Category Archives: agriculture

Labour in the Food Industry

Posted on April 3, 2015 by

Check out this piece by Stephen Lurie, writing for Vox: You care about where your food comes from. Shouldn’t you care about who grew and picked it? Lurie is arguing that the food you consume embodies a certain set of … Continue reading →

Posted in agriculture, choice, ethics, fairtrade, labour

Ethics of the World’s First Synthetic Burger

Posted on August 5, 2013 by

So, the world’s first synthetic burger has been cultured, minced, fried and consumed. (Mark Post, the scientist who conceived of and grew the synthetic burger, had announced a year and a half ago his near-term intention to produce and test … Continue reading →

Posted in agriculture, animal rights, animal welfare, biotechnology, ethics, factory farms, meat, natural, science | 4 Comments

Bigger Birds

Posted on November 22, 2012 by

Innovation isn’t always good for everyone. See this blog entry about how artificial insemination has allowed the turkey industry to triple the average size of a turkey over the last 50 years: Give Thanks? Science Supersized Your Turkey Dinner. (The … Continue reading →

Posted in agriculture, animal welfare, breeding, factory farms, meat, science

Corporate Dilution of the Meaning of “Organic”

Posted on July 21, 2012 by

A few days ago there was an exceptionally interesting article in the NY Times on the corporatization of organic foods. See Has ‘Organic’ Been Oversized?, by Stephanie Strom. The story outlines the controversy over the composition of the US board … Continue reading →

Posted in Additives, agriculture, certifiction, organic, regulation

Could GMO Technology Make Tomatoes More Authentic?

Posted on July 2, 2012 by

The LA Times ran an interesting piece a couple of days ago about Why supermarket tomatoes tend to taste bland. It turns out, according to new scientific research, that the hybridization carried out by tomato breeders over the last several … Continue reading →

Posted in agriculture, biotechnology, genes, genetic modification, GMO, natural, values

Ethics of Eating Meat

Posted on May 5, 2012 by

A recent Toronto Star piece on the ethics of eating meat quotes me, briefly, on the topic of lab-grown meat (something I’ve blogged about before). The main point of the article, however, is to make an attempt to marshall a … Continue reading →

Posted in agriculture, animal rights, animal welfare, choice, health, kids, meat, nutrition | 3 Comments

Who Wants Test-Tube Meat?

Posted on March 10, 2012 by

Sonja Puzic, for CTVNews.ca, asks: Would you eat meat grown in a test tube? When a Dutch scientist declared last month that he could have the world’s first lab-grown hamburger on the grill by October, the Internet was abuzz with … Continue reading →

Posted in agriculture, animal welfare, biotechnology, genetic modification, GMO, industrial, meat, science, synthetic meat, values