Forget elephants, tigers, giant pandas and whales.  Save the cow …and the pig and the chicken!  According to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the world is currently losing one breed of your favorite farm animal each month due to the globalization of the livestock market.
 

What’s the big deal, you ask?  “Maintaining animal genetic diversity will allow future generations to select stocks or develop new breeds to cope with emerging issues, such as climate change, diseases and changing socio-economic factors,” the FAO’s José Esquinas-Alcázar, said.   But, alas, only 14 of the 7,600 known farm animal species supply 90% of our food supply.  At this rate, industrial farming will soon narrow down our food supply to just one incredibly productive species of chicken, rendering the phrase “it tastes like chicken” moot (and ruining my beloved catchphrase forever!)

It’s the most wonderful time of the year here at F&WW! In honor of F&WW’s soon to be released report on the health risks from eating industrially raised shrimp, our little choir of holiday angels will be gathering to croon fellow consumers with our all-original Shrimp-mas carols. Decked out in our shrimp hats and holiday garb, we will sing out such classic favorites as Grandma Got Run Down with Salmonella (Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer), I Saw Mommy Eating "Farm Raised" Shrimp (I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause), and Silent Blight (Silent Night.)

Now I know what you’re thinking- once we are offered some fancy record deal, who will fight to keep our food and water safe?!?!?! But we promise not to quit our day job no matter how tempting the fortune and fame. With filthy food like imported industrial shrimp on the market, we wouldn’t dream of leaving you at the mercy of multinational industrialized food corporations this holiday season.

Stay tuned for an update on the outcome of our Shrimp-mas concert, and most of all for our report on industrially produced shrimp. It will be released December 19th!

Just this past summer I was thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to discuss emergency and large-volume livestock carcass disposal with experts nationwide?  Finally, last week, that ominous day came as I attended the National Carcass Disposal Symposium.

As the name suggests, there was a lot of carcass talk, but my favorite part of the symposium was the demonstrations of the many different methods of culling (not to be confused with killing).  The winner of the “culling-method-most-likely-to-show-up-at-county-fairs” is the foam method.  Here’s how it works.

The idea is to use a water source and mix it with the same kind of chemicals that firefighters use when fighting wildfires.  This mixture goes through a pump apparatus that makes the foam that fills the poultry house.  The foam can rise to 4 feet and is dense enough to suffocate the birds in 20 minutes.  The foam, the birds and the waste they’ve been standing in all their lives breaks down and composts inside the poultry house in 3 to 4 weeks.

At the demonstration, I watched these huge loud pumps spew foam and imagined thousands of chickens suffocating underneath the lemon-scented cloud.  The onlookers were then told that one of the many bonuses of using this foam technique is that “the media arrives and sees this white fluffy stuff that smells like citrus!”  Ok, ok.  So you’ve figured out how to cover up all the dead birds, but how do you stop the bedlam when all the journalists revisit their youth and dive into the irresistible foamy bubbles?  Judging by the amount of time I was able to play in the foam, the USDA has not yet addressed this problem.

Tired of depressing news about deadly Taco Bell and the breakdown of our food safety system? Let me introduce you to one of my favorite rural life writers: Jon Katz. He moved to a New York farm some years ago, and then to the chagrin of his wife and the befuddlement of the local farmers, started to adopt unwanted farm animals and provide them a life of unending hay. Pregnant donkeys, behavior-challenged dogs, and murderous cats all wormed their way into his heart.

His latest story is about his lonely steer, Elvis. With no other cows to keep him company, the steer’s only friend is Katz, whom he will thunder across the field to, in order to lean “over to lick [him] with his enormous, drooly tongue, like a two-story Newfoundland.” Elvis is sad without playmates, and his efforts to play with the donkeys and the sheep are met with fear and flight. And then one day, a cow named Luna is donated to Katz, and lo and behold, Elvis and Luna find everlasting friendship. They sleep under the apple tree, they stare across the field, and they just might provide a respite for you, dear reader, from hearing about those E.coli laden chalupas. Enjoy.

In the wee hours of last Saturday morning, Congress passed a fisheries bill that sets the direction for the management of our ocean resources until 2013. Too bad it's the wrong direction.

The bill allows regional fisheries councils to spend the next seven years converting a public resource into private property by parcelling out individual fishing quotas. As we've mentioned before, doling out guaranteed shares of the fishery tends to be great for the Gorton's Fisherman and his corporate owners but lousy for real people who make their living on the water.

While the bill sets some national standards for future quota programs, it does not ensure that small fishermen and their crew get quotas at all.

We think that stinks worse than spoiled cod. Food & Water Watch will take every opportunity to protect participation rights of small fishermen and crew. You can too if you sign up for updates from our Wild Oceans Listserv.

With chants like “rBGH is udderly ridiculous” and “mooove off the hormones”, Food & Water Watch activists proved today that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. (With many of our staff dressed up as cows outside of a DC Starbucks- as part of our Starbucks National Call-in Day- how could we?) We also proved, with our hardy volunteers, curious passersby, and a strong media turnout, that the movement against artificial growth hormones is growing. Watch video of the event here!

As it turns out, our efforts on Starbucks are making headway! When we returned to our desks, we found out that Starbucks is increasing the amount of its milk supply that is rBGH-free. In a message to customers today, Starbucks writes, “We are actively engaged with all of our dairy suppliers to explore a conversion of all core dairy products - fluid milk, half and half, whipping cream and eggnog - to rBST-free in our U.S. company-operated locations. Significant work on this front has already been accomplished, in fact 27 percent of the dairy we buy is already rBST-free and 37 percent will be rBST-free starting in January, 2007.” This ten percent increase in rBGH-free milk is a HUGE victory considering the enormous amount of milk that Starbucks uses every day. With continued pressure, we can get Starbucks to ban artificial hormones all the way.

Call 1-800- 235-2883 and ask Starbucks to make the switch!

Billboard of IFQ Broker at Pacific
Marine Expo (click for larger size)

Individual Fishing Quotas were a hot topic at last month’s Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle. IFQ programs turn fish in the sea, and the right to catch them, into a tradable commodity.

Marine expo attendees included both satisfied IFQ recipients and fishers who oppose IFQs because they eliminate jobs and turn independent businesspeople into sharecroppers. Also present was at least one crab IFQ recipient who resents the concept of IFQs even though she was fortunate enough to receive one. She says that while working on her will, she felt uncomfortable determining who in the next generation will have a place in the crab fishery.

Birthright is not the only means to receive an IFQ. Having a large bank account also helps. Just ask an IFQ broker. Yes, a broker for fish in the sea. At least one such brokerage had a booth at the expo. There must be a niche because IFQ programs create a private asset from what was previously a public commodity. They can make quota recipients instantly rich.

We think wills and brokerages are for houses, stocks, and bonds, not fish in the sea.

Click here to learn more about IFQs.