Deputy PM says he’s focusing on now, not 2050, as Coalition’s climate skirmishes go on
The Coalition is facing an increasingly testy party room as it struggles to land on a climate policy, with the Nationals leader, Michael McCormack, declaring he is “not worried about what might happen in 30 years’ time”.
The deputy prime minister said excluding agriculture from Australia’s attempts to reach net zero emissions by 2050 may be one option.
Continue reading...While China pushes for more industrialised farms, Buddhist monks urge now-sedentary nomads to embrace vegetarianism
Former free-roaming nomads now mostly resettled in rows of sun-baked block houses in Tibet are facing a struggle for their identity, their spiritual and cultural practices – and even their stomachs.
These yak-tending herders have always eaten meat. In addition to the milk, butter and cheese they derived from yaks, meat was a necessity in their harsh lives.
But a movement spurred by Tibetan Buddhist monks in the region over the past two decades has increasingly urged now sedentary nomads to practise vegetarianism, to pay a “life ransom” for the release of animals destined for the slaughterhouse, and to abandon the slaughter of their own animals because they have settled down.
Continue reading...Billions of unwanted male chicks are slaughtered by the farming industry. Now a startup claims to have found a surprising solution to the problem
The eggs we eat have a hidden cost. About 7bn male chicks are killed worldwide every year to produce them. Farmers need to replenish their supply of egg-laying hens but, by nature, half the chicks that hatch are male and growing them for meat is uneconomic – that industry uses faster growing breeds. In many countries they are tossed into shredding machines, although in the UK they are gassed.
But what if those male chicks could instead hatch out as functional females, able to grow into egg-laying birds? That’s the vision of Israeli startup Soos Technology. Founded in 2017, the company, which has received $3.3m in investment and prize winnings, wants to make commercial hatcheries kinder and more economic by changing the effective sex of poultry embryos as they develop.
Continue reading...Biggest ever survey finds two-thirds of people think climate change is a global emergency
The biggest ever opinion poll on climate change has found two-thirds of people think it is a “global emergency”.
The survey shows people across the world support climate action and gives politicians a clear mandate to take the major action needed, according to the UN organisation that carried out the poll.
Continue reading...Farmers protesting against new agriculture laws enter grounds of historic fort as violence breaks out
Farmers protesting against new agriculture laws in India broke through police barricades around the capital and entered the grounds of Delhi’s historic Red Fort on Tuesday, in chaotic and violent scenes that overshadowed the country’s Republic Day celebrations.
Police hit protesters with batons and fired teargas to try to disperse the crowds after hundreds of thousands of farmers, many on tractors or horses, marched on the capital. One protester was confirmed to have died in the clashes and dozens of police and protesters were injured.
Continue reading...The death toll of animals and humans is mounting as herders seeking dwindling reserves of pasture clash with farmers
In February last year, Sunday Ikenna’s fields were green and lush. Then, one evening, a herd of cattle led into the farm by roving pastoralists crushed, ate, and uprooted the crops.
“I lost everything. The situation was sorrowful, watching another human being destroy your farm,” says Ikenna, a father of 10 who farms in Ukpabi-Nimbo in Enugu state, southern Nigeria. “I farmed a smaller portion this year because I am still scared of another invasion.”
Continue reading...Farmers ‘relieved’ as chemical sanctioned for emergency use, despite EU-wide ban backed by UK
A pesticide believed to kill bees has been authorised for use in England despite an EU-wide ban two years ago and an explicit government pledge to keep the restrictions.
Following lobbying from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) and British Sugar, a product containing the neonicotinoid thiamethoxam was sanctioned for emergency use on sugar beet seeds this year because of the threat posed by a virus.
Continue reading...Impossible Foods working on milk and fish substitutes as Patrick Brown pledges to put an end to animal agriculture industry
Patrick Brown is on a mission: to eradicate the meat and fish industries by 2035. The CEO of Impossible Foods, a California-based company that makes genetically engineered plant-based meat, is deadly serious. No more commercial livestock farming or fishing. No more steak, fish and chips or roast dinners, at least not as you know them.
In their place, his company’s scientists and food technicians will create plant-based substitutes for every animal product used today in every region of the world, he promises.
Continue reading...Pushpinder Pal is one of tens of thousands of Indian farmers camped along nine miles (15km) of major roads outside Delhi, protesting about agricultural laws they claim will devastate their earnings. Based in Haryana, he collects food every day from his local gurdwara, a Sikhs' place of assembly, delivering spinach curry to huge numbers of protesters. The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, promised to increase farmers' incomes, but they claim his new policies are designed to favour rich corporations and not them. In one of the largest protests in history, farmers are pledging to stay put while they wait for their representatives to strike a deal with government
Continue reading...Workers on farms supplying world’s biggest meat firms allegedly paid £8 a day and housed in shacks with no toilets or running water
Brazilian companies and slaughterhouses including the world’s largest meat producer, JBS, sourced cattle from supplier farms that made use of workers kept in slavery-like conditions, according to a new report.
