Controversial ag spending bill defunds local food systems, promotes meat monopoly

Capitol Building - Wiki Commons Image

Rady Ananda, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Plutocrats aimed another weapon at the nation’s poor and at small and midsized farmers, this time thru the 2012 agriculture appropriations bill, H.R. 2112, which the House passed on June 16. The 82-page bill returns some federal spending to 2006 levels and others to 2008 levels.

Now being reviewed by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, the final version of HR 2112 will lay the terrain on which the 2012 Farm Bill will be crafted. The House Agriculture Committee began preparatory hearings on the 2012 Farm Bill this week, reports NSAC.

Key sections provide deep cuts to domestic food programs, threatening food banks, low-income seniors, women and children, and farmers markets supported by WIC vouchers issued thru the Women, Infants and Children program.

The Indignity of Industrial Tomatoes

Tasteless, indestructible and picked by literal slaves, our favorite fruit has become a national shame

Heirloom Tomatoes - Wiki Image

Barry Estabrook
Gilt Taste

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook/Andrews McMeel Publishing

My obituary's headline would have read "Food Writer Killed by Flying Tomato."

On a visit to my parents in Naples, Florida, I was driving I-75 when I came up behind one of those gravel trucks that seem to be everywhere in southwest Florida's rush to convert pine woods and cypress stands into gated communities and shopping malls. As I drew closer, I saw that the tractor trailer was heavy with what seemed to be green apples. When I pulled out to pass, three of them sailed off the truck, narrowly missing my windshield. Every time it hit the slightest bump, more of those orbs would tumble off. At the first stoplight, I got a closer look. The shoulder of the road was littered with green tomatoes so plasticine and so identical they could have been stamped out by a machine. Most looked smooth and unblemished. A few had cracks in their skins. Not one was smashed. A 10-foot drop followed by a 60-mile-per- hour impact with pavement is no big deal to a modern, agribusiness tomato.

If you have ever eaten a fresh tomato from a grocery store or restaurant, chances are good that you have eaten a tomato much like the ones aboard that truck. Florida alone accounts for one-third of the fresh tomatoes raised in the United States, and from October to June, virtually all the fresh-market, field-grown tomatoes in the country come from the Sunshine State, which ships more than one billion pounds every year. It takes a tough tomato to stand up to the indignity of such industrial scale farming, so most Florida tomatoes are bred for hardness, picked when still firm and green (the merest trace of pink is taboo), and artificially gassed with ethylene in warehouses until they acquire the rosy red skin tones of a ripe tomato.

Agriculture industry science denial?

Antibiotics used in meat production - Remapping Debate

Eric Kroh
Remapping Debate

Remapping Debate has previously reported on attempts to “repeal” climate science; it appears that the U.S. agricultural industry’s widespread use of antibiotics in animals used for food is another area where science denial is at play.  Even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization are united in concluding that such use leads to human exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the industry is actively fighting efforts to restrict the routine, non-medical use of antibiotics in animals, and the FDA has yet to impose a ban.

The problem — which the FDA and sister organizations say is a risk to public health — is already enormous, and it is growing.  According to the CDC, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, an antibiotic-resistant bacteria commonly known as MRSA, kills an estimated 19,000 people per year in the United States. The cost of fighting antibiotic-resistant microbes exceeds $20 billion per year.

Medical misuse of antibiotics in humans is part of the problem.  But another contributor is the misuse of the drugs in food animals. According to the FDA, a staggering 80 percent of the antibiotics used in the United States is used on livestock animals.

Livestock producers do not simply use antibiotics to treat sick animals. They also use antibiotics to promote growth or feed efficiency. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that 70 percent of the antibiotics used in the U.S. is used in food animals for non-therapeutic reasons — that is, for reasons other than treating disease. According to the FDA, 90 percent of the antibiotics given to animals is distributed via animal feed or water, a method that critics say is used primarily for non-therapeutic reasons.

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Factory Farms Produce 100 Times More Waste Than All People In the US Combined

"Factory farms are dangerous to the environment; they are ticking time bombs of manure just waiting to be spilled into public waters."

Jill Richardson
AlterNet

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently delivered a major victory to factory farms. Under a 2008 EPA rule, any confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) "designed, constructed, operated, and maintained in a manner such that the CAFO will discharge" animal waste must apply for a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit under the Clean Water Act. The livestock industry ridiculed the notion that a farm must apply for a permit to discharge manure whether it intended to discharge it or not. And while, when phrased that way, it might sound ridiculous to you too, the details of the case betray a different story.

David Kirby, author of Animal Factory, The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment, tells story after story in his book of factory farms discharging waste irresponsibly -- sometimes on purpose, and sometimes not. As Karen Hudson, whose story is told in the book, says, "Factory farms are dangerous to the environment; they are ticking time bombs of manure just waiting to be spilled into public waters."

Planet for Sale: Big Ag Buying Up World's Fertile Land (Documentary)

Farm Land Grab

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The Agribusiness Juggernaut: Assault on Nature, Threat to Human Survival

"Burning Orchids" by Richard William Posner

Richard William Posner

Activist Post 

Organic food has become one of the fastest growing segments of U.S. agriculture.  In all probability, however, it will be virtually impossible to obtain anyreal organic food in the not-too-distant future. 

Monsanto, a giant in agricultural biogenetics and holder of patents on several genetically modified organisms (GMOs), is working to corner the global market on Life. Their genetically modified (GM) crops -- some complete with suicide genes which render their seeds infertile and others genetically resistant to herbicides -- are intended to ultimately overrun all natural crops, making Monsanto quite literally the sole owner of all food crops on Earth.

These GM crops will ultimately be the only game in town and, therefore, every vegetable, fruit or grain you eat will be a genetically modified organism (GMO). The same will apply to every form of feed used for livestock, poultry and any creature whatsoever that is raised as a source of food for humans. It's even quite certain that food animals themselves will be subjected to the same sort of genetic manipulation that is now being used on crops.  In fact, genetically modified salmon could be available at a supermarket near you sooner than you think. 

Big Ag Lobbies Want to Make it Illegal to Secretly Film Animal Abuse

Activist Post

Big Agribusiness is fed up with pesky animal rights activists who expose abuses of farm animals on film.  According to the Associated Press, agriculture committees in the Iowa state government have approved a bill to outlaw secret filming of animal abuses and punish the accused with a $7500 fine and up to five years in jail.



Strangely, consumers may actually want to know if their meat is being electrocuted, beaten, or ground up alive as some recent videos have exposed.  Consumers may also want to know what the animals eat, if they ever see sunlight, if they are injected with chemicals, or even genetically cloned. Since the FDA does little to shine light on these and other concerns, activists have been the only source of this information.  Now, they will face jail time for doing so if this measure passes.