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| Headline |
Author |
Published |
Section |
PETA's dogma is all bark and no bite
Animal-rights group makes the stupid claim that enviros must be vegetarians |
Grist |
14 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| This is a guest essay from Alex Roth, a financial analyst, attorney, and environmentalist in Washington, D.C. Matt Prescott, a spokesperson for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, asserted last month that 'you just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist.' PETA's pronouncement is part of a cooperative campaign among a number of animal-rights groups. Their message is that meat production exacerbates global warming. PETA will lead the charge by dispatching an ... |
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| Topics: animal welfare, environmental movement, food, messaging, vegetarianism and veganism (all these topics) |
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Trouble Cropping Up
Climate change will cause agricultural output to decline significantly, says study |
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13 Sep 2007 |
News |
| Posted at 4:43 PM on 13 Sep 2007 Attention, people who eat: Climate change could cause global agriculture output to decline by up to 16 percent by 2080, according to a new study from the Center for Global Development and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Like life itself, the allocation won't be fair: productivity is likely to generally decline in developing countries -- Indi ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, climate, climate change impacts, food, news (all these topics) |
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Can You Greenwash Yourself With It?
Talking Rain adds organic water flavors |
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13 Sep 2007 |
News |
| Posted at 3:18 PM on 13 Sep 2007 Talking Rain now has four flavors of organic bottled water. Wow. From the Archives Permanent Depress. Top 10 most polluted places on earth tallied by Blacksmith Institute. Science Friction. U.S. climate-change research found inadequate in many ways. Swap Meat. Study says eating less red meat improves health, helps fight climate change. News Archives |
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| Topics: food, green living, greenwashing, news (all these topics) |
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Swap Meat
Study says eating less red meat improves health, helps fight climate change |
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13 Sep 2007 |
News |
| Posted at 11:49 AM on 13 Sep 2007 The British medical journal The Lancet published a study this week that advises people in rich countries to eat less red meat in order to help mitigate climate change and boost their health. Far from advocating citizens of the world entirely eschew meat, the study advised a climate-friendly cut in red-meat consumption of 10 percent of the world average by 2050; the average is c ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, climate change mitigation, food, news (all these topics) |
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Guest movie review: King Corn
Children of the corn armed with movie cameras |
Tom Philpott |
13 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| This is a guest post by Nicole de Beaufort, a long-time advocate for local, sustainable, and accessible food systems. She is principal of Fourth Sector Consulting in North Oaks, Minn., which employs strategic communications to work with food system advocates and funders to mobilize the growing food movement. The film King Corn is set to open in theaters nationwide starting Oct. 12 in New York. ----- In 1977, Stephen King published a short story in Penthouse about some ... |
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| Topics: ag policy, agriculture, food, Iowa, movies (all these topics) |
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Gilled Complex
On vegetarian remorse |
Umbra Fisk |
12 Sep 2007 |
Ask Umbra |
| Dear Umbra, I've been a vegetarian for almost 10 years. I started when I was 15, on pretty much a whim just to see if I could do it, but since then I've come to appreciate what I'm doing for my body and the planet. Lately, though, whether from boredom or subconscious protein cravings, I've been thinking about reintroducing fish to my diet. For convenience, variety, and health, I think it could be a good thing. But I don't want to go ... |
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| Topics: advice, Ask Umbra, food, green living (all these topics) |
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Is eating local the best choice?
