Thanks to Virginia Clarke of SAFSF for today’s great and shocking food news…
The White House Garden: Michelle Obama Is The First
Lady of Food Policy (VIDEO)
Huffington Post Article Published September 1, 2009
The White House just released a new video about the kitchen
garden as the second installment of their “Inside The White House”
series. The video is not just fun fiuff with nice shots of vegetables. In it,
Michelle Obama makes historic statements about the importance of food, healthy
eating, family meals, instilling children with lessons about food choices, and
even more boldly, changing the way America eats.
ORIGINAL VIDEO FROM THE WHITE HOUSE
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Big Food rallies against climate change legislation
Food Navigator-USA Article Published August 17, 2009
Multinational food and agritech giants are banding together
in a bid to throw light on areas of climate change legislation they warn could
severely hike food prices. The consortium that includes Cargill, General Mills,
Tyson Foods and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, is preparing to release
studies it says will demonstrate the potentially drastic effect global warming
could have on the cost of food items.
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Pain-free animals could take suffering out of farming
NewScientist Article Published September 2, 2009
Animals should be genetically modified so they don’t feel
pain, according to Adam Shriver, a philosopher at Washington University.
“If we can’t do away with factory farming, we should at least take steps
to minimise the amount of suffering that is caused,” says Shriver, who
contends that genetically engineered pain-free animals are the most acceptable
alternative. Progress in neuroscience and genetics in recent years makes
Shiver’s ‘solution’ a very real possibility. Shiver’s suggestions have provoked
considerable resistance, critics have highlighted that rearing ‘pain-free’
animals does not make intensive agriculture okay – “Large farms have
become an environmental disaster,” said Alan Goldberg at Johns Hopkins
University. They generate enormous amounts of waste and greenhouse gases and
breed antibiotic resistance. “I think factory farms have to go, it’s that
simple.”
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Born to Be Big
Newsweek Article Published September 11, 2009
In 2006 scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health
reported that the prevalence of obesity in infants under 6 months had risen 73
percent since 1980… The search for the non-obvious has led to a familiar
villain: early-life exposure to traces of chemicals in the environment.
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Wendell Berry’s Wisdom by Michael Pollan
The Nation Published September 2, 2009
A few days after Michelle Obama broke ground on an organic
vegetable garden on the South Lawn of the White House in March, the business
section of the Sunday New York Times published a cover story bearing the
headline Is a Food Revolution Now in Season?… But the national conversation
unfolding around the subject of food and farming really began in the 1970s,
with the work of writers like Wendell Berry, Frances Moore Lappé, Barry
Commoner and Joan Gussow.