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Category: Food

  • Specialty coffee professional Nish Arthur on asking so-called stupid questions

    Can you walk me through your morning coffee ritual?

    When I’m brewing just for myself or with another person, I usually go for the V60, a manual pour-over method. It’s always been my favorite home brewing technique. It doesn’t yield the most coffee, so it’s not great for impressing a crowd, but it’s perfect for small batches. I use a bleached paper filter because it doesn’t leave any extra flavors behind. I find that metal filters can sometimes give the coffee a metallic taste, which can really throw off the brew, and unbleached filters can leave a slight papery flavor. For the setup, I use a temperature-controlled gooseneck kettle and my own grinder.

    Do you remember when you first had a “good” coffee?

    It was in Edmonton, Alberta. A couple of friends took me to Transcend at the original Garneau location. I think I had a cappuccino or something, and everyone I was with was like, “This is the spot; this is the best coffee.” I didn’t have a frame of reference then, but it completely rewired my brain. I applied for a job there during that visit because I had just moved to Edmonton and needed work. I was hired almost on the spot.

    How old were you?

    18 or 19.

    Would you say that was the beginning of your career?

    Definitely. I had just dropped out of university and it wasn’t until I had the 60 hours of one-on-one training that things really clicked. Once I started, I realized, Wow, I’m actually really good at this. I had a strong palate, my retro-nasal senses were on point, and I picked things up quickly.

    Does having a strong palate apply to anything else in your life?

    Nothing professional, but I’m a big perfume guy. Some people are better tasters and some people are better smellers.

    What does it mean to have a good palate?

    For me, a well-developed palate can isolate the different flavors, aromas, and textures at play. This can be tricky with coffee, especially if you’re not a regular drinker or not particularly intentional about it. In North America, many people tend to prefer coffee that tastes nutty or chocolatey, whereas something like a naturally processed Ethiopian coffee is very aromatic and bold—it can hit you with flavors like blackberries and Jolly Ranchers. If you build your palate without assumptions, you can sip the coffee and ask yourself, “What else am I tasting?” Often, it’s not immediately obvious. It’s about exploring what else you can detect in the cup.

    You work in coffee education. Can you explain what being a trainer entails?

    I work as a management consultant and educator for Variety Coffee Roasters in New York. Specifically, for education, I’m responsible for building and executing the coffee program for their retail staff across eight cafes. I redesigned their education program, breaking it into modules. The first module is all about assessing the individual’s experience with coffee. If someone is new to coffee, it will start with a basic PowerPoint covering the fundamentals, like how coffee is a seed inside a cherry, followed by a full menu cupping. The second module focuses on milk-based drinks, including milk steaming and latte art. No one can work in the cafes until they’ve passed the milk training session. The final two modules are all about espresso dialing from scratch.

    Before joining Variety, I had been working in coffee education on a consulting basis, helping small restaurants and cafes develop their own sustainable coffee programs. I designed an espresso training cheat sheet, a key part of my consulting. When I joined Variety, I adapted it to their program, and it worked so well that I eventually patented it. This method has allowed me to train people to dial in espresso to a high standard in just a few hours. When dialing espresso, I rely on instinct rather than a clear cause-and-effect process. I just know what to do, but teaching that kind of instinct to others has been one of the biggest challenges in my role as a trainer.

    You started your own company recently, Hot Stuff, and you work with Nordic light roast coffee. Can you explain what constitutes a light roast and how you achieve that flavor?

    A good way to compare roasts is through sugar: light roasts are like white sugar, medium roasts are like caramel, and dark roasts are like molasses. If you think of fruitier, more expressive coffees you’ve had, they’re likely light roasts. During roasting, after the drying phase and Maillard reaction, there’s a point called the first crack. The first crack is a chemical change when the green coffee stops absorbing heat, then expels it. At this stage, all the moisture is gone, and when the coffee expels the heat, it’s similar to popcorn popping. This is when the coffee’s pores open up, and the sugars inside begin to cook. Green coffee is full of sugar, gas, and oil. The oil and sugars carry the coffee’s natural flavor.

