Sam, have you been served yet?: "Organic, Inc" author Sam Fromartz lets fly the latest salvo in the war of words between Aurora Organic Dairy and its critics. Rebutting Aurora’s "they hate us big guys" defense — that the USDA’s investigation of its practices was launched by disgruntled, smaller rivals — Fromartz says that Aurora deliberately "broke the rules to gain a competitive advantage not available to those farmers following the regulations." In a follow-up post, Sam writes that theFederation of Organic Dairy Farmers (FOOD Farmers) has attacked the USDA’s settlement with Aurora as weak. Meanwhile, Aurora has threatened to sue the Cornucopia Institute, the Organic Consumers Association and the Center for Food Safety for defamation for charging the company engaged in consumer fraud.
Let’s try spending 15% per capita: An interesting op-ed by Barb Stuckey, a food-manufacturing consultant, who argues that the problem with the American diet isn’t cheap corn or soy, it’s that we don’t spend enough on food, period. (San Francisco Chronicle) Related: The audibly nervous Stuckey interviews Michael Pollan in a podcast (MP3) about what the food-manufacturing industry could do better. He doesn’t pull many punches in telling her.
Valley of the CAFOs: A Humane Society rep writes about British Columbia’s Fraser Valley, which has more farm animals per square kilometre than anywhere else in Canada and the highest concentration of large farms - and the environmental, health, and animal-welfare problems to prove it. (Vancouver Sun)
We will be fact-checking this later: The Cattle Network says that contrary to public per"in reality, antibiotics are used very sparingly by cattlemen" and not routinely added to the ruminants’ feed.
Food, Farming, & Food Politics events calendar
September 27th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Most cattle are actually grass fed until they hit the feedlots for finishing. I am not sure about feed additives at feedlots but ranchers here in cattle country put them to pasture and cross their fingers for good rain. This past season some of the locals considered selling their stock young because there just wasn’t enough grass to feed them. Late rain changed that fact. This is a bit idyllic, but some lucky cattle in our area get to summer in the Sequoia National Forest:
http://www.rebuild-from-depression.com/blog/2007/09/all_cattle_should_live_this_we.html