Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Top investment house delists world biggest meat producer over lack of commitment to sustainability issues
The investment arm of northern Europe’s largest financial services group has dropped JBS, the world’s biggest meat processer, from its portfolio. The Brazilian company is now excluded from assets sold by Nordea Asset Management, which controls a €230bn (£210bn) fund, according to Eric Pedersen, its head of responsible investments.
The decision was taken about a month ago, over the meat giant’s links to farms involved in Amazon deforestation, its response to the Covid-19 outbreak, past corruption scandals, and frustrations over engagement with the company on such issues. “The exclusion of JBS is quite dramatic for us because it is from all of our funds, not just the ones labelled ESG,” Pedersen said.
The vast illegal wildlife trade and humanity’s excessive intrusion into nature is to blame for the coronavirus pandemic, according to a leading US scientist who says “this is not nature’s revenge, we did it to ourselves”.
Scientists are discovering two to four new viruses are created every year as a result of human infringement on the natural world, and any one of those could turn into a pandemic, according to Thomas Lovejoy, who coined the term “biological diversity” in 1980 and is often referred to as the godfather of biodiversity.
Campaigners have called for the suspension of all live animal shipments out of Europe, and a restriction to the shortest possible journeys within Europe, over welfare and animal diseases concerns – as meat supply chains face potentially debilitating strain.
Last week queues of up to 60km (37 miles) formed at the Polish/German border on Wednesday after Poland announced that it was shutting to foreigners. Although the closure was supposed to apply solely to people, cargo experienced a knock-on effect, with some trucks reportedly taking as long as 18 hours to get through border controls. More queues formed at the Bulgarian/Turkish border.
Sabine Fisher of German animal welfare group Animal Angels said: “One driver told us that it had taken him three hours to travel 300 metres. There were trucks of sheep, bulls, cows. I’ve never seen a queue like it.”
From beef to cod to avocados to soya, many of our best-loved foods raise big ethical and environmental questions. What do the experts say?
Deforestation. Child labour. Pollution. Water shortages. The more we learn about the side-effects of food production, the more the act of feeding ourselves becomes fraught with anxiety. How can we be sure that certain foods are “good” or “bad” for society and the planet? As Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University of London and the co-author of Sustainable Diets, puts it: “When you come to ‘judge’ food, you end up with an enormous list of variables, from taste to health outcomes to biodiversity.” Here are some of today’s most controversial products – and some thoughts that may help you when shopping.
Pedro Sánchez confuses prized jamón ibérico for plain old jamón serrano in ‘serious error’
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has confused jamón ibérico, the prized Spanish ham, with run-of-the-mill jamón serrano in a gaffe on a par with a French politician referring to a fine burgundy as plonk.
Speaking at the centuries-old livestock fair in Zafra in Extremadura, western Spain, Sánchez left his audience open-mouthed when he told them “you can be sure that when the Chinese president visited Spain he would have been served a plate of jamón serrano from Extremadura”.
People more or less keeping to NHS guidelines at higher risk than those who eat little
Eating even the moderate amounts of red and processed meat sanctioned by government guidelines increases the likelihood of developing bowel cancer, according to the largest UK study of the risks ever conducted.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) suggests anyone who eats more than 90g of red or processed meat per day should try to cut down to 70g or less, because of the known link with bowel cancer. The NHS describes 90g of red meat as “equivalent to around three thinly cut slices of beef, lamb or pork, where each slice is about the size of half a piece of sliced bread”.
The study, conducted for the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA) by the scientific consultancy Campden, and marked “confidential”, examines the growth of the toxin Clostridium botulinum in the processing of bacon and ham.
Makers of animal-free products aim to revolutionise the very idea of meat – but is their hi-tech approach really the answer?
I bit into the Impossible Burger and was immediately filled with awe. I lifted my head to the bartender and, with my mouth full, croaked: “This is vegan?”
I was just coming off two long days of hearings at the US Department of Agriculture, where the future of food was discussed in great detail but taste was scarcely mentioned. Now, sitting at my favorite New Jersey bar, eating something satisfying that nothing died for, was a relief.
Iowa has reached a record number of pigs on farms as the pork industry continues to expand production amid questionable export demand due to tariff battles with China. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday Iowa has 23.6 million pigs on farms as of Sept.
Farmers don't seem to be brimming with relief over the Trump administration's plan to offset the impact of trade tensions with a $12 billion, stopgap trade package nor the European Union's apparent vow to begin snapping up more U.S. soybeans. It all comes down to market share and the fact that for commodity producers, it can be very hard to recover once lost.
Nearly 80 percent of supermarket meat collected in 2015 was found to have antibiotic-resistant bacteria, also known as superbugs. A new analysis offers alarming findings as many Americans get ready to fire up their grills for the 4th of July-nearly 80 percent of supermarket meat was found to have antibiotic-resistant bacteria, also known as superbugs.
What came first - the USDA-regulated chicken or the FDA-regulated egg ? OMB director Mick Mulvaney wants to end that question entirely by eliminating silly overlaps in government. The White House rolled out its long-awaited government reform program, which headlines a consolidation of the Departments of Labor and Education into one Cabinet-level office.
That question has yet to be decided by regulators, but for the moment it's pitting animal rights advocates and others against cattle ranchers in a war of words. Supporters of the science are embracing "clean meat" to describe meat grown by replicating animal cells.
A desire to protect its members, not consumers, is the primary motivation behind the US Cattlemen's Association petition to restrict use of the terms 'beef' and 'meat' to products from animals "born, raised, and harvested in the traditional manner" claim leading plant-based and cultured meat companies. In a comment a a to the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service urging it to reject the USCA petition, the Good Food Institute, Tofurky, Lightlife Foods, Field Roast Grain Meat Co, Impossible Foods, Finless Foods, Sweet Earth Foods, and Hungry Planet, argue that USDA is authorized to regulate meat labels to protect the health and welfare of consumers.
USDA's proposed " Modernization of Swine Slaughter Inspection " rule would expand a failed and unlawful pilot program, the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point-based Inspection Models Project , to pig slaughterhouses nationwide, creating the New Swine Slaughter Inspection System. While the largest meat companies stand to profit from this privatized, speeded-up pig slaughter, animals, consumers, and slaughterhouse workers will pay a steep price.
PFP Enterprises is recalling approximately 7,146 pounds of raw beef products that were produced and packaged without the benefit of federal inspection, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service announced Saturday. The frozen and fresh beef items were produced on March 23-24, 2018.
In this March 26, 2018 photo, farmer Jeff Rehder looks over some of his pigs, in Hawarden, Iowa. Rehder stands to lose potential revenue on his hogs after China responded to Trump's announced plans to impose tariffs on products ... President Donald Trump's plan to impose tariffs on a range of Chinese goods has prompted threats from Beijing that it will tag U.S. products, including pork and aluminum, with an equal 25 percent charge.
A wrongful death lawsuit over an Oklahoma man's 2013 trampling death at a southern Kansas cattle processing facility has been reinstated. The Wichita Eagle reports that the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the ruling Thursday.