NEWS & COMMENTARY
Justice vs. paperwork: Ken Cook of the Environmental Working Group has a doozy of a scoop. USDA employees are organize a lobbying campaign to to eliminate a provision in the farm bill that would reopen a landmark civil rights case. If passed, the provision would give up to 73,000 black farmers another chance to make their case that they were denied USDA loans as a result of racial discrimination. The basis for objection by the USDA employees (who are using government computers in their campaign)? Cook quotes from a mass email: "The agency will be required to submit a boatload of information within 60 days of anyone filing which will bury us! (Mulch)
Update on UK livestock disease outbreak: The Associated Press reports that the strain of foot-and-mouth disease found on a farm in southern England was identical to one used at a nearby laboratory for producing vaccines, a fact which might mean the outbreak will be fast contained (but has farmers hopping mad). The lab denies the leak. Writing in the Times UK, Magnus Linklater says that the massive funereal pyres of 2001 won’t be repeated, because this time few experts are arguing any longer that the mass slaughter of healthy animals is the only way of containing the disease.
Chew on this hard-to-swallow contention: A very thoughtful examination of the controversial contention that oftentimes, buying local food is less environmentally responsible than patronizing the far-away producers. Author James E. McWilliams suggests that maybe it makes "more sense to stop obsessing over food miles and work to strengthen comparative geographical advantages," such as a clean-fueled "hub-and-spoke system of food production and distribution." We still believe firmly that strengthening local food production is of critical importance for regional food security and community rebuilding, but he’s right, we shouldn’t close our minds to making the longer food chains more efficient. (New York Times)
Self-protectionism: Are standards-based barriers to food products simply substitutes for other, more transparent forms of trade protection such as tariffs or quotas? Examples: the EU’s ban on meat containing growth hormones, Australia’s barriers on imports of salmon, or Japan’s restriction on imports of apples. (Financial Times, thanks Dr. Vino!)
A roundup of the myriad editorials flaying the House farm bill for selling out reform (Mulch)
Food, Farming, & Food Politics events calendar
August 6th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Be sure to check out James McWilliam’s original article at http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2564. The NY Times synopsis hardly did it justice.