Tag Archives: Politics

Hiding the Truth About Factory Farms —NYTimes

In an

editorial on 26 April 2011, the New York Times opined:



A supermarket shopper buying hamburger, eggs or milk has every reason,
and every right, to wonder how they were produced. The answer, in
industrial agriculture, is “behind closed doors,” and that’s how
the industry wants to keep it. In at least three states — Iowa, Florida,
and Minnesota — legislation is moving ahead that would make undercover
investigations in factory farms, especially filming and photography,
a crime. The legislation has only one purpose: to hide factory-farming
conditions from a public that is beginning to think seriously about
animal rights and the way food is produced.

Would people really want to eat CAFO chicken, beef, or pork if they
knew it came from animals that are kept in pens so small they can’t
move and fed antibiotics constantly to keep them from dying of diseases
they give each other from standing in their own feces?

Also, I’m a Farm Bureau members, but this makes me ill:

And they are supported by the big guns of industrial agriculture:
Monsanto, the Farm Bureau, the associations that represent pork
producers, dairy farmers and cattlemen, as well as poultry, soybean,
and corn growers.

Farming used to be something to be proud of, not something to hide.

-jsq

Two Mexican states ban GM corn

Many if not most pesticides are sprayed on crops genetically modified
to resist them. Ban GM crops and reduce spraying. Two states in Mexico
prove it can be done. Mexico, the country where corn was originally
domesticated could lead the way back to healthy agriculture.

Aleira Lara reported in
Health Impact News Daily reported 5 March 2011 that

Two Mexican states ban GM corn:



The Mexican States of Tlaxcala and Michoacán each passed legislation
banning the planting of genetically modified corn to protect natural
plants from further contamination of transgenes. Together, both states
produce about a third of all of Mexico’s corn. Below this story is a
detailed timeline of genetic contamination and legislation in Mexico.

The timeline is a long saga including intimidation of scientists
attempting to research the problem.
The Mexican federal government caved in to big agro,
but two Mexican states are fighting back anyway.

-jsq

The case against agrochemicals


Some people didn’t like the source of a recent post about
the toxic effects of agrochemicals and GM plants on the environment,
plants, animals, and people.
There are plenty of other sources, including:

How big agro causes the problem

Evidence of the ill effects

There are ways forward

What you can do

Food tastes good as politics



Bryan Walsh writes in Time that

Foodies Can Eclipse (and Save) the Green Movement:

Even as traditional environmentalism struggles, another movement is
rising in its place, aligning consumers, producers, the media and even
politicians. It’s the food movement, and if it continues to grow it may be
able to create just the sort of political and social transformation that
environmentalists have failed to achieve in recent years. That would mean
not only changing the way Americans eat and the way they farm — away
from industrialized, cheap calories and toward more organic, small-scale
production, with plenty of fruits and vegetables — but also altering
the way we work and relate to one another. To its most ardent adherents,
the food movement isn’t just about reform — it’s about revolution.

Food is something that affects everybody, and now that people are
starting to realize that the mainstream food supply is poisoned:

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