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rBGH: How Artificial Hormones Damage the Dairy Industry and Endanger Public Health
2009-07-10
Recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), also called recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST), is a drug that is injected into cows to increase their milk production. Developed by the agricultural company Monsanto and approved for commercial use in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1993, by 2000 it had become the largest selling pharmaceutical product in the history of the dairy industry. RBGH has never been approved for commercial use in Canada or the European Union due to concerns about the drug’s impact on animal health. The artificial hormone’s known side effects include increased udder infections and reproductive problems in cows. Notably, a growing body of scientific research also suggests a link between drinking rBGH-treated milk and certain types of cancer in humans.
Where's the Local Beef?
2009-06-24
Local beef. Sustainable sausage. They’re what a growing number of people want for dinner. Across the country, demand is increasing for meat from cattle, sheep and other animals raised on the pastures of local and regional farms and ranches. But satisfying this burgeoning demand is no easy task. Decades of agribusiness and economic trends tilted toward centralizing animal agriculture in industrial factory settings have hollowed out the infrastructure needed to produce and market meat close to population centers. The long, slow demise of local small slaughter and processing operations is now preventing farmers and ranchers from fully satisfying rising consumer demand for meat from sustainably raised livestock.
What’s Behind the Global Food Crisis?
2008-07-24
The 2008 global food crisis is compromising the survival of 860 million undernourished people and threatens to push a hundred million people into extreme poverty, erasing all of the gains made in eradicating poverty in the last decade. Record high prices have put food out of reach for the poorest people in the developing world, many of whom already spend more than half their income on food. Growing food insecurity is undermining tenuous civil stability in at least 33 countries, about one sixth of United Nations member countries.
Book Signing Event: Groundbreaking Food Irradiation Book
2008-05-28
Author Wenonah Hauter, of the new book Zapped! Irradiation and the Death of Food, will be reading from and signing her book at Busboys & Poets in Washington, DC.
Cargill: A Threat to Food and Farming
2008-05-12
This report, Cargill: A Threat to Food and Farming, will show that Cargill’s vast influence on global agricultural trade threatens the health of consumers, family farmers, the environment, and even entire economies and governments.
More Foul Fowl
2008-03-25
The bacteria Salmonella is the leading cause of food-borne illness in the United States with nearly a million cases of salmonellosis attributed annually to meat and poultry consumption. Of these, more than 14,000 of the victims are hospitalized and more than 400 die.
The Trouble With Smithfield: A Corporate Profile
2008-01-14
Four corporations control 66 percent of the U.S. hog market, as of 2007. At the top of this list is Smithfield Foods, which slaughters 27 million hogs every year, making it the biggest hog producer and processor in the United States and world–wide. For Smithfield, this means sales of $11 billion a year, but for farmers, consumers, workers, and the environment, this concentration in agriculture has been anything but a success story.
Retail Realities: Corn Prices Do Not Drive Grocery Inflation
2007-09-13
Retail prices for meat and milk are disconnected from increases in the price that farmers receive for corn, according to a Food & Water Watch analysis of food and corn prices over the past three decades. Retail consumer food prices have generally risen steadily with inflation or even faster irregardless of the price farmers receive for corn used to feed livestock.
Turning Farms into Factories
2007-07-24
Industrial animal production, the practice of confining thousands of cows, hogs, chickens or other animals in tightly packed facilities has become the dominant method of meat production in the United States. This report, which accompanies Food & Water Watch’s online map of factory farm animal production, explains the forces that have driven the growth of factory farms, as well as the environmental, public health, and economic consequences of the rise of this type of animal production.
Foul Fowl: Salmonella in Chickens
2006-10-10
The bacteria Salmonella is the leading cause of food-borne illness in the United States with nearly a million cases of salmonellosis attributed annually to meat and poultry consumption Food & Water Watch obtained the Salmonella testing results through the Freedom of Information Act. We report here on: the performance trends in the broiler chicken industry; the relative performance of the largest seven broiler chicken companies, and; plants that failed to meet USDA’s Salmonella standards between 1998 and 2005.
Fact Sheets
Reports
- rBGH: How Artificial Hormones Damage the Dairy Industry and Endanger Public Health — Recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), also cal ...
- Where's the Local Beef? — Local beef. Sustainable sausage. They’re what a ...
- What’s Behind the Global Food Crisis? — The 2008 global food crisis is compromising the su ...
- Cargill: A Threat to Food and Farming — This report, Cargill: A Threat to Food and Farming ...
- More Foul Fowl — The bacteria Salmonella is the leading cause of fo ...