Climate Food and Agriculture

A former McDonald’s cook explains his return to the family farm

Working at McDonald’s got me to college, for which I thank the world’s largest restaurant chain. I worked there for three years, beginning at about $1 an hour, during the middle of the 20th century. Back then, a buck bought something. I consumed tons of hamburgers and fries and gallons of milkshakes for free — […]

Donate wild salmon instead of tuna

It's hard to believe that the holiday season is already upon us. Despite the mall stampedes, fruitcake overload, never-ending traffic jams, and hideous reindeer sweaters, I'm looking forward to spending the holidays with my family. I can almost taste my mother's mince pie, and I am ready to play backyard soccer and touch football with my daughters and my nieces and nephews.

The film opens nationwide Friday

Find out what author Eric Schlosser has to say about the film.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I sat down in the mostly empty theater for the press screening of Fast Food Nation last month. The book is fascinating ... but fact-heavy and not character-driven. I knew this movie was a narrative, following the lives of fictional workers producing (and marketing and serving and eating) food at fictional fast-food chain "Mickey's." I had seen the trailer featuring Little Miss Sunshine cutie Paul Dano serving a "Big One" from off the prep-room floor and Greg Kinnear getting a whiff of "smoky meat" flavoring. I thought the movie might even be a comedy.

But I left the theater feeling like I had seen a horror film. During many of the meat-packing scenes, the gore-level was on par with something like Saw III. (Or I would assume, anyway -- my eyes were closed during the most gruesome scenes. And I've never seen Saw III ... but both involve large saws.) The scariest part about the film, though, is that -- to the best of Eric Schlosser's and Richard Linklater's screenwriting abilities -- it accurately portrays the fast-food industry.

The Case of the Mislabeled Case

Wal-Mart accused of incorrectly labeling organic products Ah, Wal-Mart — always reliable for some good old-fashioned eco-drama. This week, the Cornucopia Institute, an activist group representing small farmers, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture that accuses Wal-Mart of incorrectly labeling or otherwise misrepresenting various products as organic in some stores. Visiting a […]

Watchdog group files complaint with USDA

Wal-Mart has been mislabeling non-organic food items as organic, charges the Cornucopia Institute in a complaint filed with the USDA. Reports the AP:

Calls the Mounties — someone’s enjoying locally raised meat in rural Ontario

A couple of weeks ago in my Victual Reality column I wondered why more farm areas don't focus on growing food for local consumption, since the global commodity market had proven such an economic disaster.

I acknowledged one key problem: the collapse of local food infrastructure after 50 years of investments in stuff like grain elevators and train systems designed to haul food far, far away.

I forgot to add a factor I mentioned in an earlier column: federal regulations, designed with mega-producers in mind, are a crushing weight on small-scale artisanal operators.

Together, these two factors can deal a death blow to people's extraordinary efforts to rebuild local food networks.

An email I received yesterday from the Community Food Security Coalition's excellent listserv illustrates these points to maddening effect.

Why everyone should be allowed to love food with unrestrained glee

I spend hours at a time in the kitchen, I approach my morning coffee with a quasi-religious fervor, and the attention I grant beer and wine selection can border on the Talmudic. Am I a food snob? Diverse authorities — including my mother, a certain Grist writer, and several friends — have claimed as much. […]

Worldwatch releases a hopeful plan for saving the world’s fish.

There's no shortage of reasons it would really suck if present trends continued and the world's oceans stopped supporting a robust fish population.

For one, it would deal a devastating blow to human nutrition and cuisine. The sea provides us with high-quality protein and many other valuable nutrients. Poof? Gone? (Don't be smug, vegans. Fish emulsion -- ground-up fish -- is a common and valuable input for organic vegetable farming.)

As for cuisine, can anyone really bear to contemplate Southeast Asian food without fish? Then there's Italian. No spaghetti alle vongole (clams)? Or that immortal Sicilian dish, pasta con sarde (sardines)? What, the southern French won't get to make bouillabaisse, the Basques will be robbed of their cod, the coastal Mexicans can no longer do hauchinango al mojo de ajo (garlic-crusted red snapper)? What will become of Vera Cruz? Of New Orleans?

No. This is wholly unacceptable. It won't do. Such a world does not interest me. Present trends must not continue; they must end immediately.

Adventures in Agriculture

U.S. gets approval for ozone-depleting pesticide, despite international objections Pursuing its goal of world destruction (mwahaha!), the U.S. won approval to continue using and making a pesticide banned under an international ozone treaty. The decision, which countered the recommendation of the treaty’s technical committee, allows a 5,900-ton methyl bromide exemption in 2008 — less than […]

Go veggie — a poll

With Science about the collapse of the world's fisheries, I think it's appropriate once again to examine a topic that doesn't get enough attention: our diets. Not only does eating fish exacerbate the collapse of marine ecosystems and lead to the death of millions of other creatures, including turtles, dolphins, and whales, but the energy used to catch deep-sea fish is equivalent to factory-farmed beef.