Welcome to the Farm Wars: Big Ag Fights the Small Farm MovementAugust 22nd, 2011 - Jill Ettinger
Feeling the pressure of the growing number of small-scale farms and activists concerned with food safety and the effects Big-Ag farming has on the environment, some of the largest U.S. farming groups have joined forces in the formation of new organization called the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance. Read More:Welcome to the Farm Wars: Big Ag Fights the Small Farm MovementEgg Recall Highlights Benefits of Going OrganicAugust 21st, 2010 - Barbara Feiner
I wish I could tell you that the ongoing egg recall is under control, with all affected egg brands clearly delineated and successfully pulled from market shelves. Unfortunately, Iowa-based Wright County Egg sold its products to a slew of major grocery chains, retailers and distributors, and additional recalls are likely to be announced. To wit: Hillandale Farms of Iowa yesterday issued a new recall, as did Los Angeles-based Country Eggs, Inc. on Thursday. Investigative journalist David Kirby, author of Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment, noted in Thursday’s Huffington Post that cheap eggs are destined to make us sick. As he writes:
Be sure to check out Kirby’s July 15 post, American Factory Farming: You Owe It to the Animals to Watch This (Video). It makes a trip to McDonald’s all the more maddening. Photo: George Grinsted Read More:Egg Recall Highlights Benefits of Going OrganicFood Inc To Air on PBS’s POVApril 20th, 2010 - Laura Klein
This Academy Award nominated film is a powerful eye opening documentary about the truth behind America’s food supply. It questions whether America’s industrial food system produces healthy, nutritious, life-sustaining stuff we call food. If you take one look at America’s current health care crisis you might ask the same questions. Food Inc., features several poignant interviews that caution us about the nutritional value of America’s food supply and question if our food products, including processed foods, fresh meat and produce, are in fact a threat to public health and safety. Interviews include Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) (two food movement heroes), sustainable, organic farmer Joel Salatin of Virginia’s Polyface Farms and mother, Barbara Kowalcyk. Kowalcyk’s 2 1/2 year old son died 12 days after eating a hamburger contaminated with E. coli. The documentary also raises serious questions about ethical business practices of food giants Monsanto, Tyson, Perdue and Smithfield companies. When these companies were asked to tell their side of the story to filmmakers, they declined to comment. This past week California public health officials issued another recall on ground beef products sold at WinCo food stores in six western states, stating it could be contaminated with E. coli. Despite some of the heavy issues Food Inc tackles, the film is driven by visionaries of alternative businesses and activists that are leading the food movement to delicious, healthy, safe food for America. Read More On America’s Food Safety Issues: Tyson Foods Lied To Consumers About Drugs Used To Raise Their Chickens FDA Fills New Position with Monsanto Hormone Guy Monsanto is Hogging Hawaii’s Water Big Agribusiness Dictating U.S. Food Safety A Chemical Reaction to the White House Garden E. coli Outbreak and Our Contaminated Food Supply Most Chicken Producers’ Safeguards “Inadequate” Russia and China Say Thanks, But No Thanks, to U.S. Poultry Antibiotics: Tyson Chicken Wants to Lie to Consumers USDA Allows Contaminated Chicken in Stores Animal Antibiotics, Are They a Threat to Human Health?February 15th, 2010 - Laura Klein
The incidences of drug resistance infections have literally sky rocketed in the past twenty years. Last year alone 65,000-70,000 Americans died as a result, more than prostate and breast cancer combined. 2Many are now asking questions about the safety of Big Ag and factory farms using common antibiotics to promote animal growth and fight off infections before they occur. According to Katie Couric’s report, there is evidence that MRSA has now been found in the nation’s meat supply. Because only a small fraction of meat has been tested, it is not clear just how widespread it may be. More and more reports are turning up like these. Which leads us to ask the same question Couric did to Liz Wagstrom, a veterinarian for the National Pork Bord, “Some people say giving animals antibiotics to prevent illness or promote growth is like putting antibiotics in a child’s cereal,” Couric said. “You know, save them so they’ll work when they are needed.” Wagstrom’s response, “I’d say we do strategically place them……It’s not an all day, every pig gets antibiotics every day of his life.” “So you don’t think they’re being overused by farmers anywhere in this country,” Couric asked. Many however are questioning whether this is true. ABC News did a report In December, ’09 entitled Pressure Rises To Stop Antibiotics in Agriculture. In 2009 three government agencies in charge of protecting human health, the Center for Disease Control, Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, affirmed that drug-resistant diseases ensuing from overuse of antibiotics in animals is a “serious emerging concern.” Last summer, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, FDA deputy commissioner, told Congress that farmers need to stop feeding antibiotics to healthy farm animals. 