by DAVID McCUMBER | September 17, 2017 Editor’s note: Last of a two-part series. Sunday’s first installment detailed how Bart Riley, owner of Riley’s Meats, received a long list of required changes to his plant when it was visited by Food Safety and Inspection Service front-line supervisor Jeffrey Legg and what happened after Riley found…
by Jesse Hirsch | September 12th , 2017 Not so fast, Maine. You might recall that, on July 5, the New England state passed historic legislation allowing municipalities to make their own regulatory decisions on locally produced food. Well, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) jumped in right quick—sending state officials a letter on…
by Christopher Collins | Mon, Aug 21, 2017 The same conservation efforts that saved Texas from the Dust Bowl may have opened the door to a new man-made disaster. At just past 8 p.m. on April 19, a PowerPoint presentation on the basics of firefighting is concluded inside the Briscoe Volunteer Fire Department, and the…
by Ronnie Cummins The large meat industry interests have monopolized the market by brainwashing the public into believing that cheap meat, from animals raised on brutal factory farms, is the best we can do. It’s a lie. For the first time since the advent of industrial agriculture, the federal government is considering advising Americans to…
The Organization for Competitive Markets is concerned with the exiting of employees from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to jobs in the meat industry. OCM Executive Director Joe Maxwell says their biggest concern is with the most recent case of the inspector in charge at the Food Safety and Inspection Service Al Amanza taking a…
By Peggy Lowe Of all the expensive machinery Tom Giessel worked during the 2017 wheat harvest, his favorite sits in the office of his home. It’s a microfilm machine, the kind found in a high school library. Giessel uses it for his work as the historian of the National Farmers Union, the nation’s second-largest farm…
By Sumner Park – 07/23/17 01:09 PM EDT Small farm and ranch companies and animal rights activists flew to Washington to meet with lawmakers and push for legislation they say will bring needed reforms to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. At issue are mandatory USDA fees for so-called checkoff programs. Farmers and ranchers are required…
For Immediate Release: July 19, 2017 Contact: R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard Phone: 406-252-2516; r-calfusa@r-calfusa.com Billings, Mont. – In the wake of the discovery of a cow in Alabama infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) that did not enter the U.S. food supply, R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard issued the following statement regarding his organization’s…
by Baylen Linnekin | July 8, 2017 Two lawsuits and action in Congress indicate wasteful, unconstitutional mandates may be on their way out. Last week, a federal court in Montana handed an important victory to opponents of USDA checkoff programs. As I describe in my recent book, Biting the Hands that Feed Us, USDA checkoff…
By Caitlin Dewey | July 7 The first known shipment of cooked chicken from China reached the United States last week, following a much-touted trade deal between the Trump administration and the Chinese government. But consumer groups and former food-safety officials are warning that the chicken could pose a public health risk, arguing that China…