Meat monopoly busters: A new “packer ban” bill introduced by Senators Charles Grassley and Tom Harkin seeks to prohibit the large meatpackers from buying and raising their own livestock, which leads to price gouging and shutting out small farmers and ranchers. This is really big news, as it would basically force Tyson, Smithfield, etc to […]

Shocking good news: Smithfield Foods, the nation’s largest hog producer (aka The Death Star of Pork), is voluntarily phasing out the use of “farrowing crates,” the too-tiny cages for nursing sows that animal-welfare activists have been successfully banning through several state votes. However, it is only for facilities that Smithfield actually owns — like many […]

Farm Bill 101: Tom Philpott plans to analyze the political economy of farming and suggest a socially and environmentally sustainable farm policy. (Someone has to do it, and we’re glad he’s volunteered.) The 2007 Farm Bill will affect everybody who cares about what they eat, and/or about the environment, so if you’re unsure how agricultural […]

People and Planet: Somebody tell the Bill Gates Foundation to hold up on foisting a GMO- and fossil-fueled Green Revolution on Africa! A 10-year experimental project has shown that Ethiopian farms using organic compost are producing higher yields — sometimes double — compared with those using chemical fertilizers. (Reprinted from the South-North Development Monitor)
Business Week: […]

USA Today: “Cyberspeak” columnist Andrew Kantor says cloned-meat opponents are simply anti-science and dumb as a box of hair. (We’re paraphrasing. Sorta.) He fails to address why labeling meat from clones — or food that’s genetically modified — is such a bad idea, unless his stance that consumers are stupid and easily scared counts.
Cattle Network: […]

Gristmill: Just say no to CAFO diesel! Tom Philpott explains in brief why deriving biodiesel from chicken fat is a bad idea.
ABC News: The wires are afire with a report today in the New England Journal of Medicine that pet rodents could be the source of salmonella infections.
Science Daily: Who knew? Sometimes the USDA’s Agricultural […]

BusinessWeek: Tyson, Smithfield, and other Big Meat producers are looking at turning animal fat into biodiesel. Somehow we don’t think Daryl Hannah and Willie Nelson are going to want to run their vehicles on factory-farmed chicken fat … but we could be wrong.
The Times (UK): A Spanish foie gras from free-ranging, non-force-fed geese has won […]

United Nations: According to a draft report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Org., 190 of the more than 7,600 breeds in the FAO global database of farm animal genetic resources have become extinct since 1990, and 1,500 more are deemed at risk of extinction.
Sacramento Bee*: We knew this was coming — irradiation is being […]

Slate.com: Sara Dickerson’s delightful look at the popularity of what she has dubbed the piggy confessional, the porcine write o’ passage in which “a dead pig — usually killed, butchered, or eaten by the author — provokes a meditation on the ethics and aesthetics of eating.” (Thx Aunt B.) On a related note, the Dallas […]

Grist: In today’s Victual Reality column, Tom Philpott delivers a blistering report on the state of the biofuel industry around the globe. Sugar-based ethanol is taking a devastating toll on India and Brazil, while corn-based ethanol is poised to do the same in the U.S. Even if you think you understand what’s at stake, read […]

Radio Iowa: Dozens of Iowans are sick in a new E. coli outbreak — but suspicion is falling on a Taco John’s, not a Taco Bell. (And supposedly green onions are not implicated, according to additional info at the end of the NYT article below.)
New York Times*: How the Taco Bell E. coli case was […]

Green Money Journal: An excellent, must-read piece by Bob Scowcroft, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation. The first half, which those who have read Fromartz’s “Organic, Inc.” can skim through, recaps the historical milestones and messy evolution of the organic agriculture movement; it’s in the second half that Scowcroft gets interesting, taking the […]

Salon.com*: Q&A with Michael Pollan about the recent revolting-food news, including why he trusts the FDA more than the USDA and why we must “figure out a way to [match] the regulation to the production system” as well as get rid of antibiotics in the meat production chain.
Asbury Park Press: The number of Taco Bell […]

Revolting food news roundup:
New York Times*: Maybe there’s not shit in the meat after all … this time. Taco Bell today removed green onions from 5,800 of its restaurants, suspecting they were the culprit in the recent E. coli poisonings; no word yet where the green onions were grown. Four new cases have been reported […]

Post-Gazette: A reprint of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal interview with Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, in which he explains why he cut his own salary to $1, why sales are slowing, and how Whole Foods is lowering prices to compete with Wal-Mart and other entrants into the organic foods marketplace.
BBC News: This fascinating report (trust […]