| US: Tyson Pulls Antibiotic-Free Label
by LAUREN ETTER, Wall Street Journal June 3rd, 2008 Under pressure from regulators and competitors, Tyson Foods Inc. withdrew its antibiotic-free chicken label awarded by the Agriculture Department barely a year ago. |
| US: In Stock Plan, Employees See Stacked Deck
by MARY WILLIAMS WALSH, The New York Times May 29th, 2008 Now that many U.S. Sugar workers are reaching retirement age, though, the company has been cashing them out of the retirement plan at a much lower price than they could have received. Unknown to them, an outside investor was offering to buy the company — and their shares — for far more. Longtime employees say they have lost out on tens of thousands of dollars each and millions of dollars as a group, while insiders of the company came out ahead. |
| GERMANY: Pesticides: Germany bans chemicals linked to honeybee devastation by Alison Benjamin, The Guardian (UK) May 23rd, 2008 Germany has banned a family of pesticides that are blamed for the deaths of millions of honeybees. The German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) has suspended the registration for eight pesticide seed treatment products used in rapeseed oil and sweetcorn. |
| US: Slaughter Ban Is Implemented
On Cows Too Sick, Weak to Stand
by Associated Press, Wall Street Journal May 20th, 2008 Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer announced Tuesday a total ban on meat plant slaughter of cows too sick or weak to stand. |
| US: Court Orders Tyson to Suspend Ads For Antibiotic-Free Chicken by Annys Shin, Washington Post May 2nd, 2008 Poultry giant Tyson Foods has 14 days to dismantle a national multimillion dollar ad campaign centered on the claim that its chickens are raised without antibiotics, a federal appeals court in Richmond ruled yesterday. |
| CHILE: Salmon Virus Indicts Chile’s Fishing Methods
by ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO, The New York Times March 27th, 2008 The new virus is spreading, but it has primarily affected the fish of Marine Harvest, a Norwegian company that is the world’s biggest producer of farm-raised salmon and exports about 20 percent of the salmon that come from Chile. |
| INDONESIA: Indonesia's Commodity Boom Is a Mixed Bag by Tom Wright, Wall Street Journal March 24th, 2008 Indonesia's economy is riding the recent wave of high global commodity prices. But local pressure is arising towards steel makers and power producers in China and India who have diverted coal supplies abroad by locking in 20-year supply contracts with Indonesian miners. |
| US: Families Sue Chiquita in Deaths of 5 Men
by CARMEN GENTILE, The New York Times March 17th, 2008 Last week, Ms. Julin, who has remarried, and the widows of the four other men filed a lawsuit against Chiquita Brands International Inc., saying the company contributed to their husbands’ deaths by financing the leftist group. |
| US: Fighting on a Battlefield the Size of a Milk Label
by ANDREW MARTIN, The New York Times March 9th, 2008 A new advocacy group closely tied to Monsanto has started a counteroffensive to stop the proliferation of milk that comes from cows that aren’t treated with synthetic bovine growth hormone. |
| US: Pesticide maker owned by political donor
by Matthew Yi, San Francisco Chronicle March 8th, 2008 The company that makes one of the pesticides state officials are considering spraying over the Bay Area to fight the light brown apple moth is owned by a wealthy California agribusinessman who has been a generous contributor to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state officials. |
| BRAZIL: King of soya: environmental vandal or saviour of the world's poor? by Rory Carroll and Tom Phillips, Guardian (UK) March 3rd, 2008 Erai Maggi's company Bom Futuro produces more than 600,000 tonnes of soya a year, most of it to feed livestock ending up as meat in China and Europe, and generating £175m in revenue. Critics decry the link between increasing soya production and Amazon deforestation. |
| UGANDA: Privatization of Seeds Moving Apace by Aileen Kwa, IPS February 21st, 2008 The Ugandan parliament will soon have a hearing on the draft Plant Variety Protection Bill, approved by the cabinet early last year. According to an inside government source, seeds companies including Monsanto have been lobbying for such intellectual property protection. |
| GLOBAL: 2 Reports At Odds On Biotech Crops by Rick Weiss, The Washington Post February 14th, 2008 Dueling reports released yesterday -- one by a consortium largely funded by the biotech industry and the other by a pair of environmental and consumer groups -- came to those diametrically different conclusions. |
| EL SALVADOR: "Life Is Worth More than Gold" Say Anti-Mining Activists by Raúl Gutiérrez, Inter Press Service (IPS) February 1st, 2008 Peasant farmers from the northern Salvadoran province of Cabañas fear that mining operations planned for the region will consume 30,000 litres of water a day, drawn from the same sources that currently provide local residents with water only once a week. |
| GLOBAL: False 'Green' Ads Draw Global Scrutiny
by Tom Wright, Wall Street Journal January 30th, 2008 With companies eager to tout their "green" credentials to consumers, advertising watchdogs are stepping up efforts to rein in marketers that make false or exaggerated claims. |
| US: McDonald’s Ending Promotion on Jackets of Children’s Report Cards
by STUART ELLIOTT, New York Times January 18th, 2008 McDonald’s has decided to stop sponsoring Happy Meals as rewards for children with good grades and attendance records in elementary schools in Seminole County, Fla. |
| THAILAND: Green Groups Will Take GM Crops Issue To Court by Marwaan Macan-Markar, IPS News January 9th, 2008 Thai environmentalists are banking on the country’s courts to overturn a decision by the military-appointed government to allow field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops. |
| US: Cloned Livestock Poised by Jane Zhang, John W. Miller and Lauren Etter, Wall Street Journal January 4th, 2008 After more than six years of wrestling with the question of whether meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring are safe to eat, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to declare as early as next week that they are. The food industry appears to be divided over the issue. |
| EUROPE: Both Sides Cite Science to Address Altered Corn by Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times December 26th, 2007 A proposal made by Europe’s top environment official, to ban the planting of a genetically modified corn strain produced by companies like Syngenta and Monsanto, sets up a bitter war within the European Union. |
| UK: Supermarkets admit milk price fix
BBC News December 7th, 2007 Supermarket firms Sainsbury's and Asda have admitted that they were part of a dairy price-fixing group that earned about £270m extra from shoppers. |