    Depending on the coffee’s origin, the flavor can vary widely. African coffees tend to be fruity and tea-like. In contrast, Latin American coffees often have notes of stone fruit, nuts, caramel, and chocolate—flavors that North Americans might associate with more traditional profiles, even though all coffee originates from Ethiopia. For lighter roasts, the goal is to preserve these flavors while ensuring the sugar is developed enough to avoid grassy or underdeveloped tastes. In a light roast, you aim to stop the process just after it has developed enough to avoid those underdeveloped qualities, before the flavors begin to neutralize as the sugars cook… You need to learn how to listen to the coffee and figure out what it wants.

    And you’re roasting the coffee yourself?

    Yes. It’s a one-person business, but I hired a consultant to help me get started. Coffee roasting is an exclusive field, especially if you’re not a dude, so I brought in a friend who had roasted for Stumptown Roasters for years. Though I had years of specialty experience, he was the only one willing to teach me to roast.

    We roast out of my workplace, Variety. I just asked the owner, “Hey, can Patrick and I rent the roastery on weekends for this project I’m working on?” and he said, “You do enough for me, just use it.” It was insanely generous because that saved me thousands and thousands of dollars. I can also store my green coffee there, which is crazy. The reason why most people don’t learn how to roast coffee is because it’s prohibitively expensive.

    It feels like there’s so much of you in this project. You’ve been pursuing this since your teenage years, co-owned a café in Montréal for years, worked at Variety, and now launched this Nordic-inspired business. Given that you’re Nordic yourself, it all feels incredibly personal and reflective of who you are. Was that intentional?

    I feel like with Hot Stuff, I realized I wanted to do my own thing, and I want to do it the way that I like to do it. I also want it to be less serious! I want someone to be able to walk into a cafe without being scared about asking a stupid question. I want someone trying a fruity espresso to be like, “Why does this taste like this?”

    Last year, I hosted a public coffee cupping in my hometown in Saskatchewan, and a huge crowd showed up. I encouraged everyone to dive deeper into tasting coffee. By the end, people were genuinely excited about what they had learned. Even my mom joined in. One coffee was on the table with a noticeable sour defect, and she immediately picked up on it, saying, “This tastes like when a peanut starts to go a little sour.” I was amazed at how quickly she identified it. It made me realize that people inherently know how to taste; they’ve just never been given the opportunity to engage with coffee beyond its typical, commodity-focused perspective.

    What do you feel you still have to learn?

    I want to deepen my understanding of coffee production and agronomy because they’re incredibly fascinating. With climate change, we’re seeing significant shifts in how and where coffee is grown. Some countries are experiencing frost for the first time, leading to increased defects and challenges in production. Their coffee economies are struggling as a result. Meanwhile, other regions are seeing hotter climates that, surprisingly, are yielding more unique and exciting coffees. It’s been fascinating to observe these changes over the years. In the 11 or 12 years I’ve been in the industry, I’ve noticed how much Kenyan coffee, for example, has evolved in flavor compared to a decade ago.

    At the same time, growing coffee is becoming increasingly difficult and costly, which impacts both producers and consumers. As coffee becomes more expensive, I believe it’s the roaster’s responsibility to educate consumers. It’s important to explain why their coffee costs $6—whether it’s due to climate challenges, labour conditions, or production costs—not simply because the roaster wants to charge a premium.

    We also can’t ignore the fact that the coffee industry has deep roots in exploitation and slavery. As a coffee company, there’s a responsibility not just to help people enjoy coffee more but also to share the stories behind it—highlighting the producers, the struggles their countries face, and the broader context of what’s happening in the industry.

    What does the future hold for Hot Stuff?

    When I eventually open a brick-and-mortar roastery, my goal is to establish a program to teach people how to roast coffee, specifically aiming to support marginalized communities. The biggest challenges in learning how to roast coffee are often access-related. First, finding someone willing to teach you the craft can be difficult. As an educator, I’m passionate about filling that gap. But beyond that, sourcing and purchasing green coffee is incredibly challenging, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the process. Then there’s the question of where to store it and where to roast. My vision for the roastery is to address these hurdles and create a supportive environment where people can learn and grow.

    I want to create a scholarship program based on a circular economy. The idea is to use still-fresh tasting, past-crop coffee to teach roasting. Participants—two or three at a time—would get meaningful, hands-on experience, not just a quick two-hour session. The coffee they roast would be bagged separately as “scholarship coffee” and sold at a lower price, with revenue reinvested into the program to buy more green coffee and support future participants. The goal is to make this education free and sustainable, reducing waste by repurposing coffee that might otherwise go unsold. There’s a huge demand for roasting education, especially among women and marginalized groups… I hope to create a space where aspiring roasters can learn without the financial burden or logistical challenges. We’ll see who shows up for it!

