not because they are sick but to fatten them) is clear: antibiotics that no longer work against antibiotic-resistant diseases like staph (MRSA), enterococci (VRE) and C. difficile. Continue reading
To bee or not to bee
A friend of mine from advertising, Richard Tucker, now working as a freelance producer, sent me a funny email the other morning with a huge bee on it. The headline reads “If I Die You Die,” which in advertising generally means, “Duck, a blood bath is coming;” or perhaps it’s a metaphor for the world of people. Richard is a very clever fellow. Continue reading
Monsanto, the TPP, and global food dominance
“Control oil and you control nations,” said US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. “Control food and you control the people.” Continue reading
Just who got Trump’s farm bailouts?
Rich families cashed in on over half the bailout money set aside for farmers hurt by Trump’s trade policies.
Posted on August 22, 2019 by Jim Hightower
Donald Trump loves farmers. We know this because he says so. “Farmers, I LOVE YOU!” he declared in December. Continue reading →