What's your beef (and why's it coming from Tanzania?)

by: Marcia Ishii-Eiteman

Fri Nov 04, 2011 at 14:48:56 PM PDT

What do an American businessman, Iowa State University and 162,000 refugees in Tanzania have in common?

Answer: they are all either directly involved in or soon-to-be impacted by a small group of U.S. investors' plans to acquire 800,000 acres (1,250 square miles) of land in Tanzania and transform it into large-scale industrial crop, beef and agrofuel production. They plan to use genetically engineered (GE) seed and other inputs supplied by Monsanto, Syngenta and other global agribusinesses.

As you might guess, not everyone is going to benefit from this mega-project! The deal, if it goes through, would force 162,000 former refugees from Burundi off land they have tended for the past 40 years, destroying their livelihoods and the communities they have built to give their children a future.

Engineering Food for Whom?

by: Marcia Ishii-Eiteman

Fri Aug 26, 2011 at 12:20:58 PM PDT

Warning! Nina Federoff - former "Science and Technology Advisor" to the U.S. State Department and well-known genetic engineering apologist - is back on her soapbox. In an Op Ed published in the New York Times last week, Federoff strings together one blazing falsehood after another, extolling the virtues of a technology that much of the rest of the world has rightly rejected. What is behind her evangelical commitment to this particular technology? Let's take a look.

You Are What You Eat: My Tour of Morris Grassfed Beef

by: Curtis Abbey

Wed Apr 01, 2009 at 13:09:21 PM PDT

Though that doesn't seem novel on first glance, in today's industrial-fed America, it is. But, don't confuse simple with easy. Corn-fed beef is easy, profit is their only concern.

Simple is raising cows the way it's sustainably been done for centuries. Morris uses a holistic approach that considers more than profit. They're focused on what's best for: the cows, the environment, community, the health of the consumer, and the grass.