Provided by Organic Consumers Fund
PORTLAND, Maine — A sustainable, healthy food system cannot be built overnight. To get local produce to your plate, a host of hands, hearts and minds has to work in harmony.
Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a city to set the agenda for the state’s “new food economy.”
An economics professor at the University of Southern Maine led a daylong conference Monday titled “Scaling up to Local,” which examined ways Maine farmers, fresh-food purveyors, politicians and institutions can work together to strengthen this system.
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Maine Department of Agriculture officials said Thursday they support easing licensing requirements for some dairy farmers who sell raw milk directly to consumers.
The debate about unpasteurized “raw milk” still divides Maine’s agriculture and dairy products community, as was evident from Thursday’s lengthy testimony before the Legislature’s Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee. But after several failed legislative efforts, advocates for allowing farmers to sell raw milk without a license might have found a path to success.
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FREEPORT — Maine parents would be wise to consider the implications of a vaccine-related bill – L.R. 1098, An Act To Require Childhood Immunization Counseling – recently introduced by Democratic Portland Rep. Richard Farnsworth.
L.R. 1098 proposes that parents who seek an exemption from the regimen of vaccines required in order for their children to attend public school in Maine now be required to attend counseling and to obtain the signature of a health care provider before their exemption will be considered.
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People who eat animals increasingly care about the way their food was treated while it lived. When the American Farm Bureau, representing large-scale agribusiness interests, funded a study to gauge just how much, its researchers found that virtually all Americans — 95 percent of us, to be exact — believe animals on farms deserve proper care.
In response, instead of grappling with consumer concerns, the pork industry is scrambling to convince people that its animals were raised and slaughtered humanely by targeting the language used to describe its cruelty, rather than the cruelty
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Chellie Pingree is not your average member of Congress. Before joining the U.S. House of Representatives in 2009, she had a long career as a state lawmaker in Maine. But before that, she spent more than a decade managing a yarn business using wool spun from sheep she had raised herself. The business boomed, and soon yarn stores and catalogs across the country were carrying Pingree’s products. And she did all of that after starting an organic farm on North Haven, a tiny island off the coast of Maine, when she was barely out of her teens.
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Organic food activists in Maine are backing a national effort to defeat a proposal that would effectively pre-empt states from requiring labeling of genetically modified food.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday will debate a resolution called the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act, which allows for disclosure of GMOs to the Food and Drug Administration but not to the general public.
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In 2013, Maine became the second state in the nation to pass a GMO labeling law.
But consumers in Maine still don’t know which foods contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs)—and they won’t, unless five nearby states, including New Hampshire, pass similar labeling laws. Take action: Tell Maine lawmakers you want the right to know what’s in your food now. It’s time to pass a clean, enforceable GMO labeling law! Read morePages
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