    Nish Arthur recommends:

    T.H.C.’s 1999 album Adagio

    Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997)

    A staple turtleneck

    The Erewhon Hailey Bieber smoothie

    The L Word S6E3

    This post was originally published on The Creative Independent.

  • BRICS Expands With Nine New Partner Countries

    With its nine members and nine partners, BRICS now makes up roughly half of the global population and more than 41% of world GDP (PPP).

    The group is an economic powerhouse, including top producers of key commodities like oil, gas, grains, meat, and minerals.

    At the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia in October 2024, 13 countries were invited to become BRICS partners, meaning they are on the path to full membership in the near future.

    Nine of these 13 nations accepted the invitation. The remaining four did not give a formal response as of the end of 2024. These were Algeria, Nigeria, Turkey/Türkiye, Vietnam.

    The post BRICS Expands With Nine New Partner Countries appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Corporate Fearmongering Over Fast Food Wage Hike Aged Like Cold French Fries

     

    FAIR: Reporting on California’s Fast-Food Minimum Wage Raise Comes With Side Order of Fear

    Conor Smyth (FAIR.org, 1/19/24): “The history of debates over the minimum wage is filled with claims about the detrimental effect of raising the wage floor that have repeatedly flopped in the face of empirical evidence.”

    In September 2023, California passed a law requiring fast food restaurants with more than 60 locations nationwide to pay workers a minimum of $20 an hour, affecting more than 700,000 people working in the state’s fast food industry.

    Readers will be unsurprised to hear that corporate media told us that this would devastate the industry. As Conor Smyth reported for FAIR (1/19/24) before the law went into effect, outlets like USA Today (12/26/23) and CBS (12/27/23) were telling us that, due to efforts to help those darn workers, going to McDonald’s or Chipotle was going to cost you more, and also force joblessness. This past April, Good Morning America (4/29/24) doubled down with a piece about the “stark realities” and “burdens” restaurants would now face due to the law.

    Now we have actual data about the impact of California’s law. Assessing the impact, the Shift Project (10/9/24) did “not find evidence that employers turned to understaffing or reduced scheduled work hours to offset the increased labor costs.” Instead, “weekly work hours stayed about the same for California fast food workers, and levels of understaffing appeared to ease.” Further, there was “no evidence that wage increases were accompanied by a reduction in fringe benefits… such as health or dental insurance, paid sick time, or retirement benefits.”

    Popular Info: What really happened after California raised its minimum wage to $20 for fast food workers

    Judd Legum (Popular Information, 12/3/24): “The restaurant industry provided a distorted picture of the impact of the fast food worker wage increase.”

    In June 2024, the California Business and Industrial Alliance ran a full-page ad in USA Today claiming that the fast food industry cut about 9,500 jobs as a result of the $20 minimum wage. That’s just false, says Popular Information (12/3/24).

    Among other things, the work relied on a report from the Hoover Institution, itself based on a Wall Street Journal article (3/25/24), from a period before the new wage went into effect, and that, oops, was not seasonally adjusted. (There’s an annual decline in employment at fast food restaurants from November through January, when people are traveling or cooking at home—which is why the Bureau of Labor Statistics offers seasonally adjusted data.)

    The industry group ad starts with the Rubio’s fish taco chain, which they say was forced to close 48 California locations due to “increasing costs.” It leaves out that the entire company was forced to declare bankruptcy after it was purchased by a private equity firm on January 19, 2024 (LA Times, 6/12/24).

    As Smyth reported, there is extensive academic research on the topic of wage floors that shows that minimum wage hikes tend to have little to no effect on employment, but can raise the wages of hundreds of thousands of workers (CBPP, 6/30/15; Quarterly Journal of Economics, 5/2/19). Media’s elevation of anecdotes about what individual companies have done, and say they plan to do, in response to the minimum wage hike overshadows more meaningful information about the net effect across all companies in the industry.

    WSJ: California's Fast Food Casualties

    The Wall Street Journal (12/28/23) said last year that “it defies economics and common sense to think that businesses won’t adapt by laying off workers.” Since that hasn’t happened, does the Journal need better economists—or more sense?