1 http://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/understanding-mrsa-methicillin-resistant-staphylococcus-aureus Tyson Foods Lied To Consumers About Drugs Used To Raise Their ChickensJanuary 21st, 2010 - Laura Klein
Tyson Foods has been marketing their chickens as being raised without antibiotics. However Tyson uses a poultry feed additive known as ionophores, that the U.S. Department of Agriculture classifies as an antibiotic. Ionophores are given to poultry to control the parasitic disease coccidiosis. It is also used as a growth promoter for cattle. Because ionophores have been shown not to be harmful to humans (and are supposedly not a threat to antibiotic resistance) , Tyson wanted to advertise its chicken as being “without harmful antibiotics.” In December 2007, the USDA approved the phrase for marketing purposes, but competitors Perdue Farms and Sanderson Farms filed lawsuits one month later. Consumers followed with a class-action suit. A federal judge has signed off on a preliminary agreement that could net consumers $5 million in refunds and coupons from the nation’s largest poultry producer. Individuals who bought Tyson chicken products labeled as having been raised without antibiotics from mid-June 2007 through April 2009 would be entitled to refunds. This settlement also includes Tyson’s fresh, frozen or deli chicken along with Cornish hens or tenders during the same time period. Concerns about antibiotic resistance has European regulators concerned enough that they have banned several in-feed antibiotics for their animals. Legislators in the United States are considering a similar action with The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which would prohibit the use of many non-therapeutic antibiotics in animal feed.1 Feeding animals a daily dose of antibiotics also has an environmental impact. Colorado State University researchers showed that ionophore drugs are getting into public waterways.2 In the study, the ionophore monensin was found at sample sites near agricultural regions. Additionally, ionophore drugs were found in surrounding streams with higher concentrations in the sediment vs. the overlaying water. Researchers concluded this study raises questions about whether antibiotics can accumulate in sediment and impact stream health. I can’t help but ask, do we really need to feed our animals a constant, steady supply of antibiotics in their food and water when they are not sick? We will have a severe problem on our hands if we continue this practice. In case you missed it, ABC News ran a story about one farmer who fought for his life after becoming infected with an antibiotic resistant form of strep after being gored in the knee by a bore. After two months of unsuccessful antibiotic treatments, Kremer’s doctors were baffled. The answer was found in the bore. A drug resistant strain of strep ran through the boars veins after being fed a steady, daily supply of penicillin. Antibiotics save lives when used properly. Do we really want to continue to risk human lives by feeding our livestock a steady supply of drugs when they aren’t needed? The conditions of animals that are raised in Big Ag (Big Agriculture) are atrocious and disgusting. Something has got to change. You can make a difference buy buying more certified organic foods and continue to raise the demand for truly healthy foods. The American dollar is the most important voting tool we as consumers have. 1 http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/solutions/wise_antibiotics/pamta.html Monsanto’s AdsNovember 10th, 2009 - Laura Klein
