Section » Labor
Digest – Blogs: Farmers as serfs, re-naturalized landscapes, Logsdon on carnivorism
"Kill your buddy": A guest post uses Pilgrim's Pride poultry operations in North Carolina to explain what a clustercluck our supposedly free-market meat industry is. "Like all integrators, Pilgrim’s Pride determines the cost of the farmer’s investment, and therefore debt, determines the cost of the inputs and the price paid
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Coming home to industrial ag: A tour of the Central Valley
There’s an image that’s stuck with me from the cross-country drive that my dad and I took last summer. It was one of many late-night stints at the wheel, perhaps 11 p.m., and we were hurtling along through the Utah desert. A sign at the last gas station had warned us of a nearly 100-mile
Digest – News: Apple-moth exposé, payment limit moving forward, food crisis
Holy smoking spraygun, Batman!!!: The company that makes one of the apple-moth pesticides that state officials are considering spraying over the Bay Area is coincidentally owned by a wealthy California agribusinessman — one who's also coincidentally been a generous contributor to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
Digest – Features: The littlest farmworkers, free-meal stigma, defending soul food
Wasn't the Green Revolution supposed to save the children?: A comprehensive look at the problem of child labor around the world. According to the UN International Labor Organization, there are an estimated 218 million child laborers worldwide — and 7 out of 10 of them are in agriculture. Farmers
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Nuggets of truth: The Charlotte Observer carves up the poultry industry
As the massive outcry in response to the Humane Society's expose of a California beef-processing plant shows, Americans are extremely sensitive to the mistreatment of animals — even those we intend to eat. It would be nice if
Eric Schlosser would rather chew on a wooden podium than cloned meat
The 2008 Ecological Farming Conference (EcoFarm) kicked off in Pacific Grove, CA, tonight with a talk on sustainability given by Eric Schlosser. His best-seller "Fast Food Nation" was not really about food, he said, but about this country's massive experiment in disposability — sustainability's
Bringing your work home: Poultry workers carry drug-resistant E. coli into the community
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been in the news a lot lately. Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle had a front page story about the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. One of the causes
Digest – Features: Food in ’08, immigration ideals, NPR on hormone-free labeling
Dietgeist predictions around the media: The Philadelphia Inquirer sees more "local, fresh, natural, organic" offerings on our horizon (although we shudder to think we might be getting them from convenience
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Digest – News: PA still mulling “rBST-free” labels, USDA admits impotence, will flu make pigs fly?
Organic milk sales to skyrocket in Pennsylvania: That's the only silver lining in the news that as of Feb. 1, Pennsylvanian consumers won't be able to tell the difference between milk from farms that inject their cows with rBST and that from those that don't — unless the governor blocks the move
Digest – Features: Hairy mulch, green cafeterias, cattlemen’s predictions
Toupee-sticides?: A new product called SmartGrow uses human hair from China and India to cover plants' roots, somehow increasing crop yields and plant growth. (UPI) Tray excellent: More and more technology
Digest – Commentary: Food trends in ’08, the real kitchen confidential
The dietgeist cometh: Under the sneaky headline "Top health issues of 2008," Reuters reporter Terri Coles devotes seven of the eight to food-politics hot topics like raw milk, the end of cheap food, and the continuing world domination of Michael Pollan. (Reuters) A
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Have it Burger King’s way — shower executives with millions, stiff the pickers
The stinginess and lack of ethics shown by Burger King and its contractors in balking over giving Florida tomato pickers a penny-a-pound raise is outrageous. Eric Schlosser, the journalist who exposed the dirty underbelly of the fast-food
Digest – News: Tomato pay raise endangered, Smithfield rejects clones, organic fish debated
Forgive us readers, for it has been a record 12 days since the last Digest. But we're back, with an incomplete list of links both moldy and fresh. Smell before you click. What's "un-American" is virtual slave labor: The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has fought for years to persuade McDonald’s
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Digest – News & Commentary: Bee breakthrough, popcorn lung, progressive grocers
Duck! Six days' worth of links coming at you. Yeah, we're playing catch-up on some big news, and it really is 2:15 a.m. NEWS Unraveling the bee mystery: Genetic research on bees has indicated that Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) may be the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in American bees.
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Why I love labor
It's Labor Day, the day we pay homage to the folks who brought us the weekend (among many other things). It's a fitting moment to show some love for the labor movement, which has seen union
