There are so many important food and farm stories unfolding right now it’s hard to keep up!
Here are just a few of today’s stories:
- Michael Pollan wants your help! Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food is working on a new project. He’s compiling a list of food rules–ideas about how we choose, prepare, and eat food that have been passed down through our cultures, ethnicities, families and time. Share your own food rules with him here.
- The First Lady loves fresh, healthy, local food and thinks that everyone should have access to it!
- Farmers and farm organizations are speaking out against the proposal National Animal Identification System (NAIS), which seeks to microchip every livestock animal, including cattle, hogs, sheep and goats, chickens and other poultry, horses, bison, deer and elk, alpaca and llamas, and others (whether or not they’re destined to be someone’s dinner) so that the federal government can track their location. Farmers will be responsible for the cost of this program, but while small farmers will have to ensure that every single one of their animals is individually chipped, factory farms will be able to use one chip for an entire building full of animals! The proposal claims to be about food safety but the reality is that once the animal enters the slaughterhouse, the chip does nothing to tie the burger on your plate to an individual animal.
Click here to read an op-ed about how this plan endangers small family farmers.
