As our allies at the Environmental Working Group reminded us this week, the Farm Bill is the single most important piece of legislation that determines what type of food appears on your plate every day, how farmers will be paid government subsidies and what type of environmental protections will preserve the land and topsoil for [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Yesterday’s Occupy Our Food Supply global day of action was by all accounts a resounding success. The day included more than 100 events across the globe that united an unprecedented alliance of more than 60 Occupy groups and 30 environmental, food justice, and corporate accountability organizations. It also featured prominent voices including Indian environmentalist Vandana [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, February 23, 2012
Just days before the massive global day of action to Occupy our Food Supply, I thought I’d take a look at just who some of these agribusiness thugs really are. The deeper you dig the more clear it becomes that two corporate giants are responsible for a large part of the poisoning of our food [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, January 26, 2012
Whether you’re one of the 3,200 companies that do business in California with at least $100 million in worldwide gross receipts, or a consumer that buys products from anywhere other than your local mom and pop shops, you better check this out. Effective this month, a new law called the Transparency in Supply Chains Act [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, January 17, 2012
There are some who say that corporations are people. So can you arrest one? Well, we’re going to find out. Right now, corporations technically have the same First Amendment rights as real live people (as ruled by the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC two years ago). So shouldn’t we (real live people) [...]
Continue reading...Friday, August 5, 2011
This is the third and final installment in a series of posts that endeavors to answer a simple question: What is sustainable palm oil? The answer, of course, is anything but simple. The first blog post in this series explored the weaknesses of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the dominant certification standard for [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, June 23, 2011
Did you know that palm oil—a pervasive vegetable oil widely known for its disastrous effect on rainforests—is found in about half of the goods at your local grocery store? Palm oil is now also linked to slave labor. You can thank Cargill for that. Cargill is the largest importer of palm oil into the US, [...]
Continue reading...Friday, March 4, 2011
Sinar Mas Group, the notorious international palm oil pariah, recently made a remarkable announcement: The company’s subsidiary, Golden Agri Resouces (GAR), intends to implement a forest conservation policy. Among other things, GAR’s Forest Conservation Policy commits it to a goal of “no new development” on peat lands, High Conservation Value Forest areas or High Carbon [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Last month I wrote a post telling the horrific stories of Ferdi, Volario, and Suroso and their personal accounts of being forced into slave labor on oil palm plantations in Indonesia. Some escaped after months without pay. Others were paid less than 40 cents/day for back-breaking work clearing forests and spraying pesticides. Through visiting many [...]
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Tuesday, June 12, 2012
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