Grist | Topics | 15 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 15 of 15
Headline	Author	Published	Section
Milkin' It More use of growth hormones would boost sustainability of dairy industry, says study		01 Jul 2008	News
Posted at 2:00 PM on 01 Jul 2008 Shooting up cows with artificial growth hormones increases the sustainability of the dairy industry, claims a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Giving rbST to 1 million cows would enable the same amount of milk to be produced using 157,000 fewer cows," says the study, thus easing the impact that giant dairy-cow operatio ...
Topics: agriculture, air pollution, food, health, industrial ag, news, scientific research, water pollution (all these topics)

Amazin' maize Corn tries to look a little too sweet	Meredith Niles	27 Jun 2008	Gristmill
This week's $4.8 billion merger of Corn Products International and Bunge Ltd. probably didn't catch your eye, but with revenues projected to increase 29 percent this year to $4 billion, you might consider paying attention -- for the sake of your belly and the environment. Corn syrup manufacturers are going on the offensive -- and that includes a charm offensive. The Corn Refiners Association -- an industry trade group -- launched a new marketing campaign yester ...
Topics: agriculture, food, health, industrial ag (all these topics)

Meat Wagon: Filthy swine U.S. officials dither while antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains creep into our pork supply	Tom Philpott	10 Jun 2008	Gristmill
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries.The good news is that people are earnestly trying to figure out if a deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria strain is infecting our nation's vast supply of pork.The bad news is, they don't work for a government regulator with the power to do something about it. Rather, they're university researchers and journalists, whose only real power is the public outrage they can generate through th ...
Topics: agriculture, Department of Agriculture, food, Food and Drug Administration, health, industrial ag (all these topics)

Downer and out? The USDA's new ban won't keep sick cows out of the food supply	Tom Philpott	23 May 2008	Gristmill
Months after the downer-cow scandal of last winter, USDA chief Ed Schafer announced plans to ban all downer cows from the food supply. The rule involves cows that get sick after an initial inspection by veterinarians before slaughter. Under old rules, such cows could be reinspected by vets and then cleared for slaughter if the vet decided they posed no threat. In the press release announcing the proposed new rules, Shafer had this to say: Last year, of the nea ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, Department of Agriculture, food, health, industrial ag (all these topics)

Coke: Still 'it' with the kids Coca-Cola and McD's top brands among teens, study says	Tom Philpott	14 Apr 2008	Gristmill
Photo: Taneli Mielik�inen There has been a lot of great work in the last decade to wake kids up to alternatives to industrial food. Here and there, farm-to-school programs have been launched, soft drinks banished from cafeterias, books like Eric Schlosser's Chew on This have emerged. Yet clearly, much more work needs to be done. Seems that teens are still gulping down Coke and flocking to McDonald's (when they're not heading for Burger King, evidently seen ...
Topics: advertising, agriculture, business, food, health, industrial ag, messaging (all these topics)

The case for organic builds Recent studies: organic ag is just as productive, and better for you	Tom Philpott	27 Mar 2008	Gristmill
For years, industrial-food enthusiasts such as Norman Borlaug have attacked organic farming on two grounds: 1) it produces essentially the same nutritional results as chemical-intensive farming, and 2) it's less productive.Both of those criticisms are crumbling. This month, the Organic Center released a 'state of science' analysis of peer-reviewed studies comparing the nutritional content of organically and conventionally grown veggies. Organic wins by a substantial mar ...
Topics: agriculture, food, health, industrial ag, organic food, scientific research (all these topics)

Meat Wagon: Waste makes haste Canada says no to ethanol waste as cow feed, and more	Tom Philpott	26 Mar 2008	Gristmill
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat industry. Back in January, a high USDA official made a pair of statements that say a lot about how we regulate industrial food production here in the United States. On the one hand, he admitted to a journalist that feeding cows high levels of distillers grains -- a the mush leftover from corn ethanol production -- had probably contributed to a spike in cases of beef tainted with the deadly E. coli 0157 b ...
Topics: agriculture, Arkansas, Big Ag, ethanol, food, health, industrial ag (all these topics)

