Julie's Blog
Are there heavy metals lurking in your fruit juice?
Yes, according to a recent analysis by Consumer Reports (CR). CR tested 45 fruit juices in four popular flavors—apple, grape, pear and fruit blends—sold in the U.S. and found “elevated levels” of arsenic, cadmium and lead.
The levels were “concerning,” according to CR. Even more worrisome? Toxic heavy metals were found in nearly half of the juices tested.
For millennia, women have played a central role in farming and ranching communities. Today, a new generation of women are taking on new roles of carbon farmers and ranchers managers.
In the U.S., there are more than 900,000 women farmers, according to data collected in 2012 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That means women constitute 31 percent of the agricultural sector, and contribute upwards of $12 billion to America’s economy.
Historically, men have been considered a better fit for work in the agriculture field, work often characterized as rugged and ruthless. But as regenerative agriculture becomes more popular, women are bringing unique strengths to the field.
The diseases caused by exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals in our food, environment and household and personal care products cost the U.S. $340 billion a year, says children’s environmental health expert Dr. Leonardo Trasande.
Trasande is the author of “Sicker, Fatter, Poorer,” featured on a recent CBS News segment. The book highlights the potentially harmful effects of thousands of endocrine disruptors, also known as hormone mimickers, which can interfere with the body’s endocrine system and cause adverse developmental, reproductive and neurological effects.
We’ve known for a while that Monsanto buried the truth about Roundup weedkiller by ignoring concerns by its own scientists. Now it seems Dow Chemical Co. has been using the same playbook.
Dow (renamed DowDuPont after its 2017 merger with DuPont) likely knew for decades that its widely used chlorpyrifos insecticide is harmful to humans—especially children and developing fetuses. But the company hid that information from regulators, both in the U.S. and EU, according to a new study, published in the journal Environmental Health.
An ingredient found in many everyday products is pushing wildlife towards the brink of extinction. It’s also displacing smallholder farmers and moving us closer to a climate catastrophe.
The rising demand for palm oil is contributing to deforestation worldwide, as forests are destroyed and cleared to build industrial-size palm oil plantations.
A new investigation found that the world’s biggest brands, including Unilever, Nestlé, Colgate-Palmolive and Mondelez, are responsible for destroying an area of rainforest almost twice the size of Singapore in less than three years. Why? Because they use palm oil in a variety of food and personal care products, including frozen pizzas, ice cream, cookies, chocolates, soaps, candles, makeup and detergents.
By now, most everyone knows that the pesticides used by industrial farming operations pollute the air, linger in the soil and turn up on many foods—including Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
Now, a new study suggests those pesticides could also be in your home.
A team of researchers from Cornell University conducted pesticide analyses as part of a larger effort to study pollutants in homes and childcare facilities. Scientists sampled 350 rural homes in six New York state counties, looking for more than a dozen potentially toxic pesticides commonly used in conventional farming operations.
There are about 8,700 lawsuits pending against Monsanto, by people who allege that exposure to Roundup weedkiller is responsible for their cancer. Most of the people behind these lawsuits have stories not unlike the one told by Dewayne Johnson, during his landmark jury trial which resulted in a unanimous decision against Monsanto.
Like Johnson, many of these people have non-Hodgkin lymphoma—or they have family members who have already died from the disease. They face long, grueling trials as they go up against the biotech behemoth.
Not all fair-trade certification labels are created equal, according to a new report by the Fair World Project (FWP). The report breaks down the various definitions of the most common fair-trade certifications, and the role verification programs play in the global fair trade movement.
“Fairness for Farmers: A Report Assessing the Fair Trade Movement and the Role of Certification,” identifies the fundamental differences between six fair trade product labels. It also emphasizes the importance of purchasing fair-trade certified products to ensure farmer fairness and to combat power imbalances often seen within global supply chains.
Small-scale farmers face many threats including land grabbing, unfair trade agreements, lack of government and technical support, low and volatile prices, uneven wealth distribution, corporate control of the food system, and climate change.
Global trade favors those already in power—businesses, governments, and the largest players at any stage of the supply chain whether large-scale farms, factory owners, or mega-corporations. In conventional supply chains, producers—the bottom of the chain—generally lack negotiating power and small-scale producers are further marginalized within the production sector since they are competing against bigger and better-resourced producers.
Monsanto can’t catch a break, not that it deserves one. The $50-billion mega-corporation, now owned by Bayer, has taken a beating this year, both in the courts and in the public eye.
On August 10, a jury ordered Monsanto to pay $289.2 million to a former groundskeeper who successfully argued that the company’s flagship weedkiller, Roundup, caused his cancer. A few days later, Monsanto lost its bid to keep glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, off of California’s Proposition 65 list of carcinogens.
Now this: On September 6 (2018), a Manhattan judge threw out a subpoena filed by Monsanto against an activist group, going so far as to lecture Monsanto on the importance of free speech and democracy.
The 168-page subpoena, issued on behalf of Monsanto from a New York court, would have forced the global activist organization Avaaz to hand over decade’s worth of internal campaign communications, including personal information belonging to millions of activists who signed petitions against Monsanto’s genetically modified crops and Roundup weedkiller.
Jurors will begin deliberations today in the case of Dewayne Johnson vs. Monsanto Co. following a heated showdown of closing arguments from attorneys on both sides. The deliberations are expected to last one to two days.
The plaintiff, Dewayne Johnson, a 46-year-old former groundskeeper who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma four years ago, claims Monsanto hid evidence that the active ingredient in its Roundup herbicide, glyphosate, caused his cancer. The case is the first of hundreds of similar lawsuits to go to trial, under a California law that expedites legal cases filed by terminally ill plaintiffs.https://www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto-roundup-cancer-trial
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