Floor of a salmon cannery
Salmon steak. Salmon burgers. Salmon tartare. Is salmon the new beef? Some say yes. If that’s true, hurray for the planet, which desperately needs a break from resource-intensive beef production. (Check out this article, which quotes CLF’s Roni Neff, about the negative effects of beef production.)
But not so fast with the rejoicing. By taking the predatory, carnivorous fish that we enjoy eating, such as salmon, swordfish and tuna, from their natural habitats, we risk overfishing (and depleting) fisheries, and disturbing marine ecosystems. Aquaculture seemed like a viable solution to overfishing—we would simply farm the fish, and not mess with the ecosystems. Read More >
A new U.S. Food and Drug Administration study has found that farmed shrimp can be added to the list of animal protein sold in grocery stores that harbors multi-drug resistant bacteria. That list, now being joined by farmed shrimp, includes pork, chicken, ground turkey, and ground beef.
The article was published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Food Microbiology in February 2012, and while it has not been covered by the mainstream media, given the importance of the study findings I think this article deserves more attention. Read More >
This story has conflict, suspense, fast-moving legislators (oh, my!), and sexy terms like “conservation compliance,” so stick around.
The fast-moving legislators have already entered the stage and have been acting against type by drastically speeding up the normally glacial process of creating a new farm bill. The Senate Agriculture Committee on Thursday finished marking up a version of the bill that will now be sent to the full Senate. Read More >
Chicken coop, circa 1939, Florida
Let me begin by saying I would love a mobile chicken coop in my backyard. In fact, I plan to build one this summer, hopefully for less than 100 dollars. I’m lucky enough that with an afternoon of work and a trip or three to the hardware store, I think I can accomplish this. But although it would be wonderful if more people raised healthy egg-shaped protein in their backyards, this isn’t feasible for everyone.
Cue Williams Sonoma’s new “Agrarian” line.
For those less fortunate souls with little time but oodles of money, Williams Sonoma can provide you with a pre-assembled chicken coop for a mere $879.95 (1). Better yet, you can also purchase lettuce seedlings for just $16.95 each! (Yes that is the price for ONE seedling. But of course you’ll probably want 20 so that’s 339 dollars—but they come wrapped in burlap fabric with a cute bow!). Read More >
Carole Morison, independent chicken farmer
Two years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice raised a lot of hopes among contract farmers that they would finally get some help from the federal government in their struggles with corporate control of the livestock industries.
The department’s Antitrust Division held five workshops around the country that dealt with competition (or the lack of it) in agricultural markets. There were sessions devoted to poultry, dairy and beef/hogs.
At the poultry workshop in Normal, Ala., contract farmers had a forum to vent about their disempowering relationships with corporate integrators. Many spoke out despite fear of reprisals from the industry. DOJ’s antitrust chief, Christine Varney, handed her business card to any farmer who expressed such fears. They could call her directly if industry threatened them with retaliation for speaking out, she said. Read More >
“In Cipro we trust.”
These were Tom Brokaw’s words on NBC Nightly News, in October of 2001, a month after the 9/11 attacks. As he said it, he held up a bottle of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin, which is used to treat anthrax. At that time, more than 30 people in the U.S. Capitol had tested positive for anthrax exposure, the result of some snail-mail terrorism.
Now, a new CLF study has uncovered a surprising link between drugs like Cipro and poultry products. (News release here.) These studies are getting some attention from The New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof, whose feathers are ruffled by the ickiness of what goes into poultry feed, as well as by the connection between antibiotic resistance and poultry production (“Arsenic in Our Chicken?”). Read More >
Will Allen is proof that the phrase “down to earth” can be as literal as it is figurative. His ongoing relationship to soil and compost, and all the processes that produce them, keep him literally grounded.
The founder and CEO of the Milwaukee-based community food center known as Growing Power spoke to an audience of about 300 recently at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. While he’s very much at home in front of a crowd, you could get the impression he was missing his worms back home. In his slide show or on the Internet, you can find pictures of Allen with hundreds of worms in his giant hands (definitely Google-worthy). He gives much of the credit for his food production successes to those humble creatures. Read More >
Hens in a battery cage. Photo credit: farmsanctuary.org
In the United States, for every citizen, there is roughly one laying hen. The majority of these birds are confined in battery cages, wire enclosures that typically afford each bird a space smaller than a single sheet of letter-sized paper.
This system is poised to undergo several major changes. Two unlikely allies, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the United Egg Producers (UEP), are jointly working toward the enactment of H.R. 3798, a federal amendment that would afford laying hens several welfare measures. These include a gradual shift from battery cages to “enriched colony cages,” more spacious enclosures outfitted with perches, nest boxes and scratching areas. Enriched colony cages would allow birds greater freedom of movement and the ability to perform certain natural behaviors. Read More >
Will Allen and Dave Love at CLF Aquaponics Project, 2012
Today, for a change, I will gush.
Why the gushing? Because I’ve been hanging around Will Allen, an urban farming pioneer with nearly cult-hero status among foodies and farmers. He’s an inspiration, an overflowing font of information, and the picture of humility.
The son of a sharecropper, Mr. Allen swore as a young man that he’d never return to farming—now he’s the CEO of a Milwaukee-based community food center that’s doing so many bold things with food systems that it’s hard to keep track of all his good works. (He’s also a former professional basketball player, a MacArthur fellow, and a spokesperson for First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign.) Read More >
As a nutrition professional, my focus on chicken has been on healthy preparation methods, appropriate portion sizes, which part of the animal to eat, and what colorful foods should surround it on the plate. Discussion of what happens before the chicken gets to the plate had been rare, until recently, as consumers become more sensitive to what’s going into to our food and how it can affect the environment and our personal health. I recently had my first in-person experience with one of the hurdles in promoting a healthy change in food production. It was a major eye-opener to see how great of a hurdle the legislative process can be. Read More >
