Much of the conversation over GMOs within the US natural food industry has focused on issues of labeling and the dangers that multinational corporations like Monsanto pose to organic farmers. For many, the 2008 documentary Food Inc. was their first exposure to the dark side of these high-tech advances, detailing how intellectual property lawsuits from agrochemical firms have put some… Read more »
I continually find myself in a personal struggle as to whether I should maintain a vegetarian lifestyle or consume meat. I switched to vegetarianism for many years after first learning about the practices that the industrial meat industry participates in. Michael Carolan touches on many of these points, which ignites my internal debate about returning to a diet void of… Read more »
The current industry of agricultural seed production is broken into two competing sides. One is made of corporate behemoths, behaving in absolutely capitalist ways with attempts to privatize and patent living items as intellectual property. The other side are smaller scale entities, some comprised of activists and others that are simply individuals trying frame support for balanced policy. Unfortunately these… Read more »
Awareness key to understanding and grappling with a lot of the dense and complex issues surrounding the world food system. Many people make an effort to eat locally-produced sustainable meats and organic vegetables, generally avoiding beef that has racked up many “food miles” and genetically modified produce, because the alternatives are automatically “bad” or “unsustainable.” These kinds of hard line… Read more »