    And what about agency? The Wall Street Journal (12/28/23) contented that “it defies economics and common sense to think that businesses won’t adapt by laying off workers” in response to the new law. But why? Is there no question lurking in there about corporate priorities? About executive pay? About the fact that consumers and workers are the same people?

    The question calls for thoughtfulness—will, for example, fast food companies cut corners by dumping formerly in-house delivery workers off on companies like DoorDash and Uber Eats, which are not subject to the same labor regulations? How will economic data measure that?

    That would be a story for news media to engage, if they were interested in improving the lives of struggling workers. They could also broaden the minimum wage discussion to complementary policy changes—as Smyth suggested, “expanded unemployment insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, a job guarantee, and universal basic income.”

    The narrow focus on whether a Big Mac costs 15 cents more, and if it does, shouldn’t you yell at the people behind the counter, is a distortion, and a tired one, that should have been retired long ago.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • How Trump could bring fish farms to the Gulf of Mexico

    Floating cages with fish by the thousands may be popping in the Gulf of Mexico under a controversial plan that was backed by President-elect Donald Trump’s administration four years ago and is likely to gain traction again after Trump begins his second term next month. 

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently identified five areas in the Gulf that the agency says strike a balance between the needs of the growing aquaculture industry and the potential impacts on the marine environment and elements of the seafood industry that depend on wild fisheries. 

    Identifying these “aquaculture opportunity areas” is part of a decade-long federal plan to open the Gulf and other offshore areas to aquaculture. The plan got a strong push from Trump but slowed under President Joe Biden’s administration, which concludes next month.  

    Three of NOAA’s preferred aquaculture areas are off the coast of Texas and one is south of Louisiana. Each area ranges from 500 to 2,000 acres and could total 6,500 acres. A fifth area, considered a possible alternative, has been identified near the mouth of the Mississippi River, but it would likely conflict with shipping traffic and shrimping in that area.

    The areas would open the Gulf for the first time to the large-scale cultivation of shellfish, finfish and seaweed. Seafood companies have long expressed interest in raising large, high-value species, including redfish and amberjack, in floating net pens several miles off the coasts of Louisiana, Texas and Florida.   

    A locator map showing four preferred and one possible alternative offshore aquaculture farm locations in the Gulf of Mexico (as identified by NOAA). The alternative location is off the southeast coast of LA, while the preferred locations are off the east coast of TX.
    The federal government is considering five locations for fish farms.

    Opponents say fish poop, fish feed and other organic debris that often swirls around offshore aquaculture operations will worsen the Gulf’s massive “dead zone,” a New Jersey-size area of low oxygen that pushes away fish and suffocates slow-moving crabs and other shellfish. Fish that escape from floating farms can spread diseases and parasites, gobble up food that supports other species, and potentially mate with their wild counterparts, introducing their domesticated genes, which tend to produce slower, dumber fish.  

    “When you think of all of these environmental impacts, it’s pretty concerning,” said Marianne Cufone, executive director of the New Orleans-based Recirculating Farms Coalition, a group opposed to offshore aquaculture. “Plus, we get super violent storms in the Gulf of Mexico. I don’t know how these (farms) won’t be damaged with fish escaping.”

    But the planet’s already-taxed wild fish stocks can’t meet the world’s expanding appetite for seafood alone, said Neil Anthony Sims, CEO of Ocean Era, an aquaculture company that hopes to develop a floating redfish farm 40 miles from Sarasota, Florida. His assertion is backed by a 2021 Stanford University study that predicted global fish consumption is likely to increase by 80 percent over the next 25 years. 

    “We can’t feed a planet with wild fish anymore than we could feed a planet with wild antelope,” Sims said. 

    Many fish, including tilapia and catfish, are raised in ponds and other land-based facilities. Floating fish farms in state-managed waters are increasingly rare. In 2022, Washington state effectively banned its once-thriving salmon farming industry after about 260,000 non-native Atlantic salmon escaped from a net pen north of Puget Sound. Hawaii still hosts a floating fish farm that raises Hawaiian kampachi, a fish related to amberjack.

    Deeper waters managed by the federal government have remained aquaculture-free. 

    Like Trump, Biden backs opening federal waters to fish farming, but his administration has taken a more methodical approach, directing NOAA to study various areas that may be “environmentally, socially and economically viable” for supporting offshore aquaculture. 