Workers on cattle farms supplying slaughterhouses earned as little as £8 a day and lived in improvised shacks with no bathrooms, toilets, running water or kitchens, according to a report from Brazilian investigative agency Repórter Brasil.
Since 1995, the report said, 55,000 Brazilian workers have been rescued by government inspectors from “situations similar to slavery”. While the number of investigations has fallen in recent years – 118 workers were freed in 2018, compared with 1,045 a decade earlier – that does not mean the situation has improved, just that inspections have been reduced, it noted.
Continue reading...Kerala villagers are reaping the benefits of a scheme that pays them to leave their trees rooted, reducing risk of deforestation
In the misty, hilly terrain of Wayanad, in the southern Indian state of Kerala, the people with any access to land in the quiet town of Meenangadi have been out counting their trees.
Sheeja CG, a 46-year-old farmer, has lived among coffee, coconut and pepper plantations all her life but last month she increased her income dramatically by mortgaging 53 of her trees at the local bank, in return for a sum of 2,650 rupees (£26.96), or 50 rupees each. She was one of the first beneficiaries of the state-sponsored scheme.
Continue reading...Developer says it plans to focus on using pig organs for human transplant rather than selling for meat
Genetically modified (GM) pigs have been approved for food and medical use in the US, drawing mixed reactions. The pigs are only the second GM animal to be approved for food after GM salmon in 2015.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week approved the GM pigs, which have been engineered to eliminate alpha-gal, a sugar found in pigs that can cause allergic reactions.
The FDA said it was the first time it had approved a GM animal for human food and medical use.
With unique access to remote communities in the snow-capped landscape of Norway, this film follows characters on either side of a fierce debate on whether to cull the wolf population. For decades the topic has split political parties, families and communities across the country, with environmentalists world-wide criticising Norway for how it handles its tiny population of critically endangered wolves. Here, a group of hunters await news from the government on whether their yearly hunt will be permitted, while the environmentalists anticipate the worst. With angry threats on both sides, the film takes a deep dive into what’s at stake for both groups, as well as the wider world
Continue reading...Protests against new agriculture laws hits transport, shops and markets across the country
Farmers in India have shut down swathes of the country’s transport, shops and markets as they escalated their protests against new agriculture laws with the launch of a national strike.
Hundreds of thousands of farmers blocked all roads into the capital Delhi for most of the day, and across the country demonstrated on railway lines and highways and called for a shutdown of shops, in a effort to pressurise the government into repealing new agriculture laws they say will leave them poverty stricken and at the mercy of corporations.
Continue reading...Turmeric is synonymous with Sri Lankan cuisine and an import ban is helping boost production after the ravages of civil war
In Sri Lankan cuisine, a pinch of turmeric brings the gold colour to sodhi, the mildly spiced coconut soup eaten with the island’s carbohydrate-rich foods.
Turmeric is valued in every Sri Lankan kitchen for its subtle flavour, distinct yellow colour and powerful aroma. In ayurvedic medicine, this humble spice is hailed for its values as an anti-inflammatory.
Continue reading...Naima Brown’s encounter with a lab-grown chicken nugget reminded her of a Happy Meal – but she’s less certain about what it means for the future of food
“Clean”, “cultured”, “no-kill” – these are just a few of the monikers that have been applied to San Francisco-based food start up Just Inc’s lab-grown chicken nuggets.
The product has just been approved for sale to consumers in Singapore – a world first. But the company’s CEO Josh Tetrick would prefer it if everyone dropped the additional descriptors and just called his company’s product “meat”.
Continue reading...It takes thousands of years for soils to form, meaning protection is needed urgently, say scientists
Global soils are the source of all life on land but their future looks “bleak” without action to halt degradation, according to the authors of a UN report.
A quarter of all the animal species on Earth live beneath our feet and provide the nutrients for all food. Soils also store as much carbon as all plants above ground and are therefore critical in tackling the climate emergency. But there also are major gaps in knowledge, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) report, which is the first on the global state of biodiversity in soils.
Continue reading...Primarily Latino workforce has contracted Covid-19 at nearly three times the rate of other residents
California’s agricultural workers have contracted Covid-19 at nearly three times the rate of other residents in the state, a new study has found, laying bare the risks facing those who keep a $50bn industry afloat.
Continue reading...Singapore’s approval of chicken cells grown in bioreactors is seen as landmark moment across industry
Cultured meat, produced in bioreactors without the slaughter of an animal, has been approved for sale by a regulatory authority for the first time. The development has been hailed as a landmark moment across the meat industry.
The “chicken bites”, produced by the US company Eat Just, have passed a safety review by the Singapore Food Agency and the approval could open the door to a future when all meat is produced without the killing of livestock, the company said.
Continue reading...In The Welsh Wind distillery already taking orders for 30-litre casks of ultra-local spirit
The barley has been grown in fields with spectacular views over Cardigan Bay and malted on a local farm. The all-important water comes from springs deep beneath the Welsh countryside.
A small distillery in west Wales is at the centre of what it hopes may turn out to be a quiet whisky revolution.
Continue reading...