Still a 'jungle' out there Upton Sinclair on downer cows	Tom Philpott	19 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Regarding the record-breaking meat recall in California, involving an industrial slaughterhouse that used torture to compel downer (i.e, too sick to walk) cows to slaughter, I caught word of a passage from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (published exactly 102 years ago Monday). Forcing downer cows through the kill line and into the food supply has a long and ignominious history. (The practice of mixing meat from downer cows into the food supply, of course, played a heavy r ...
Topics: animal welfare, food, agriculture, industrial ag, health, books (all these topics)

Meat Wagon: Don't have a (downer) cow, man Despite biggest meat recall ever, 37 million pounds of suspect meat made it to schools.	Tom Philpott	18 Feb 2008	Gristmill
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat industry.In the last edition of Meat Wagon, we mentioned the scandal at an industrial-scale slaughterhouse in California, where workers had been caught on videotape torturing severely sick ("downer") cows. Horrifically enough, the workers were abusing the enfeebled animals in an attempt to get them stagger to slaughter -- where their flesh would be mixed with that of other cows, and sent to market. M ...
Topics: animal welfare, food, agriculture, industrial ag, health, education (all these topics)

Eco-Farm: Seeds of ignorance Investigative journalist reveals serious safety concerns about GM food	Tom Philpott	25 Jan 2008	Gristmill
Note: For the next few days I'll be reporting from Eco-Farm, the annual conference held by the Ecological Farming Association of California. At Eco-Farm, some 1,400-1,500 organic farmers, Big Organic marketers, and sundry sustainable-ag enthusiasts pack into a rustic, beautiful seaside conference hall an hour-and-a-half south of San Francisco to talk farming amid the dunes. I've been writing about genetically modified food since I first took up food-politics writing ...
Topics: industrial ag, food, agriculture, GMOs, health (all these topics)

Meat Wagon: Get it while it's hot Avoid burgers in Texas, Hillary gets charred for CAFO ties, and more	Tom Philpott	31 Dec 2007	Gristmill
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat industry. In a proper finale to an E. coli-tainted 2007, the USDA has issued a public-heath alert regarding 14,800 pounds of stolen hamburger meat down in Texas. Get this: the hot meat is 'thought to be contaminated with E. coli bacteria.' By my calculations, there is enough of the tainted stuff floating around Texas to produce no fewer than 74,000 quarter pounders. Texas Grist readers, don't say you we ...
Topics: agriculture, food, health, Hillary Clinton, industrial ag, Iowa, politics, Texas (all these topics)

Pollan connects the dots Why bees and pigs are not machines	Maywa Montenegro	17 Dec 2007	Gristmill
In yesterday's New York Times Magazine, Michael Pollan writes, "Two stories in the news this year, stories that on their faces would seem to have nothing to do with each other let alone with agriculture, may point to an imminent breakdown in the way we're growing food today." Can you guess what they are? Answer here.
Topics: agriculture, food, health, industrial ag, wildlife (all these topics)

From Bad to Thirst How the nation's breadbasket is poisoning its own water supply	Elizabeth Royte	16 Oct 2007	Grist Feature
In late September, the corn and soybean fields of the lower Missouri River floodplain are a lovely dull brown, nearly ready for harvest. The row crops sprawl as far as the eye can see, their regimental march broken only by levees, gravel roads, the occasional band of cottonwoods, and the endless tracks of the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe. The scenery is pastoral and soothing. But ...
Topics: agriculture, food, health, industrial ag, Mississippi River (all these topics)

Angry greens giants Inspired by the spinach scare, new California rules could wilt small farmers	Tom Philpott	04 Oct 2007	Gristmill
This is a guest essay by Judith Redmond, co-owner of Northern California's legendary Full Belly Farm and president of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers. California is on the verge of adopting a policy that would regulate all of the state's salad greens-producing farms -- including ones that sell to a local market -- as if they were huge operations that ship cross-country. That's as predictable as it is absurd -- another case of the problems caused by industri ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, California, food, health, industrial ag (all these topics)

Fowl Play Factory farms get off easy on air pollution	Amanda Griscom	19 May 2004	Muckraker
What do the National Chicken Council, the National Turkey Federation, United Egg Producers, and Tyson Foods have in common? Crying fowl. Photo: USDA. Well, first there's the obvious fowl connection. Then there's the foul connection: Their facilities, known as "concentrated animal feeding operations" (CAFOs), have growing air-pollution problems thanks to the mountains of gas-emitting excrement deposited ...
Topics: agriculture, air pollution, business, food, health, industrial ag, Muckraker, politics, US EPA (all these topics)

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