Strengthening community is an important benefit of eating locally |
David Morris |
12 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| The following is a guest essay originally posted at AlterNet by David Morris, vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Some 30 years ago NASA came up with another big idea: assemble vast solar electric arrays in space and beam the energy to earth. The environmental community did not dismiss NASA's vision out of hand. After all, the sun shines 24 hours a day in space. A solar cell on earth harnesses only about four hours equivalent of full sunshin ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, food, local food, placemaking (all these topics) |
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'OECD warns against biofuels subsidies'
Biofuels subsidies will only lead to increased food costs and habitat destruction |
Jason D Scorse |
11 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| This, courtesy of the Financial Times, is a welcome development. Hopefully, the Doha Round of the GATT will get restarted, and this can be addressed in addition to the more general discussion of agricultural subsidies. |
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| Topics: ag subsidies, agriculture, biofuels, energy, food, habitat loss (all these topics) |
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A Summer Send-Off
As the season fades, it's time for one last blueberry blowout |
Roz Cummins |
06 Sep 2007 |
'Tis the Season |
| Before summer gets away from me entirely, I'd like to share a few more moments from the Northeast Organic Farming Association conference I went to a couple of weeks ago. (By the way, I referred to it as the Farmers' Association last time, which may seem like a small difference, but is actually an important one: you need not be a farmer to be a member.) It was a berry good year. Photo: iStoc ... |
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| Topics: food, organic food, recipes, Tis the Season (all these topics) |
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It's about damned time
ConAgra: No more toxic fake butter |
Tom Philpott |
06 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Clearly not responding to my post from yesterday -- but rather to steady pressure from the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy and other groups -- ConAgra announced it would stop using diacetyl in its Orville Redenbacher and Act II microwave popcorn brands. Diacetyl, a fake butter flavoring, has been known for years to cause severe lung damage among food-industry workers who inhale it in vapor form. New evidence suggests that it also harms consumers. Th ... |
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| Topics: business, food, health, toxics (all these topics) |
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Take this box and check it
Japan offers Micky D's as reward for climate change promises |
Sarah van Schagen |
05 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Today, in Japan: A Japanese government website crashed Wednesday as people raced to take up an offer of a half-price McDonald's hamburger in exchange for pledging to fight global warming. ... People were asked to check up to 39 boxes on a form they could download from the environment ministry's website, each listing a way of reducing carbon dioxide emissions blamed for global warming. ... The 39 measures range from cutting air conditioning use to ... |
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| Topics: climate, climate change mitigation, food, Japan (all these topics) |
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'Popcorn lung' and the collapse of government oversight
While the FDA and EPA look away, noxious fumes from fake butter wreck lungs |
Tom Philpott |
04 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Back in May, I drew attention to the remarkable fact that food-industry workers are literally dying from exposure to a key ingredient in microwave popcorn. The food additive diacetyl (responsible for that "buttery note" in nuked popcorn and also in margarine) emits a noxious fume when heated up -- one that can literally destroy people's lungs in high concentrations. Exposure to diacetyl has been decisively linked to a condition known with chilling accuracy ... |
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| Topics: food, health, toxics, US EPA (all these topics) |
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Edible media: Local yokel
'Extreme localism' in the New Yorker |
Tom Philpott |
03 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Edible Media takes an occasional look at interesting or deplorable food journalism. Whatever else it has accomplished, the local-food movement has certainly conquered the appetites of New York's influential food-media editors. Following the lead of Gourmet, glossy mags like Food & Wine and Bon Appetit now offer regular paeans to place-based eating. The New York Times Wednesday food section sometimes seems like the house organ of the city's burgeoning eat-l ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, food, local food (all these topics) |
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Driving Us to Vegetarianism
Animal-rights groups say meat-eating worse for climate than driving |
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30 Aug 2007 |
Daily Grist |
| Driving Us to Vegetarianism Animal-rights groups say meat-eating worse for climate than driving With which instrument do you cause more greenhouse-gas emissions: your car key or your fork? It's a question asked in an advertising campaign by the Humane Society, which, along with other big animal-rights groups, is striving to open consumers' eyes to an oft-overlooked connec ... |
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| Topics: advertising, animal welfare, food, green living, news, vegetarianism and veganism (all these topics) |
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Import-Export Business
How globalization is smothering U.S. fruit and vegetable farms |
Tom Philpott |
30 Aug 2007 |
Victual Reality |
| Earlier this month, President Bush roiled U.S. vegetable farmers by announcing a crackdown on undocumented workers. Last week, industrial-meat giant Smithfield Foods goosed the hog-futures market by inking a deal to export 60 million pounds of U.S.-grown pork to China. These events, unrelated though they seem, illustrate a common point: that despite all the recent fuss around loc ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, business, food, international politics, Victual Reality (all these topics) |
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The Shrimp and Petroleum Festival...
