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
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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In an interview conducted on May 21, 2020, Pat Thomas and Sam Husseini discuss the mainstream media’s coverage of the COVID-19 crisis, including the reluctance to explore all reasonable possibilities. Husseini is a writer, journalist and communications director at The Institute for Public Accuracy.
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Despite internal research that Facebook’s platform was exploiting and exacerbating divisiveness among its users, top executives ignored the findings that the algorithms were doing the exact opposite of the company’s stated public mission to bring people together.
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Many people know that Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the world and the founder of Amazon. They have seen pictures of him and perhaps heard about his high-profile 2019 divorce. But many are not aware of the darker side of Bezos' Amazon empire, including business ventures that raise questions about privacy, surveillance and product safety.
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There’s a serious flaw in the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES Act) just passed by the House: It includes a bailout for the four largest factory farm meat companies—Tyson, Cargill, JBS and Smithfield.
Congress should help independent family farmers, who are on track to
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As COVID-19 swept through U.S. meatpacking plants (slaughterhouses currently account for almost half of the country’s hotspots), plants closed, leaving farmers with millions of animals they couldn’t get to market. This prompted Tyson to take out an ad in the New York Times,
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Few people in the United States had heard of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—the high-security biolab in Wuhan, China, that does cutting-edge research on coronaviruses—until mid-April, when the Trump administration began to imply that it might be the source of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
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As the owner of a small farm, I’m frequently amazed at how little Washington understands the work that goes into putting food on our plates, but coronavirus has made it impossible to ignore the labor of grocery store employees, farmers, processors and food producers.
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The Farm System Reform Act would prohibit new large factory farms from going into business and force others to cease expansions before halting operations entirely within two decades. Warren's support for the law comes after multiple reports of unsafe conditions in the meatpacking industry amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
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For a few fleeting moments during New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s daily coronavirus briefing on Wednesday, the somber grimace that has filled our screens for weeks was briefly replaced by something resembling a smile.
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