A consumer group is suing one the largest pork producers over allegations that the company falsely advertises its products as the “safest” in the U.S. The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) filed a civil suit May 20 against Smithfield Foods, Inc., claiming they use practices that contribute to the creation of widespread diseases. The group is seeking to stop its ‘false’ advertising and marketing.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many fragile industries to the breaking point and highlighted systemic problems in others, including the industrialized, centralized food system in the U.S. Major meat processing plants have emerged as hotspots for transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
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This version is subsequent to the previous version “The future of Agriculture”, which was written by the Carbon Footprint Center in 2016 (version 1, 2016). Due to our vision to face many challenges in regards to climate change, food insecurity, water scarcity, and desertification we decided to rewrite and update the original study after the new economic development in Egypt.
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A new report released Tuesday draws attention to the worldwide decline in insects and calls for global policies to boost the conservation of both agriculture and the six-footed creatures. The publication, entitled Insect Atlas, comes from two progressive networks: Brussels-based Friends of the Earth and Berlin-based Heinrich Böll Foundation.
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Animal rights activists published an interactive map on Sunday revealing the locations of more than 27,500 farms and animal agriculture facilities, including 5,812 identified using satellite imagery, many of which do not appear in public records.
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Supermarket customers are paying more for beef than they have in decades during the coronavirus pandemic. But at the same time, the companies that process the meat for sale are paying farmers and ranchers staggeringly low prices for cattle.
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Janine Jackson interviewed the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Ricardo Salvador about the coronavirus food crisis for the May 8, 2020, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
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Last week, an Intensive Care doctor in a central Florida hospital placed a call to Mexico to the parents of Juan Santiago (pseudonym) to inform them that their son was not expected to survive the next twenty-four hours. The next day, Juan, a farmworker from Immokalee, Florida, died from complications of the novel coronavirus.
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In January 2020, an estimated 10,000 chickens perished in a fire just west of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The blaze spread quickly after reportedly activating exhaust fans in a poultry house managed by Mountaire Farms. Delaware-based Mountaire, the sixth-largest poultry company in the United States, pumps out tens of millions of pounds of ready-to-eat chicken each week.
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The Organic Consumers Association has sued Smithfield Foods Inc. in Superior Court for the District of Columbia over allegedly “deceptive food safety marketing representations about pork products.Smithfield, VA-based Smithfield Foods is accused of making marketing and advertising representations to convey to consumers, including consumers in the District of Columbia, that Smithfield brand pork products are the “safest” possible U.S. pork products.
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