... for real |
Roz Cummins |
30 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| It sounds like an unappetizing combination, I know, but it's for real: http://www.shrimp-petrofest.org/ |
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| Topics: fishing, food, funnies, Louisiana, oil (all these topics) |
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The Cornucopia Institute bags another one
USDA brings the enforcement hammer down on nation's largest organic dairy producer |
David Roberts |
30 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| This, fresh from the Cornucopia Institute, is big news: Tonight at 7:20 p.m. EST, August 29, the USDA issued an emergency news release announcing that they had sent a Letter of Revocation to the Aurora Organic Dairy. In lieu of revoking Aurora's organic certification, the Agency has instead entered into a consent agreement requiring the nation's largest certified organic dairy to make substantial and wide-ranging changes to the livestock management practices a ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, Department of Agriculture, food, organic food (all these topics) |
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We Have Some Hypocritical Coworkers
Animal-rights groups point out the climatic effect of meat-eating |
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29 Aug 2007 |
News |
| Posted at 4:50 PM on 29 Aug 2007 With which instrument do you cause more greenhouse-gas emissions: your car key or your fork? It's a question asked in an advertising campaign by the Humane Society, which, along with other big animal-rights groups, is striving to open consumers' eyes to an oft-overlooked connection: the climatic impact of eating meat. Bolstered by a recent United Nations report ... |
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| Topics: animal welfare, food, green living, news, vegetarianism and veganism (all these topics) |
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A Shareable Feast
On singles and CSAs |
Umbra Fisk |
29 Aug 2007 |
Ask Umbra |
| Hi Umbra! I've held back from joining a CSA because 1) I live alone and am worried about wasting food, and 2) I'm worried I'll get so much oddball stuff, especially in the winter, that I won't know what to do with it. I figure I can overcome No. 1 by seeking out some sufficiently hip neighbors and seeing if they want to share (although someone cautioned me that it gets hard to split the choice stuff -- she mentioned an incident with ... |
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| Topics: advice, agriculture, Ask Umbra, food, sustainable ag (all these topics) |
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More cleverness from Free Range Studios
A short video called 'The Farm Bill Food Battle' |
JMG |
29 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Funny and smart. |
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| Topics: food, agriculture (all these topics) |
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Attack of the Helpful Tomatoes
Radiation breeding of plants is way better than it sounds |
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28 Aug 2007 |
News |
| Posted at 3:47 PM on 28 Aug 2007 Think two wrongs don't make a right? Meet radiation breeding, a method of modifying crops by zapping them with gamma rays. While "radiation" and "modify" are unpleasant words to many, "I'm not doing anything different from what nature does. I'm not using anything that was not in the genetic material itself," says plant breeder Pierre Lagoda. The ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, food, GMOs, news (all these topics) |
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I scream against ice cream consolidation
How to stick it to the ice-cream Man |
Tom Philpott |
28 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| I've written a lot about the consolidation of U.S. food markets, and have become jaded to facts such as: just four firms slaughter 83.5 percent of cows, and so on. But I actually gagged on my ice cream when I read this bit in BusinessWeek: The days of mom-and-pop parlors and local brands are fading fast. Today, the $59 billion ice cream industry is dominated by two global giants: Switzerland's Nestlé (NESN.DE) and Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Unilever (UN). Togeth ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, business, food, green living, industrial ag, local food, recipes (all these topics) |
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Gardens in the hood
Urban agriculture does more than provide healthy food for those who need it |
David Roberts |
27 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Phoebe Connelly and Chelsea Ross have a detailed and incredibly heartening story on urban agriculture in In These Times. It focuses on urban ag projects that target inner city "food deserts," where liquor stores outnumber groceries 20-to-1 and the most easily available food is fried. It's not just about food, though: 'We are what most folks would consider organic, but we're not certified,' the Food Project's Burns says. 'That's not as important to us. We' ... |
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| Topics: food, gardening, health, placemaking, sustainable ag (all these topics) |
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Udderly awesome
Starbucks vows to make 100 percent of its milk rBGH-free |
Glenn Hurowitz |
27 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| If you haven't been ordering that double whipped Frappuccino at your local Starbucks with soy milk, you've likely been gulping down Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH). It makes cows produce more milk, but it's thought to increase the risk of breast, prostate, and colon cancer in humans (if only they could come up with something to make cows squirt machiatto directly from their udders). But now, after two years of pressure from the organization Food and Wate ... |
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| Topics: business, food, greening biz operations, organic food (all these topics) |
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Your food mileage may vary
A small grocery chain uses food mileage as an advertising tactic |
JMG |
27 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Roth's, a tiny (11 store) grocery chain in Oregon's mid-Willamette Valley, is promoting a 'Go Local' campaign that's interesting in many respects, including its 'Support our Northwest food system' slogan and ads: 'Go Local' products are grown, caught, or produced in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, or Northern California. Look for the 'Go Local' icon on products in your weekly Roth's ad. Buying these products will help build a regional food economy, ensuring farms in our community [ ... |
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| Topics: consumerism, food, local food (all these topics) |
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