Overuse or misuse of antibiotics in humans and animals can lead to antibiotic resistance, increasing the risk that antibiotics will not be effective when needed. In a finding that suggests organic is best, a new study indicates that chickens raised without antibiotics may have fewer types of antibiotic-resistant salmonella than animals raised at factory farms.
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By some estimates, Americans send about 300m pounds of feces daily from the nation’s toilets to wastewater treatment plants. While the water is cleaned and discharged, the remaining toxic sewage sludge stays at the treatment plant, and it’s what Sierra Club environmentalist Nancy Raine calls “the most pollutant-rich manmade substance on Earth”.
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This week's UN Climate Action Summit will be tricky for agribusiness CEOs. With forest fires raging in the Amazon, a damning new report about the food system by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and millions of young people out in streets clamouring to shut down fossil fuels and factory farming, it will be hard for the world's largest food and agribusiness companies to get away with another round of voluntary pledges to reduce their gigantic emissions.
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According to the company website, D’Artagnan’s foie gras “is considered a great delicacy around the world.”
But if you’re eating D’Artagnan’s foie gras, what you’re actually eating is the diseased liver of a tortured duck or goose.
Samples of D’Artagnan’s foie gras, submitted by Organic Consumers Association for independent lab testing, confirm that the product is made from the livers of ducks that suffer from “severe hepatic lipidosis,” or what’s commonly known as fatty liver disease.
Setting aside the “yuck” factor for a minute, what do these test results mean?
They mean that the birds used to produce this “great delicacy” for consumers lived painful, tortured lives.
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Climate change action plans often call for less fossil fuel usage, reduced carbon dioxide emissions and a shift toward renewable energy sources. But one area that hasn’t received the broader attention it deserves is industrial farming.
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The public is providing more than $1m per minute in global farm subsidies, much of which is driving the climate crisis and destruction of wildlife, according to a new report. Just 1% of the $700bn (£560bn) a year given to farmers is used to benefit the environment, the analysis found. Much of the total instead promotes high-emission cattle production, forest destruction and pollution from the overuse of fertiliser.
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Five years after joining in a historic commitment to stop cutting the world's forests, governments and companies are not only failing to slow deforestation, they are rapidly driving the disappearance of more trees.
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When it comes to the global climate crisis, carbon dioxide emissions represent a problem that's massive, intractable and running short on time to solve. But it's not the only problem. Other pollutants are rapidly warming our climate, too, sending scientists on a race to understand their implications before it's too late.
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Companies producing more than 90% of America’s chicken have conspired to depress wages for a largely immigrant work force in some of the nation’s most dangerous jobs, according to a lawsuit. The case filed last week is mostly based on interviews with former employees, and claims the conspiracy among 18 companies, their subsidiaries and affiliates and two consulting firms continues until today.
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Not since the Rev Jesse Jackson’s candidacy for the Democratic nomination in 1988 have we seen presidential hopefuls so fiercely and consistently bring the issues facing family farmers into the national conversation. This year, five candidates for the Democratic nomination say they support a ban on factory farms.
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