Producing more. Conserving more. Improving farmers’ lives. That’s sustainable agriculture. And that’s what Monsanto is all about. (You can see the full add here) What!?! Are you joking?!!?! Which is what exactly went through my head when I first heard these ads airing on NPR. This I have to say is first rate “Green Washing”, and probably the best I have ever seen. And I was even more shocked to hear it run on NPR of all places! But I guess they have a bottom line to meet. I used to make yearly donations to NPR and then stopped. I have reconsidered several times about renewing my “membership” and donation, but my decision has now been made. I will divert my dollars to other projects that I believe in like the Center of Food Safety, a project I firmly believe in. Just to give you a brief background on Monsanto, up until two decades ago it was a chemical company that produced chemical warfare, specifically agent orange. Today it is the biggest seed corporation in the world and controls the worlds seed supply through genetic engineering and patents. It is also the market leader in genetically modified US corn, soybean and cotton seeds. In a previous blog, I discuss why Monsanto could be a sitting target for an antitrust enforcement by the Obama administration because they have their farmers in an iron grip with their contracts (but I’m not holding my breath with Michael Taylor, former Monsanto executive, appointed by Obama as the FDA’s food czar or “senior advisor to the commissioner”). As Marc David, Nutritionist and Founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, stated in one of my Green Club interviews, GMO’d foods are a huge genetic experiment of which we don’t know the repercussions. I agree. And if you want to know how GMO’d foods are affecting our children’s health in the form of food allergies you can listen to my interview with, Robyn O’Brien, author of The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It In a recent video put out by the Center of Food Safety, Vandana Shiva founder and director of Navdanya in India, leader in the Slow Foods Movement (which is at the top of my favorite food movements), and author of the recently released book, Soil not Oil, shares the heartbreaking story of farmers pressed into deep debt, and some driven to suicide, by the economy of biotech crops. Over the next month, CFS will be bringing you videos from experts with whom they work closely in the trenches—Michael Pollan, Vandana Shiva, Anna Lappé, and CFS’s Executive Director Andrew Kimbrell—to help reveal the real truth about the bogus claims put forth by Monsanto and other biotech companies. I will be closely watching these videos to learn more about what’s going on with our food supply and hope you will too! The Center for Food Safety is on the front lines fighting against the corporate take-over of our food, farms, and future; advocating REAL, sustainable, solutions to the problems of the biotech industrial agriculture model. If you want to get involved and help keep our food supply green, organic and sustainable, become part of the solution and say no to industrial and GMO’d agriculture by taking action and make a donation to the Center For Food Safety. Join more than 85,000 members across the country saying no to industrial agriculture, and yes to True Food! Read More:Monsanto’s AdsDear Egg Producers: Get Over YourselvesOctober 7th, 2009 - Barbara Feiner
Here’s a special message for the United Egg Producers: Get over yourselves. The group is threatening consumers with a 25% hike in egg prices if cages are banned, while blaming animal-rights activists for snatching school breakfasts from the mouths of needy children. The egg producers’ ultimate threat: importing eggs from overseas. “I don’t think American consumers really want to play Russian Roulette with every carton of eggs they buy, which is essentially what would happen if we allow special interest groups to force a ban on the most modern, sanitary egg housing systems in the world,” said UEP President Gene Gregory in a hyperbolic press release. “Those systems are used to produce 95% of the eggs that American consumers buy every day.” And therein lies the problem. California has already banned battery cages—a move that prompted Gregory to tell a U.K. audience that voters were “uninformed.” I, for one, am willing to pay more for eggs that don’t require hens to be abused. As a child, I would accompany my mom to the local dairy farm in suburban New York, where we would buy our milk and eggs. Watching the chickens and cows roam free was the highlight of the trip. Somehow, the farm managed to get it right. Am I willing to boycott egg producers who cage their hens? In a New York minute. Want to get involved in the cause? Farm Sanctuary is pressing for national legislation to prevent animal cruelty. Read More:Dear Egg Producers: Get Over YourselvesCaught on Tape: Hen HorrorsSeptember 21st, 2009 - Barbara Feiner
Compassion Over Killing (COK), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit animal advocacy group, has exposed cruelty at an egg factory farm owned by Michael Foods, one of the nation’s largest egg producers and a major supplier to Dunkin’ Donuts. (Click here to view the video.) While employed at the facility in August, an investigator with a hidden camera shot footage of farm conditions for more than 1 million birds in battery cages, including:
“No responsible company should support this animal cruelty,” says Erica Meier, COK’s executive director. “Dunkin’ Donuts can—and should—make the right decision by removing eggs from its doughnuts and offering more humane vegan menu items.” Earlier this year, COK asked the donut chain about how the hens in its supply chain were treated and whether the company could offer egg-free donuts. Dunkin’ took no action, so COK launched DunkinCruelty.com. You can protest the ongoing hen mistreatment by completing an email form. Photo courtesy of DunkinCruelty.com Read More:Caught on Tape: Hen HorrorsDon’t Eat Dirty Meat!August 31st, 2009 - Laura Klein
Another reason I love grass-fed beef is that it’s simply cleaner. Feedlot cattle stand all day long in dirt and manure. You can imagine how much harder it is to remove all the fecal contamination given that scenario. Pasture-raised animals are much easier to clean “because they come from small herds raised in relatively clean pastures,” according to Meat Marketing and Technology’s associate editor. Most U.S. cattle, he said, “are raised in far larger numbers in congested and typically less sanitary feed lots.”1 The E. coli Question E. coli contamination occurs when manure from an animal comes in contact with meat in the slaughterhouse. The less manure on an animal when it enters the slaughter house, the less likely the meat will become contaminated. Some studies show that grass-feeding (vs. grain feeding) may reduce the number and acidity of E. coli in the digestive tract of cattle. Another study shows that E. coli from grass-fed cattle is more likely to be killed by the natural acidity of our digestive tract and therefore might be less likely to survive and make us ill. The reason for the greater persistence of E. coli from grain-fed cattle, the researchers speculated, is that feeding grain to cattle makes their digestive tracts abnormally acidic. Over time, the E. coli in their systems become acclimated to this acid environment. When we ingest them, a high percentage will survive the acid shock of our digestive juices. By contrast, few E. coli from grass-fed cattle will survive because they have not become acid-resistant.2 Science and the Senate: HR 2749 Time after time, scientific evidence proves that it’s industrialized animals that spread E.Coli 0157:H7 and Salmonella. Let’s hope that the senate, who will soon be voting on HR 2749 – the so-called Food Safety Enhancement Act – take these types of facts into consideration.
1“The Future of Food Safety,” by Joshua Lipsky. Meat Marketing and Technology, April 2001 2 Russell and Diez-Gonzalez (Microbes Infect 2, No. 1 (2000): 45-53.) Read More:Don’t Eat Dirty Meat!Sign Farm Aid’s Petition Against Factory-Farm FundingAugust 28th, 2009 - Barbara Feiner
Farm Aid is sponsoring a petition that calls on the U.S. government to suspend taxpayer funding of factory farms. As the petition states:
By signing the petition, you’ll add your name to a letter that will be sent to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. It urges the USDA “to suspend all direct or guaranteed farm ownership or operating loans for the construction or expansion of specialized hog or poultry production facilities.” In other Farm Aid news, there’s still time to order tickets to the Oct. 4 concert in St. Louis, where performers like Jason Mraz, Dave Matthews, Neil Young and Willie Nelson will rock the house. And if you’re a photography buff, consider entering the Farm Fresh Pics photo contest; the winner will receive an expenses-paid trip and two front-row concert tickets. Read More:Sign Farm Aid’s Petition Against Factory-Farm Funding |
Because of the rising demand for drug free meat and poultry, it looks like big food producers are turning to deceitful tactics to trick consumers into thinking their products are drug free.
A hot topic on my mind of late has been Monsanto’s advertising or sponsorship of NPR (National Public Radio). Maybe you’ve heard their messages running on NPR for several months now like I have, claiming that they support a sustainable future, and create a better world for farmers. In a separate print ad they state:
I’m a huge proponent of grass-fed beef, from birth to market (not finished on grains). Cows, biologically, are created to graze on grass – not feast on nutrient-poor grains. Grain-fed beef is the result of large agribusinesses wanting to fatten up cows as quickly as possible, regardless of the harm it does to their health (not to mention how grain diminishes the nutritional quality of the meat consumers wind up eating!).
