Skip to content
Grist home
All donations DOUBLED
  • EPA intern offends sensitive meat-industry souls

    Ironically enough, the people who cram animals together and stuff them full of dodgy feed are really, really sensitive. So please don’t say anything critical about meat.An iron-clad rule for government bureaucrats of all ranks: thou shalt not question the American habit of eating more than a half pound of meat per day. The folks […]

  • Berlin Reed

    Art: Nat DammBerlin Reed The Ethical Butcher Portland, Ore. Berlin Reed, 27, took an unlikely path through vegetarianism and even “militant” veganism before embracing his new profession whole hog — literally. He now styles himself The Ethical Butcher. He gets all of his meat from small, local farms and visits every one to meet the farmers […]

  • Hipster habits that annoy the Earth [SLIDESHOW]

    Photo courtesy davefishernc via FlickrWe don’t mean to jump on the hipster (NSFW) hating bandwagon. We know the young and the hip eat healthier and ride bikes more often than their peers and yadda yadda yadda. But there’s nothing like getting even with the cool kids and catching them in un-green moments. (How cool do […]

  • Ask Umbra’s Book Club: Is eating animals eating you?

    Dearest readers, Great thread yesterday on the varying viewpoints surrounding issues of independence, financial culpability, the 9-to-5 rat race, and being possessed by our possessions—all inspired by Dolly Freed’s Possum Living circa 1978. For today’s starting point, I thought we’d delve into the blood and guts—literally—as in raising, killing, cleaning, and eating your own meat […]

  • Ask Umbra chews the fat with Moby

    Whatever you do when you meet Moby (eventually, we all will), don’t tell him you enjoy his book. “That’s a strange word to use,” he said when I did the very thing I’m telling you not to do. My face briefly turned the same shade as my hair as I attempted to explain how exactly […]

  • Ask Umbra’s pearls of wisdom on supermarket shopping

    Dearest readers, Sometimes when I’m down in the stacks researching answers to your latest dilemmas, I enjoy taking a stroll down Ask Umbra archives lane. Here are some glossy tidbits I culled from my past advice on lessening your impact when it comes to grocery shopping. Have any of your own green grocery tips? Let […]

  • An omnivorous chef ponders test-tube meat

    Future rancher of America? Well, ick. That was my first reaction, anyway, to news that the search to produce animal-less sources for meat are moving, if not right along, at least in the direction of progress. The story I read is actually an editorial in Capital Press, an agricultural newspaper published for farmers in the […]

  • Jonathan Safran Foer on his book ‘Eating Animals’

    If you’re a meat eater, don’t read Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book Eating Animals. Unless, that is, you are a meat eater curious about the health of your body, the planet, or the animals you consume. The acclaimed author of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Foer, has been an on-again, off-again […]

  • Martha Stewart blisters meat industry in Thanksgiving show

    Martha Stewart is easy to caricature. But the sister values good ingredients–and has realized that industrial agriculture churns out flavorless crap. That has caused her to ask second-order questions about the food system–and use her immense popular appeal to shed light on the horrors of factory meat farming. She has devoted her latest episode to […]