Food

Got (Raw) Milk?

editor — Tue, 6 May 2008 17:27:17 -0700

Time Magazine has picked up on the raw milk movement that has been building among urban consumers.

Commission Reports on Industrial Animal Production

editor — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:55:46 -0700

A two and a half year study of "industrial farm animal production" by a special commission has concluded that while "industrial farm animal production has benefits, it brings with it growing concerns for public health, the environment, animal welfare, and impacts

Will Genetically Modified Crops End Food Crisis?

editor — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:44:17 -0700

GM foods have been protested around the world. This Greenpeace demonstration was in Thailand after a government official said he might lift a ban on genetically modified food.
Photo: Greenpeace

The director of the World Food Program said in London earlier this week that there is a "silent tsunami" of rising food prices in the world that is driving more people into poverty and causing food shortages that have set off riots around the globe, the Washington Post reported.

"This is the new face of hunger -- the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are," Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program (WFP), said at a London news conference. "The world's misery index is rising." British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that 25,000 people a day are dying from conditions that are linked to hunger.

The worldwide food shortage — and the rising cost of food — are leading those who were reluctant to use or plant genetically modified crops to change their minds, according to a front page story in The New York Times. "Soaring food prices and global grain shortages are bringing pressures on governments, food companies and consumers to relax their longstanding resistance to genetically engineered crops," reports Times reporter Andrew Pollack.

Food Shortages and an Australian Drought

editor — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:04:09 -0700

The global food crisis has been on the front page of the New York Times the last two days.

Has Ethanol Led to Food Riots? No, Says A&M Report

editor — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 08:59:00 -0700

The high cost of rice and beans has led to food riots in Haiti.
Photo: Nashgirl

With Haiti torn by riots over the price of rice and beans and food shortages in India, Egypt and the Philippines (where the Wall Street Journal reported that rice shortages have become "acute"), the common cauase of the world-wide food crisis has been assumed to be biofuels.

India's finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram said, "When millions of people are going hungry, it's a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels." An official from Turkey said the use of food for fuel was "appalling," according to the Wall Street Journal.

In this morning's New York Times, reporter Andrew Martin reports that "reaction is building against policies in the United States and Europe to promote ethanol and similar fuels, with political leaders from poor countries contending that these fuels are driving up food prices and starving poor people. Biofuels are fast becoming a new flash point in global diplomacy, putting pressure on Western politicians to reconsider their policies, even as they argue that biofuels are only one factor in the seemingly inexorable rise in food prices."

Exactly how much of the undeniable rise in food prices is caused by the use of food crops for biofuel? A little, but not nearly as much as the "crime against humanity" outcry would imply. And, according to a recent report from Texas A&M University, the use of corn to make biofuels has had very little impact on food prices at all.