pork

If JBS gobbles up Smithfield, three companies will own U.S. meat market

(Grist illo; Carlossg/Flickr) A typical supermarket’s meat counter displays a landscape of easy bounty: shrink-wrapped chops, cutlets, steaks, roasts, loins, burger meat, and more, almost all of it priced to move. But the dizzying variety cloaks a disturbing uniformity. As the chart below shows, the great bulk of the meat consumed in the United States […]

Tom Philpott Technology

Big Pork squeals over unicorn-meat marketing. Yes, unicorn meat.

We’ll have a rainbow roast, please!(ThinkGeek.com)One has to feel sorry for Big Pork. First there was that nasty swine flu that put everyone off pork chops, even though the industry managed to get the name changed to H1N1. Profits are down for producers like Smithfield. Despite America’s love affair with all things bacon, pork consumption […]

Bonnie Azab Powell Food

Pig Business: Who owns your food owns you

Ever feel like you were playing checkers and the other guy was playing chess? That’s the impression I get when watching many of the recent spate of food documentaries. Activists announce that this or that is wrong with the food system; on the rare occasion when something appears to be getting done about it, the […]

Kurt Michael Friese Food

If JBS-Pilgrim’s deal goes through, four mega-firms will dominate the meat landscape

In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. —— Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Brazilian firm JBS–the globe’s largest beef processor–was on the verge of buying U.S. chicken giant Pilgrim’s Pride. Although the companies have since remained mum on the tie-up, rumors of […]

Tom Philpott Technology

Boss Hog’s attempted regulatory coup in North Carolina

For the past two years, the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission has been crafting new rules to require water monitoring at factory hog farms, a significant source of pollution in the state. But last week, even with concerns growing over the environmental impacts of hog farms, the North Carolina Senate unanimously passed a bill that […]

Sue Sturgis Politics

North Carolina governor asked to address hog industry’s health impacts

Environmental advocates gathered at the North Carolina legislature yesterday for a press conference and prayer vigil asking the governor to create a task force to study and take action on health problems associated with industrial hog farms. The action came the same week new findings were published about the critical role hogs played in creating […]

Sue Sturgis Uncategorized

Why the climate bill is in trouble (and how to help)

If it weren’t for mixed messages, the US Senate wouldn’t be sending any messages at all. Thursday, WaPo ran a story about how the Senate, once hot to trot on passing a climate change bill, had decided to rein it in. Climate legislation got its first hearing before Senator Barbara Boxer’s Environment committee on Tuesday. […]

Osha Gray Davidson Politics

Locavores are ruining food and free range pork will kill us

Get thee to a CAFO!Photo: pubwvjIn a recent op-ed, in The New York Times gravely informed its readers that free-range pork is deadly stuff. Despite evidence that incidence of trichinosis is very rare in the US–about 40 cases a year, and mostly caused by eating wild game (usually bear)-James E. McWilliams says that pork laced […]