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Should lobbyists for biotech and food companies make the rules on what kind of food you have in your kitchen? Meet Mella Frewen, Suzy Renckens and Harry Kuiper: Three examples of how the industries take advantage of the European Food Safety Agency(EFSA) failure to properly regulate conflicts of interest.
The European Food Safety Authority has approved new rules that will ban industry experts from serving on EFSA scientific panels related to their work. Corporate Europe Observatory says the rules are still not strong enough
Land deals with foreign firms in Liberia 'could sow seeds of conflict'says a new report from the Centre for International Conflict Resolution (CICR) at Columbia University in New York. The report covers Golden Veroleum, Sime Darby, ArcelorMittal and Putu Iron Ore Mining Corporation.
Karuturi Global and Saudi Star have leased thousands of hectares of land from the Ethiopian government for agricultural development. Critics says these projects have displaced traditional farmers and subsistence crops.
ADM has moved beyond the days of blatant price-fixing that landed its top execs behind bars. But the company's forays into new global agricultural markets bring charges of complicity in forced child labor and rampant deforestation. Critics assert that the conglomerate's embrace of self- regulation and voluntary guidelines is but a cynical ploy to deter effective reform.
Today CorpWatch is releasing the sixth in a series of articles written by members of the Alliance for a Corporate-Free UN documenting violations of UN Global Compact Principles by the very companies that have signed onto the controversial UN Compact.
The last time the European Union decided the future of its 50 billion euro agricultural aid program, in 2005, the deal was cut behind closed doors in a luxury suite at the five-star Conrad Brussels hotel. Now, 2013 is closer at hand and a new round of maneuvering has begun to reshape the richest system of agricultural handouts in the world.
For plants designed in a lab a little more than a decade ago, they've come a long way: Today, the vast majority of the nation's two primary crops grow from seeds genetically altered according to Monsanto company patents. Now Monsanto -- like IBM and Google -- has drawn scrutiny from U.S. antitrust investigators.
Tracing the chain of production of an E. Coli-contaminated hamburger made by Cargill, through interviews and government and corporate records obtained by The New York Times, shows why eating ground beef is still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe.
Originally posted at http://markfloegel.org/
The best time to announce the worst news is late on Friday. The
federal government and public relations firms have known this for
years. So it was that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)
scheduled its press conference last Friday for 3 p.m., Pacific Daylight
Time or (even better!) 6 p.m. in the east.
Human rights monitoring groups and Cambodian activists are calling for an international boycott of Tate & Lyle and Domino Sugar, who do business with sugar suppliers accused of participating in government-sanctioned land grabs and illegal evictions throughout rural Cambodia.
Originally posted on July 23 at http://denverfairfood.blogspot.com/2009/07/chipotle-grilled.html.
When food industry giants like Kellogg want to ensure that American consumers are being protected from contaminated products, they rely on private inspectors. With government inspectors overwhelmed by the task of guarding the nation's food supply, the job of monitoring food plants has in large part fallen to an army of private auditors, and problems are rife.
European Union governments delivered a blow Monday to the biotechnology industry, allowing Austria and Hungary to maintain national bans on growing genetically modified crops from Monsanto. The market for genetically engineered crops is worth several billion dollars worldwide.
PARIS (October 9) -- At 8:30 this morning local time, activists from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, England, Germany, Denmark, Nigeria and Spain gathered outside the headquarters of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris to protest against the first meeting of the Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD) group.