Category: Media Coverage
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Hillary Brenhouse, “Raw Milk Sales Could Reinvigorate U.S. Dairy Farms,” The New York Times, November 17, 2009
This New York Times special report chronicles a growing movement among organic dairy farmers to overturn state bans on the sale of unpasteurized milk. According to the report, 28 states currently allow sales of raw milk “in some form,” but the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has deemed the product “inherently dangerous” and banned its…
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Elizabeth Kolbert, “Flesh Of Your Flesh: Should You Eat Meat?,” The New Yorker, November 9, 2009
“How is it that Americans, so solicitous of the animals they keep as pets, are so indifferent toward the ones they cook for dinner?,” asks Elizabeth Kolbert in this review of Jonathan Safran Foer’s latest nonfiction work, Eating Animals. According to Kolbert, Foer attempts to tackle this inconsistency through a series of vignettes exploring the…
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Krista Mahr, “The Hunt for Tuna: A Tough Catch,” Time, November 9, 2009
Describing the world’s tuna trade as “an awesome 21st century hunt,” Mahr’s article explores how “for some species of tuna, the chase is becoming unsustainable.” In 1950, she reports, about 600,000 tons of tuna were caught worldwide while in 2008, that number hit nearly 6 million tons. Particularly worrisome are the dwindling numbers of Atlantic…
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Paul Voosen, “Trade Chaos Looms as GM Crops Proliferate,” Greenwire, November 2, 2009
The third in a five-part series about genetically modified (GM) crops, this article focuses on the frustrations of importers and exporters over stringent European rules about even trace amounts of GM material in conventional crops. Apparently, European regulators have stopped more than 10 soybean or soy meal shipments from the United States this year because…
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Experts Debate Promise of GM Crops in New York Times
The New York Times invited several agriculture experts and activists to participate in its October 26, 2009, “Room For Debate” column, which addressed the potential of genetically modified (GM) crops to alleviate world hunger and protect the environment. Although essays by both Raj Patel of the Institute for Food and Development Policy and North Carolina…
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New York Daily News Guest Columnist Peter Singer Advocates Meat Tax
A high tax on meat is needed for meat-eaters to consume less, ultimately resulting in multiple benefits to human health, animal welfare and the environment, writes Peter Singer, a Princeton University bioethics professor and author of Animal Liberation and co-author of The Ethics of What We Eat, in an October 25, 2009, guest column in the…
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Paul Voosen, “Ghost of ‘Frankenfood’ Haunts Europe,” Greenwire, October 21, 2009
The second of a five-part series, this article examines in some depth how a number of European countries came to turn their backs on genetically modified (GM) crops. Belgian scientists apparently experimented with GM plants in the 1980s and instituted 50 different field trials, positioning Europe to be a world leader in plant biotechnology. A…
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Paul Voosen, “Agriculture: Courts Force U.S. Reckoning with Dominance of GM Crops,” Greenwire, October 8, 2009
In the first of a series of reports, this article discusses the sugar beet growers from Oregon’s Willamette Valley involved in litigation that has, to date, successfully challenged U.S. Department of Agriculture decisions to deregulate genetically modified (GM) sugar beets without conducting appropriate environmental impact assessments. Organic farmers risk the loss of their EU markets…