Blog Posts: Factory farms

Sowing the Seeds events will be kicking off throughout the country. It's time to get involved in shaping food policy because it's not enough to try to change our food system with our dollars.

As more and more people are making better and more informed food choices, the realization sets in that there is only so much we can do with our purchasing power to fix our broken food system. We need to focus on the policies that shape the way our food is planted, grown and distributed. This is why this weekend, and throughout the spring, volunteers, activists and anyone who cares about healthful food will be Sowing the Seeds.

What is Sowing the Seeds?
Sowing the Seeds is a series of events that bring communities together to celebrate good food and empower people to take action in large numbers. Many participants get together to plant food in local gardens and collect petitions from members of their communities. There are currently events scheduled to take place all across the nation: From Baltimore to Bismark, from Brooklyn to Seattle, and from Providence to St. Cloud, people who want to make positive changes to our food system are getting ready. Read the full article…

It is critical to consider and understand the real economic, environmental and social impacts of the global soy trade.

Over here in Europe, we are working with other organizations on a new campaign to raise awareness about so-called “responsible soy”. As consumers, we often rely on labels to help us make an informed choice by telling us what is in the product. Companies have caught on, understanding that it has become increasingly difficult to convince the savvy consumer to buy a product they do not support. Their solution? Green-wash labels. Read the full article…

Quick, point to the part of the pig that gives us the wing.

March Madness is in the air, and you know what that means: lot of exciting basketball games to watch and fun foods to eat. Mmmm… there’s nothing like spicy fried pig wings and beer to accompany viewings of the Big Dance. What’s that you say? You’ve not heard of pig wings? Wings made from pork? Really? But the British consider them a delicacy!

According to The Telegraph, a survey conducted in conjunction with National Butcher’s Week revealed that many British consumers believe pig wings are an actual pork product. Lest we judge, it’s probably not any better here in the U.S. This is obviously telling for many reasons, not the least of which is that consumers are now so far removed from the actual process of meat slaughter that we’re no longer familiar with common cuts, let alone from where our food is sourced. Read the full article…

Organize a Sowing the Seeds for a Fair Farm Bill Event

On April 16, communities across the country will show support for a better food system. Will you join them?

We know that good, healthy, and sustainably-produced food is possible, and that it’s going to start with you and communities like yours.

This April 16, join communities across the country coming together to show support for:

• a better food system
• small farmers, and
• better food for our families. Read the full article…

Rural America calls on Obama to make markets fair for independent producers.

On Valentines Day, while most people fretted about dinner reservations or flowers, a coalition of livestock producers, agriculture groups, and consumers took time out to show a little love for fair food by participating in a national call-in day. Over 2,000 confirmed calls were placed throughout the country to the White House to ask the Obama administration to finalize and implement fair livestock marketing rules.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, an activist named Cathy took the day off from her job, set up an information table in her local co-op and asked 75 people to call the White House on behalf of fair food. She has seen family and friends who were farmers suffer because of bad federal agricultural policy.

In Chicago, Floriole Café & Bakery and The Dill Pickle Food Co-op hosted call-in events with members of the local food community. They placed approximately 80 phone calls to the White House.

In Vermont, students at Vermont Law School in South Royalston — many of whom are members of the Food & Agriculture Law Society — organized a four-hour call-in at the student union. They want to change the Farm Bill to better support local farmers and local food networks.

Fair food advocates placed calls from Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Oregon and New York.

But it wasn’t just consumers and activists calling for action. The National Farmers Union sent out alerts to their chapters, and other allies, including Food & Water Watch, Western Organization of Resources Councils, R-CALF, The Land Stewardship Project in Minnesota, Missouri Rural Crisis Center, RAFI-USA, National Family Farm Coalition, the Center for Rural Affairs, Food Democracy Now and others are all working together to urge President Obama to implement Fair Farm Rules.

But what exactly are these rules and why are they so important? Read the full article…

President Obama, this is food policy we can't believe in.

As the popular face of the Obama administration’s advocacy for healthy, nutritious food, Michelle Obama has conveniently side-stepped several critical consumer food issues like organics, genetically engineered food, fair markets for farmers and ranchers, and local and regional food economies. But, while Mrs. Obama has remained silent on these topics, the actions of the agencies that regulate our food under President Obama speak volumes. And progressives don’t like what they are hearing.

Last year, the FDA began paving the way for approval of genetically engineered (GE) salmon. They pressed on despite the lack of independent research to determine what the health or environmental impacts of such a product would be, and despite concerns from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about the FDA’s process to “fast track” GE salmon’s approval. The first transgenic animal approved for human consumption, GE salmon would open the floodgates for GE cows and pigs, which biotech companies are waiting in the wings to finally commercialize after years of research and development.

But Americans don’t want it: A 2009 Consumer Reports poll revealed that the majority of consumers would not eat genetically engineered food, while a poll we conducted with Lake Research Partners last year showed that 78 percent of Americans were against the approval of a GE salmon for human consumption.

Now, the USDA has approved the unrestricted growing of GE alfalfa, which could destroy the organic dairy industry and block farmers from the export market since many countries won’t accept GE-contaminated crops. The USDA has also “partially deregulated” GE sugar beets. Soon, many candy bars in America could be produced from sugar grown with Monsanto’s dangerous Roundup Ready herbicide. Read the full article…

Michelle Obama is right to demand change, but is she asking the wrong people to lead the charge? Photo by Ben Schumin

Michelle Obama’s clarion call to fight against childhood obesity and to promote healthy, affordable food choices for children is one we can all get behind. Her alignment with Walmart, the largest grocery retailer in the U.S., could be viewed as an effort to tackle the problem directly by making positive changes to an already established system of food production and distribution. But look close enough and ask the right questions, and it’s easy to see that Walmart isn’t the solution to the problem; it’s one of the main contributors. Read the full article…

Food & Water Watch now proudly unveils the latest version of our Factory Farm Map, which charts the concentration of factory-farmed animals across the country.

It’s called the food “industry” for a reason. If you’ve seen Food Inc., you understand why. In that film, and here at Food & Water Watch, some careful analysis reveals the massive network of production and distribution that has become our food system. Thanks to advertising, marketing and fancy packaging, the images we create for ourselves of the places where our food comes from are often in direct contrast to the reality of where most of it is produced. Much of the time, we may be thinking farm, but we’re really getting factory. Read the full article…

Maybe we haven’t learned anything from the Great Egg Recall of 2010; at least not enough–not yet. The egg farm mentioned in William Neuman’s New York Times article, and many farms like it, try to adjust their large-scale models of production to address unhygienic conditions and other problems that arise from being so big.

The factory farm model confines thousands of animals into a closed environment that is condusive to the spread of diseases like E. coli and salmonella.

Read the full article…

CNN's Brian Todd interviews our own Patty Lovera, food director, about how food contamination—like the Wright Egg salmonella outbreak—can spread so quickly. None of the eggs in the background were affected by the recall.

The Wright County Egg recall has continued to raise interesting questions about food safety issues across our industrial food system. Various news stations have been contacting our offices for the past week to ask how food contamination can spread so quickly across the country. CNN’s Brian Todd asked our food director, Patty Lovera, to meet him at a grocery store just outside of downtown Washington, D.C., to discuss the recall (we’ll provide the link as soon as the story airs), so I tagged along. Read the full article…