Big Meat | Grist

Meatheads

Meat, climate change, and industry tripe 1
Posted 3 months, 2 weeks ago
A flack from the American Meat Institute recently downplayed meat's contribution to climate change. Tom Philpott sets him straight.
Meat wagon

As MRSA gets worse, the FDA discovers antibiotic abuse on factory farms [UPDATED] 7
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago
The FDA has finally noticed that antibiotic abuse on factory farms is creating a health menace.
Meth of the matter

New book looks at economic devastation in an Iowa meat-packing town 1
Posted 4 months, 2 weeks ago
It's become axiomatic that to peer deep into our reliance on fossil energy is to gaze upon human wreckage: bombed-out Baghdad slums, desolated Nigerian townships, or Appalachian communities eviscerated by the removal of mountaintops. The same is true of the food system, as the new book Methland shows.
Where's the beef?

Food-safety legislation leaves gaping hole for meat giants 3
Posted 4 months, 3 weeks ago
After a massive "voluntary" recall of E. coli-tainted beef--three months after it emerged into supermarkets and restaurants--Tom Philpott got to wondering how food-safety legislation would affect meat regulation. Turns out, not at all.
Meat wagon

E. coli O157 comes back with a vengeance, and other nasty toxins in meat 3
Posted 4 months, 3 weeks ago
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. This time, we've got some real whoppers (so to speak).
Flu do they think they are?

Europeans demand investigation of the CAFO/swine flu link 1
Posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago
Remember swine flu? It's still spreading--and Europeans, at least, want the World Health Organization to seriously investigate links to factory hog farms.
Trampling the rainforest

Greenpeace: your boots are made for climate change 3
Posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago
According to Greenpeace, the cattle trade is still taking down vast swaths of the Brazilian rainforest. And it's not just the global appetite for beef that's driving the process.
Flu farce

Biotech industry group alights on La Gloria to test backyard pigs 0
Posted 6 months ago
The good news is that bloggers and other hysterics aren't the only ones taking seriously La Gloria, Mexico, as the possible origin of the swine flu pandemic. The bad news is that the scientists aren't from the World Health Organization or some other neutral international group--rather, they're funded by the U.S. biotech industry.
Follow the herd

Another symptom of swine flu: instant amnesia 23
Posted 6 months, 2 weeks ago
Now that the swine flu that broke out last month is proving not so virulent, it has largely been shuffled off of the front page. But the conditions that likely caused it -- a global web of vast, lightly regulated factory animal farms -- remains in place. And we might not be as lucky next time.
Swine flew

A terrific NYT piece on Smithfield and the globalization of pork 3
Posted 6 months, 2 weeks ago
On Wednesday, The New York Times ran a terrific long piece on how Smithfield Foods has rapidly transformed hog production in Eastern Europe. It's all there: the open cesspools, the farmers knocked off the land by the hundreds of thousands, the high-level cronyism, and more.
Pot calling the kettle green

Smithfield brings home McDonald’s corporate responsibility prize 2
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Smithfield Foods CEO announces that the pork giant has been recognized for social responsibility -- by McDonald's.
Home groan

CDC: swine flu strain has genetic roots in U.S.A. 1
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago
The CDC's chief virus scientist confirms that the swine flu that broke out in Mexico evolved from U.S. hog farms in the 1990s.
Big Pork speaks

Smithfield is listening! 0
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Smithfield CEO Larry Pope has evidently been checking out the blogs.
Not ready for swine-time players

‘New Scientist’: Swine flu stems from virus that evolved in U.S. 5
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago
In a pair of articles in New Scientist, Debora MacKenzie links the swine flu virus now spreading across the globe to large-scale pork-raising operations in the United States.
The nasty bits

Symptom: swine flu. Diagnosis: industrial agriculture? 27
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Several days after news broke of a possible link between hog Mexico-based CAFOs and the rapid spread of a novel swine flu strain, what have we learned?
When pigs flu

Swine-flu outbreak could be linked to Smithfield factory farms 62
Posted 7 months ago
The deadly swine-flu outbreak now spreading into the U.S. could be linked to large-scale hog operations in Mexico run by industrial-meat giant Smithfield Foods, according to Mexican news reports.
Stir-fried pork

Chinese agribiz giant eyes Smithfield takeover 2
Posted 7 months ago
As the U.S. meat industry struggles in the bad economy, the state-owned Chinese food-and-agribusiness giant Cofco is considering buying out Smithfield Foods, the globe's largest pork packer.