Politics & Globalization
International trade agreements force the U.S. and other participting countries to "harmonize" food and envrironmental safety standards to the lowest common denominator. Often these agreements are negotiated behind closed doors, shutting out Congress and the public, while granting corporations and trade associations a seat at the table. It's no surprise that these agreements give transnational corporations "special rights", allowing companies to challenge individual countries' environmental, worker and food safety laws and regulations.
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Rose and Ronnie· Joe volunteer© 2008
An institute whose experts have occupied key positions on EU and UN regulatory panels is, in reality, an industry lobby group that masquerades as a scientific health charity, according to a peer-reviewed study. The Washington-based International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) describes its mission as “pursuing objectivity, clarity and reproducibility” to “benefit the public good”.
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According to Reuters, 285 square miles of forest was cleared in May, the highest one month total in a decade. The information comes from Brazilian space research institute INPE's DETER alert system. "If this upward curve continues, we could have a bad year for the Amazon forest," said INPE satellite monitoring head Claudio Almeida.
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Industry sponsorship of public health research has received increasing scrutiny, and, as a result, many multinational corporations (MNCs), such as The Coca-Cola Company and Mars Inc., have committed to transparency with regard to what they fund, and the findings of funded research.
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The Trump administration would exempt many new genetically engineered crops from regulation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture under a broad overhaul of biotechnology rules announced on Wednesday. The overhaul, which the department said would cut the cost of developing genetically engineered plants, would exempt crops with traits “similar in kind” to modifications that could be produced through traditional breeding techniques.
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Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the oil and gas production technology that has positioned the United States as the global leader in fossil fuel production and caused environmental controversies across the country. While some Democrats have pushed for tougher regulation of the industry, fracking has generally enjoyed political support from politicians in both parties since the technology began unlocking massive oil and gas reserves well over a decade ago.
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By late 2016, many of the nation’s 25,000 chicken farmers said they had grown bitterly frustrated by the administration of President Barack Obama. Under Obama, top officials had promised to help farmers by tightening regulations on meat processing companies, which for decades had been growing bigger and more powerful.
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New data suggest that a few farms are cashing in on President Trump’s farm bailout in a way that’s not quite in the spirit of the rules. Though no single person was supposed to receive more than $125,000 from 2018’s $12-billion bailout program, The New Food Economy has found that at least one farm has received more than $2 million.
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A bill introduced in Congress today that would temporarily halt agribusiness mergers and launch an effort to improve antitrust enforcement is urgently needed for family farmers struggling with noncompetitive markets that are influencing high costs and low prices, says the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
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Amidst all the bad news, scandals and neo-fascist machinations in Washington, there is some good news on the political front: A number of leading Democratic Party candidates for president, including U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), emboldened by a wave of grassroots action on the part of the youth-powered Sunrise Movement and
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Vivian Song of Sacramento tries to keep up with the latest makeup trends. While she pays attention to the ingredients in her beauty routine, she says others are clueless. “Not a lot of girls know what they’re putting on their face,” she said. “Whatever’s trending, they’re going to put it on.”
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