¡Join the fight!
I would love to read some feedback from farmers and/or animal welfare specialists on this piece from the Des Moines Register (which typically has some of the better ag reporting among mainstream, daily newspapers). The article is headlined Critics of old henhouses drive a shift to cage-free, and by my read, the article has a reasoned tone that tells both sides of the cage-free chicken issue fairly well. Read more...
So - looks like Chiquita isn't out of the forest yet on being held accountable for financing, aiding, and abetting the intimidation, kidnapping and murder in Columbia.
Chiquita paid the FARC to intimidate labor unions and sabotage rival growers as a means of “squashing competition and assuring defendants of an accommodating labor force,” the families said. Read more...
The little guys win some gold from Goliath. From AP News:
A federal court jury has ordered the German conglomerate Bayer CropScience to pay $1.5 million to farmers in Arkansas and Mississippi whose rice seed was contaminated with a genetically altered strain.
Friday's verdict was the second against Bayer CropScience for losses sustained by farmers when an experimental variety of rice that the company was testing infiltrated crops. Read more...
Spittin' mad. That's the only way to put it.
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) makes conventional U.S. livestock farmers downright, wet-hen, cat-in-a-blender, spittin' mad. When HSUS manages to alter state constitutions to ban battery cages and gestation crates, well, you better start bringing guns to your knife fights, vegans.
I'm playing catch-up on a couple things after my horrible laptop crisis. One, of real importance to Minnesotan locavores, is the debut of Rochdale Farms cheese and butter. Jill Lewis at Heavy Table has the full breakdown on these new items, which have debuted at local, Twin Cities grocery co-ops, and which use milk from local Amish, sustainable, and organic dairy farms. Read up -- it's a good piece. Read more...
