It's only January, and the organic industry is already having a bad year. Not only have producers been losing consumers due to the hefty price tag of organic food, but the industry has struggled to maintain its integrity.
With organic feed prices at an all-time high, farmers in the UK are lobbying the government to temporarily relax organic feed standards to assist livestock producers who are currently paying twice as much for organic feed as they would conventional.
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With its affordable menu, fresh produce, and appetite-stimulating burritos, Mexican chain Chipotle can’t get any better. Or can it? Yesterday, the casual eatery announced that it has appointed Bill Niman, founder of sustainable farm Niman Ranch, as its sustainable agriculture advisor.
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With President-Elect Barack Obama taking office in two months, changes to our country's economy, national security, and foreign policy are imminent. But will America's agricultural system change with Obama in the White House as well? In an interview last month with Time magazine's Joe Klein, Obama commented on a recent article in the New York Times written by Michael Pollan, the country's preeminent critic of modern factory agriculture, saying:Our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil.
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Yesterday, California passed the most far-reaching farm animal treatment measure to ever be placed on the ballot.
Proposition 2 passed with an estimated 62 percent of the vote in early returns and will affect 20 million farm animals in California, America's largest agricultural state. It requires farmers to give animals space to turn around, spread their wings, stand up, and lie down.
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Animal-rights activism group PETA has come out with yet another inflammatory campaign. This year, they kicked their off Halloween festivities a few weeks early: On Saturday, more than 100 people gathered outside a Herald Square KFC dressed as blood-drenched zombies, holding signs that said, "I'd rather be dead than eat at KFC!"
The protest was part of the Kentucky Fried Cruelty campaign, which addresses concerns about KFC suppliers' treatment of chickens on farms and slaughterhouses.
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The government has decided to consider farmers' proposals to sell genetically altered animals as food. Although genetically engineered food is not a new concept (the process is used in agriculture to produce more crops), this is the first time that the FDA has contemplated applying the process to animals. The animals' genes would be manipulated to bring out or change certain characteristics.
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Animal rights activists PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has released a highly unsettling, undercover video that shows the mishandling of pigs on an Iowa farm. Among other things, in the clip — which I couldn't watch all the way through — workers hit female pigs with metal rods and slam piglets on a concrete floor. The farm supplies pigs for pork giant Hormel, who has acknowledged the abuses as "completely unacceptable."
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The Wall Street Journal's "Green Acres II: When Neighbors Become Farmers" reports that a growing number of Americans are "turning grass into edible greens and maybe even greenbacks," by growing food in their front and backyards. Since 2006, in Boulder, CO, school-bus driver Kipp Nash has "uprooted his backyard and the front or backyards of eight of his Boulder neighbors," and spent his afternoons "planting, watering, and tending" these minifarms, growing vegetables like tomatoes, bok choy, garlic, and beets. Although not everyone in the neighborhood finds this suburban farming aesthetically pleasing, particularly not during the Winter months, the locally-grown food market has grown, leaving yard farmers with an opportunity to sell to nearby restaurants and other neighbors.
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It's no secret, I'm a pretty die-hard carnivore. I tried to go veg when I was 16, but my dad made bacon for breakfast a few days later and I just couldn't help myself. So naturally, when a book with the huge letters M-E-A-T arrived at the Sugar HQ, I knew I'd found my next "must read."
The Omnivore's Dilemma was one of last year's most talked about food books and yet it didn't have a single recipe in it. In fact, it didn't have any kitchen tips either. So what was it about and what made it so popular? 
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