• Food

Bayer Forging Ahead with New GE Corn That Can Withstand 5 Herbicides

• Bayer
• cancer
• corn
• dicamba
• genetically engineered
• glyphosate
• herbicides
• Monsanto
• Roundup
• science

Bayer, the parent company of Monsanto, is “forging ahead” with developing genetically engineered (GE) crops that could be used with at least five herbicides at once, Lisa Held reported last week in Civil Eats.

Why This Matters:  The fact that Bayer is likely to get approval for this new crop, which would be resistant to the active chemical in Roundup, suggests that the losses in court had and will continue to have little impact on the company’s trajectory. Just because these herbicides won’t “harm” GE corn does not mean they won’t harm us.

• Food

Heroes of the Week: LGBTQ Farmers Changing Hearts and Minds Through Food

As Pride Month has come to a close, we wanted to recognize members of the LGBTQ+ community who are breaking down barriers —  gastronomic and cultural.  Earlier this week a blog on Ecowatch.com called Food Tank spotlighted 24 collectives, farms, and other organizations that are working to strengthen LGBTQ+ representation in the food system, which […]

• Food

US Fishing Industry Hopes You Will #EatSeafoodAmerica

• conservation
• domestic
• fisheries
• fishers
• ocean
• overfishing
• science
• seafood
• sustainable
• traceable

With supermarkets running low on meat, seafood is a healthy option, and sales of frozen seafood like shrimp and canned seafood (much of which is imported) are up over last year, according to some retailers.  Most of the domestic seafood landed and sold in the U.S. comes from small fishing businesses and goes to restaurants and those sales are down as much as 95% across the country.

Why This Matters:  Congress provided $300m for fishers in stimulus funding, but it is only a “drop in the bucket” of what is needed to keep fishers afloat said Alaskan commercial fisher Julie Decker on Tuesday at a forum convened by the Ocean Caucus Foundation.

• Food

Will The Pandemic “Cure” America’s Addiction to Cheap Meat?

• Beyond Burgers
• COVID-19
• food
• meat
• meatpacking plants
• plant-based meat

Eating meat is as American as apple pie, so baked into our culture and identity that President Trump declared meatpacking plants so essential that he ordered them to stay open. Some grocery chains such as Costco and Kroger are limiting the amount of meat consumers can buy, and prices are spiking too.  Meanwhile, plant-based meats are flying off the shelves.

Why This Matters:  Thanks to the virus, Americans may now be forced to learn how to eat less meat and why that might be good for them.

• Food

Coronavirus Forces a Conversation About Industrial Animal Agriculture

• agribusiness
• agriculture
• animal welfare
• CAFOs

We wrote the other week that the coronavirus epidemic is wreaking havoc on the meat industry forcing farmers to euthanize animals. This coupled with new research showing that the next global public health crisis could come to us through industrial animal agriculture has made it clear that we need to rethink large-scale animal farming. As […]

• Food

Hero of the Week: Smithfield Foods Whistleblower

• #COVID19
• coronavirus
• food safety
• meat
• OSHA
• workers

This week an anonymous employee at a Smithfield Foods meat processing facility wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post exposing the dangers that workers are subjected to in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak at the plant. The meat processing industry has been a hub of coronavirus outbreaks and workers are terrified to have to […]