June 3rd, 2009 - Barbara Feiner
As university researchers study the best ways to house America’s egg-producing hens, numerous organizations have signed on as coalition stakeholders, including the American Humane Association, American Veterinary Medical Association and U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service.
One prominent stakeholder may surprise you: fast-food behemoth McDonald’s, which reaps a nice share of profits each morning from scrambled eggs, Egg McMuffins and egg-based biscuit sandwiches.
It sure sounds good on paper: The eggs produced in the study are expected to be used in McDonald’s U.S. restaurants, as researchers strive to determine whether cage-free and free-range chickens fare better than those cooped up in factory farms.
Dan Gorsky, McDonald’s senior VP for North America supply chain management, says his company wants to consider “all of the sustainability impacts when it comes to buying eggs—not just animal welfare, but environmental, food safety and economic factors. It is our intention for eggs produced as part of this study, including cage-free eggs, to partially supply McDonald’s USA by 2011.”
Some critics, however, believe McDonald’s is dragging its feet in purchasing sustainable eggs. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) notes that numerous national restaurant chains have already gone the cage-free route, including Burger King, Wendy’s, Quiznos, Denny’s, Hardees’s and Carl’s Jr.
“There is already an abundance of science demonstrating that battery-cage confinement of laying hens is detrimental to animal welfare, and McDonald’s shouldn’t use another long-term study as an excuse to delay implementing the same modest reforms so many of its competitors have already adopted,” says Paul Shapiro, senior director of HSUS’ factory farming campaign.
HSUS is encouraging mainstream and organic consumers to call (800) 244-6227 to urge McDonald’s to switch to cage-free eggs now.
Photo courtesy of McDonald’s
Tags: agribusiness, animal welfare, eggs, factory farming, factory farms, McDonald’s
Posted in Organic Living | No Comments »
June 1st, 2009 - Barbara Feiner
Researchers at Michigan State University and the University of California, Davis, are leading a national study of housing alternatives for egg-laying hens.
Scientists will analyze tens of thousands of hens to determine how different housing environments affect animal health and well-being, safe and affordable food, the environment and worker welfare.
Researchers will look at cage-free, free-range and “enriched” (nests and perches) housing. As organic consumers already know, any of these alternatives is preferable to factory farms.
“The coalition anticipates a multiyear study to factor in seasonal shifts, bird life cycles and other factors,” says Janice Swanson, PhD, a professor of animal behavior and welfare at Michigan State.
Tags: agribusiness, animal welfare, factory farming, factory farms
Posted in Organic Living | 1 Comment »
March 19th, 2009 - Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese
Studies show minorities in America eat way too much junk food, resulting in higher rates of diabetes and heart disease, but yet many McDonald’s commercials seemed aimed to inner city youth.
Where’s the social responsibility? What about compassion for the consumer? Clearly profits win out.
Agribusiness is no different. The market for organic foods is growing. So big corporations like Monsanto rig the game, influencing food regulations and making it impossible for small independent farmers to operate:
And how will those who contaminate our country’s food with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics and more, do that? Why, by setting standards for “food safety” that are so grotesquely and inappropriately and even cruelly applied to a local, independent farmers and ranchers that there is no way they can manage. Imagine your being faced with a 100 page IRS form and facing a million dollar a day penalty for screwing up. That would be in the ball park of the impossible complexity mixed with threat facing our farmers. Imagine having the government and corporations deciding every single thing you can do and must do in your kitchen and backing that up with the threat of 10 years in prison for screwing up – though you have never made anyone sick, and those corporations have. Imagine being surveilled 24 hours a day by GPS tracking devices that feed into…a corporate data bank, one they have now moved out of the country so no one here can have legal access to see what is in it.
Imagine the devil himself – or a whole boardrooms of them, dressed in suits – defining the only safe and healthy food in this country as dangerous and burdening hard working farmers with more work then anyone could bear, while his own, their own, food is so dangerous at this point that in the last 10 years alone, diabetes has gone up 90%.
And how did they get this far with such a scheme to apply insane industrial standards to every farm in the country? Through fear of diseases and of outbreaks of food borne illnesses, both of which they cause themselves.
Via OpEdNews.com.
Tags: agribusiness, antibiotics, diabetes, fast food, heart disease, hormones, Monsanto, pesticides
Posted in Health, Organic, Organic Food, Political Action | 2 Comments »
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