Articles by Tom Laskawy
A 17-year veteran of both traditional and online media, Tom Laskawy is a founder and executive director of the Food & Environment Reporting Network and a contributing writer at Grist covering food and agricultural policy. Tom's long and winding road to food politics writing passed through New York, Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, Florence, Italy, and Philadelphia (which has a vibrant progressive food politics and sustainable agriculture scene, thank you very much). In addition to Grist, his writing has appeared online in The American Prospect, Slate, The New York Times, and The New Republic. He is on record as believing that wrecking the planet is a bad idea. Follow him on Twitter.
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Monsanto cash helped fund bill to stifle whistleblowers in Iowa
Monsanto: See no evil, speak no evil in Iowa’s factory farms.Speaking of Monsanto, it turns out they are playing a role in Iowa’s proposed anti-whistleblower bill — a bill focused primarily on agriculture. Should the bill pass, it will become illegal to produce undercover videos at various types of agricultural facilities (as well as to get a […]
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Reversing roles, farmers sue Monsanto over GMO seeds
Genetically modified seed giant Monsanto is notorious for suing farmers [PDF] in defense of its patent claims. But now, a group of dozens of organic farmers and food activists have, with the help of the not-for-profit law center The Public Patent Foundation, sued Monsanto in a case that could forever alter the way genetically modified […]
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While the rich get richer, the rest of us pay more for less at the supermarket
The New York Times reports that food companies are embarked on a “stealth” strategy to hike prices by significantly shrinking packages without changing the price. For example, canned vegetables are down to thirteen from sixteen ounces (one shopper observed that she found an eleven ounce can of corn recently). Sugar is now sometimes sold in […]
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Another week, another attempt to shield factory farms from public scrutiny
Above: Last spring, a Humane Society of the United States investigtor, posing as an employee, got a camera into an egg factory to film conditions there. If Iowa lawmakers have their way, such muckraking will be illegal. ——— It’s not just Florida. In what appears to be a growing movement, industrial farmers have convinced Iowa […]
