Subject: Animal Production

• A Trip to Green Dirt Farm

  July 29, 2008

• Studies In Crap: Say It In Chinese and The Bicentennial Beef Cookbook

  August 7, 2008

• Best Downtown Revitalization Project

  October 17, 2002

• To Hell With Cookies

  April 29, 2004

• The latest victim of the economy? A reasonable discussion about pork

  The 2009 Responsible Pork Symposium was supposed to be in Kansas City this week. Then everyone lost their money and ruined it.This year's summit was canceled because everyone's completely broke, the Responsible Pork Web site says. That includes pork producers who probably can't afford a plane ticket and stay, even if a room at the Airport Hilton comes at a group rate. Looking at the schedule of speakers, this might've been an interesting discussion. Presenters were supposed to discuss how re

  February 25, 2009

• Oysters and mussels and clams oh my! Do you know which are sustainable seafood?

  Flickr: Ricky DavidWhen you think "food in Kansas City," chances are seafood doesn't come in the top 10. Maybe not even the top 100. Yet it's on menus all over the city.But before you bite into that succulence from the sea, you should know whether what you're eating is sustainable or not. Overfishing is such a problem that a report by top scientists concluded that if fishing stays at its current levels, "there will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century." To

  March 20, 2009

• Martina McBride

  April 12, 2007

• Consumers Union, 29 groups ask Sebelius to veto hormone milk bill

  Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports and Consumerist, has sent a long letter to Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius regarding Kansas House Bill 2121. Twenty-nine groups involved in agricultural and food production added their signatures to a copy and sent it as well. Flickr: LauraThe letters have to do with milk labeling. HB 2121 would require producers who say their cows were not treated with rBGT, rBST or other hormones to add this disclaimer: "The Food and Drug Administration has deter

  April 14, 2009

• Urban Pollination

  October 23, 2008

• Thelma Tribute

  August 28, 2008

• For the makers of Shatto Milk, success is cold and tasty

  September 18, 2008

• Sloppy Seconds

  Pig Farm produces some good swill, but not enough.

  August 30, 2007

• Cattle Call

  March 2, 2006

• Oh, Sweet!

  Roger McNeill and Susan Macdonald Bray mind their beeswax.

  April 11, 2002

• Pig Out

  Merriam's Seaboard Corporation thought it could really bring home the bacon -- if it could just find a place to process its hogs.

  September 7, 2000

• Please don't disappear, tuna

  Flickr: Giant GinkgoLike cows or chickens, tuna seems like something that'll always be around. Tuna sandwich for lunch, sashimi for dinner. That could change drastically in the next five years. Two of the three species of bluefin tuna make up a large portion of the tuna we eat (other species include albacore, yellowfin and bigeye), and it's being fished at unsustainable levels. Last week, the World Wildlife Foundation announced that Atlantic bluefin tuna could be completely wiped out by 20

  April 20, 2009

• Charlie Arnot and big agriculture featured in this week's The Pitch

  Mr. ArnotMake sure to pick up a copy of The Pitch this week for the feature story on meat consultant Charlie Arnot. In Peter Rugg's article, Arnot comes off as a Karl Rove for carnivores for his work in, among other places, Arizona:Paul Shapiro, senior director of the Humane Society of the United States, says Arnot was hired as a consultant by the "No on 204" campaign. "It was all the big agribusiness companies putting money into the group called the Campaign for Arizona Farmers and Ranchers. Th

  April 29, 2009

• As Big Ag’s grade-A meat promoter, Charlie Arnot cooks up opposition to industry reform

  April 30, 2009

• Bees make the best brake lights

  A swarm of bees latched on to the back of a car on top of a parking garage on the Country Club Plaza, and Fox 4 was there to capture the bizarre video. Sounds like the woman didn't mind having a colony of bees attached to the rear of her car and drove away. 

  May 27, 2009

• Cow producing too much milk? Better kill it

  People aren't drinking as much milk as they used to, and the price has fallen. Yet, there are more dairy cows than ever, all eating feed -- and the price of that keeps rising. The result is that $10 of milk can cost $17 to produce. As Bloomberg News writes,In California, the largest milk-producing state, dairies lost $1.07 per 100 pounds in April, compared with profits of $11.23 in July 2007, based on feed costs and milk prices, USDA data show. In January, the state was the most unprofitable in

  June 23, 2009

• Got milk money?

  Forget spilled milk -- dairy farmers seem ready to spill blood. They're seeing red because of declining raw milk prices, the result of a decrease in worldwide demand and a glut of milk production that was ramped up in expectation of greater demand that never materialized. Some groups are seeking legislative redress, while others feel that financial subsidies are the only way to keep dairy farms in operations. Farmers donned cowsuits to protest a recent hearing by the Department of Agriculture an

  July 21, 2009

• Shatner's moved on from saving the whales

  ​William Shatner was once tasked with going back in time to rescue a humpback whale -- albeit to save the planet because those whales could communicate with a hostile alien race hellbent on destroying Earth. It's not like he would later tie global warming into a public service announcement for the Sierra Club to save the whales that live off screen. Wait a minute...  Now, only 23 years after filming Star Trek IV, he's got a new idea on how to save the planet and the challenge seems signif

  August 10, 2009

• Even the fish are juiced

  ​Fishing seems difficult enough without the potential of coming upon fish that have been genetically engineered. And now Wired has the story of how fisherman are caught in a debate over whether a record-setting catch of a genetically engineered fish should really count. Earlier this month, Saskatchewan fisherman Sean Konrad snared a 48-pound, world-record rainbow trout in Lake Diefenbaker, which is apparently filled with oversized trout that escaped from a nearby fish farm nine years ago. Alt

  September 17, 2009

• A steak with a side of antibiotics, please

  ​As the health care debate rages across the country, a different kind of health issue is cropping up with livestock: the widespread use of antibiotics for non-therapeutic uses such as growth and disease prevention. And the possibility that it's rendering those antibiotics less effective for people. Washington Post writer Ezra Klein makes the point that we are encouraging the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria by eating animals that contain low doses of antibiotics. His argument is ba

  September 18, 2009

• We'll still have scallops during the apocalypse

  ​Chalk up one food win for global warming -- it's apparently producing large and abundant scallops off the coast of Britain. A study published in Marine Biology noted an increase in the great scallop Pecten maximus over the course of 20 years of research by scientists at Bangor University and the University of York and Liverpool in England.  "It's great to provide some good news about one of our fisheries for a change. However, scallop fisheries are difficult to manage and have a history

  October 13, 2009

• Subsidies the answer to overfishing?

  ​Amid discussions of sustainable fisheries and concerns about overfishing, Southern Fried Science asks whether the government should be providing subsidies to fisherman?Supporting the concept is the precedent set by government subsidies for farmers, which ensures an employed workforce, puts limits on yields and production and restricts the amount of a given staple that can enter the marketplace. On the other side lies the free market argument, which suggests that fishing has always experience

  October 14, 2009