by Mike Callicrate “Changes will not simply happen…Changes will occur when consumers realize what they’ve been eating, get angry, and demand something different…It remains our responsibility, with every vote and every dollar spent on food, to start making it right.” (Eric Schlosser’s foreword from Slaughterhouse Blues.) Schlosser is also the author of Fast Food Nation and co-producer of the film that awakened America, Food, Inc. It was a beautiful spring day in 1996. American’s were convinced that eating Read More …
Author: Mike Callicrate
GRAVY
By Richard Oswald Simple things–like the first meal of the day–are always best. Bacon and eggs, pancakes and sausage, biscuits, or plain old grits, you just can’t beat a country breakfast. When it gets right down to it, the flavor of the whole day is topped off with one thing; Good or bad, for better or worse, it’s all about gravy. A few years ago, hotels started offering customers breakfast at free buffets. First it was cereal, yogurt, Read More …
Antitrust efforts have gone in dustbin of history
Christine Varney of the Justice Department and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack listen during a workshop with poultry farmers in Normal, Ala., May 21, 2010. (USDA photo) The food we eat is increasingly part of a globalized and industrialized concentrated system. Researchers point to a growing consolidation in food production, processing and distribution. Four or five companies control thousands of brands. Poultry growers have one-sided contracts, pig and beef producers increasingly are forced to give up independence for contracts Read More …
Do We Still Try to Win or Just Throw in the Towel?
No doubt about it; we got trounced on the GIPSA Rule! We’ve been trounced repeatedly over the past dozen years or so in most all of our market reform efforts. On Capitol Hill and in the regulatory agencies, we have routinely been unsuccessful. In the courts, we would win with the jury but ultimately get reversed at the appellate level. The big agribusiness interests have prevailed. We know that our cause is righteous, but we keep losing! I Read More …
OCM Blasts NCBA for Opposing Protection for Livestock Producers
Press Release Blast NCBA2 Click to read OCM’s press release regarding NCBA’s announcement that it intends to make eliminating the livestock title in the 2012 farm bill a priority.
For Meat Industry, Anti-trust Efforts in Corporate Control Collapse
by David Andrews In 2008 the Federal Farm Bill instructed the Department of Agriculture to write rules for competition in the meat industry. This directive was to complete the details lacking in the 80-plus-year-old legislation on competition in the meat industry from the Theodore Roosevelt era. That legislation was to be enhanced with detailed directions on contracts, anti-trust policies and mandates requiring greater justice in meat production, processing and distribution. The rules were to be developed by a Read More …
Occupy Langdon: We Are Less Than One Percent
by Richard Oswald The Occupy Wall Street Movement has been called “a potent political and cultural conversation”. On the other hand Occupy movements in cities like Washington DC have been called over reported and under attended. That is definitely not the case here because Occupy Langdon has been completely off the radar screen, totally undiscussed, and one hundred percent unreported. Until now. I’m breaking this thing wide open. Here around Langdon and all across the USA, less than Read More …
MF Global Scandal Could Hasten Vertical Integration in Agriculture
by Eric Nelson For grain and livestock producers without some kind of marketing agreement with a packer or end user, the CME Group in Chicago offers alternatives for producers to hedge their production, without signing marketing agreements that give the power of supply control to the packer or end user. These agreements work as a relief valve in times of market supply shortages and allow end users to call in “contract commodities”, versus having to bid in the Read More …