By Danielle Nierenberg and Thais Bassinello When it comes to the future of the food system, it’s hard not to be discouraged. Nearly one billion people are hungry, and another 1.5 billion are obese or overweight. All over the world, people waste 1.3 billion tons of food each year. And according to the International Panel on Climate […]
Captain Paul J. Bratti As a small business owner who runs a sailing and tour guide company on the south shore of Lake Superior, I depend on the quality of our waterways—but I’m not the only one. Last year, Wisconsin’s outdoor industry alone contributed $9.7 billion to the state economy and supported 129,000 jobs. In […]
Michele Simon Last week I attended a conference in Washington DC with the lofty title, 3rd Advanced Regulatory and Compliance Summit on Food & Beverage Marketing & Advertising. The event’s main sponsor was the law firm of Faegre Baker Daniels, whose numerous mega-corporate food clients include Cargill, Dean Foods and Nestlé. In addition, the firm […]
Greenpeace By Mahesh Prasad For ten years, the Chinese state-run organization Shenhua Group, the world’s biggest coal producer by volume, has sucked this land dry, exploiting water resources at a shocking scale from these beautiful grasslands to use in its coal-to-liquid project (also known as coal liquefaction, a process for producing liquid fuels from coal) […]
Beyond Pesticides Capitol Hill is buzzing about a new bill that aims to provide long overdue protections for America’s imperiled pollinators. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) will be introducing the Save America’s Pollinators Act, calling for the suspension of neonicotinoids, a class of systemic pesticides that are killing bees. Photo courtesy […]
Moyers & Company Muckrakers and activists have been working to expose the brutality of industrialized meat production since Upton Sinclair’s writing of The Jungle in 1906. But an ALEC model bill known as “The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” would make it a crime to film at animal facilities—such as factory farms or slaughterhouses—with the […]
Michele Simon Last month, I participated in an important panel at a childhood obesity conference to discuss the current strategy backed by some advocacy groups: asking industry to market “healthier” foods to children. But as Susan Linn and I recently argued, any marketing to children is harmful, regardless of the product’s nutritional content. Instead of […]
This week, Connecticut won the honor of becoming the first state to pass a law requiring genetically engineered foods to be labeled. (The governor has indicated he will sign.) It was really only a matter of time. The disappointing defeat of Prop 37 last fall in California—thanks to a massive industry disinformation campaign—sparked a national […]
The Cornucopia Institute The House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats gathered information yesterday regarding concerns being raised about imports of food from China that are entering the U.S. “We don’t trust, for good reason, the Chinese to supply ingredients for our dog and cat food,” said hearing witness Mark […]