"watchdog" news and stories

Greenpeace is targeting European McDonald's as a catalyst for the destruction of the rain forest half a world away.  According to a report entitled "Eating up the Amazon," the eco-watchdog organization says that the soybeans that European fast food restaurants use to feed their chickens are grown in illegally deforested areas of the rain forest.

In Brazil, soybean farming has become so profitable that ranchers are selling off their now-valuable pasture land to farmers. The reason that this is illegal, says the group, is that there are regulations in Brazil that require landowners to keep 80 percent of their land forested. Once the ranchers have sold their cleared pasture land, they simply clear new land. Selling of chunks of their property means that they are keeping themselves under the 80 percent margin set by the government, but it does mean that the rain forest is getting smaller. There is also talk of ranchers and farmers using near-slave labor to harvest and tend the crops and an insinuation that the fast food companies might be simply turning away from the problem, if not outright promoting it.

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The Cornucopia Institute (CI) has recently completed a survey of organic milks, evaluating the methods of production and "rating the integrity" of various producers of organic milk and dairy products. Predictably, the companies which received the lowest scores are the largest ones. Their study is designed to reveal the "best" organically produced dairy and the worst - which it deems to be no better than conventionally produced dairy. Fortunately for consumers, CI says that the vast majority of all branded organic dairy products are produced at farms that follow legal and ethical standards.

The rating system had categories which ranged from "outstanding" down to "brand name", which in and of itself should tell you something about the bias inherent in the survey. Just like the article over at the Slate, there seems to be no distinction made between organic and small farm, family owned, self sustaining agriculture. CI says "organic consumers tend to want to know where their food is coming from and how it is produced," but the reality is that for most organic consumers it is sufficient to know that the product has been certified organic; consumers wishing to avoid GMO products and hormones in their milk do not necessarily care what farm the cows came from. It is possible that the CI is correct and that people should care, but at the moment that is not always the case.

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