    Trump was more forceful during his first term, signing an executive order in 2020 that was aimed at breaking through the regulatory barriers that have long impeded fish farming in federal waters. The Trump administration backed offshore aquaculture as a way to create jobs, broaden markets for U.S. companies and help meet growing demand for seafood. 

    A 2020 federal appeals court ruling blocked new regulations allowing offshore fish farming under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the primary law governing fisheries since 1976. But other laws, including the National Aquaculture Act of 1980 and the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act of 1980, give NOAA the authority to develop aquaculture opportunity areas and conduct environmental impact permitting for offshore farms. 

    The opportunity areas unveiled by NOAA last month set the stage for a final greenlight by Trump or Congress. The public can comment on the opportunity areas until Feb. 20. NOAA will host the first of three virtual meetings to gather feedback on the areas on Dec. 17.

    NOAA is also considering aquaculture opportunity areas in Southern California, but opposition is likely to be stiffer there than in the Gulf, where residents are already accustomed to heavily industrialized coastal waters, with thousands of offshore oil and gas structures near Louisiana and Texas and pipelines crisscrossing the seafloor. 

    But adding more industrial infrastructure will further crowd the Gulf’s first industry: fishing.

    “We’re already dealing with the rigs and oil wells and all kinds of debris,” said Acy Cooper, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association. “And you want to put more out there? It’ll be our downfall.”

    The Gulf’s shrimping industry has been losing ground to imported shrimp, which is typically raised in farms in Asia and South America and is far cheaper than the wild-caught varieties. 

    Cooper, a third-generation shrimper in Plaquemines Parish, said America’s desire for seafood should be met by fishers rather than farmers. 

    “If you want fish, there’s a lot of fishermen here for you. We ready,” he said. 

    But NOAA isn’t so sure the U.S.’s wild fisheries can support the demand for seafood alone. About 80% of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported, and about half of the imports are produced via foreign aquaculture. That’s giving rise to a “seafood trade deficit” that had grown to $17 billion in 2020, according to NOAA.  

    As much as U.S. fishers may want to meet demand, wild stocks are under increasing threat by climate change, which is altering marine species reproduction, feeding habits and distribution. 

    Offshore fish farming can help the U.S. adapt by producing seafood in a more controlled environment, according to NOAA. 

    “Aquaculture offers a pathway to grow climate resilience,” said Janet Coit, NOAA Fisheries’ assistant administrator. “Identifying areas suitable for sustainable aquaculture is a forward-looking step toward climate-smart food systems.”

    But fish farms will likely worsen the dead zone, one of the Gulf’s main climate-related problems. The dead zone is fueled by agricultural runoff and other nutrient pollution that flushes into the Gulf from the Mississippi. Rising temperatures speed the growth of algae that feeds on the nutrients. When the massive algal blooms die, their decomposition robs the Gulf of oxygen. 

    Developing floating farms in and around the dead zone will add even more nutrients from poop and fish food that will nourish bigger blooms, Cufone said. 

    “We have warmer waters and all of the difficulties our fisheries are having because of climate change, but none of that supports an argument for factory fish farms,” she said. “If we care about climate change, we shouldn’t have them in our oceans.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Trump could bring fish farms to the Gulf of Mexico on Dec 11, 2024.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tristan Baurick.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Don’t blame Biden for inflation. Blame the climate.

    Angela Bishop has been struggling with what she describes as “the cost of everything lately.” Groceries are one stressor, although she gets some reprieve from the free school lunches her four kids receive. Still, a few years of the stubbornly high cost of gas, utilities, and clothing have been pain points. 

    “We’ve just seen the prices before our eyes just skyrocket,” said Bishop, who is 39. She moved her family to Richmond, Virginia from California a few years ago to stop “living paycheck to paycheck,” but things have been so difficult lately she’s worried it won’t be long before they are once again barely getting by. 

    Families nationwide are dealing with similar financial struggles. Although inflation, defined as the rate at which average prices of goods or services rise over a given period, has slowed considerably since a record peak in 2022, consumer prices today have increased by more than 21 percent since February 2020. Frustration over rising cost of living drove many voters to support president-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on ending inflation. 

    Simply put, inflation was instrumental in determining how millions of Americans cast their ballots. Yet climate change, one of the primary levers behind inflationary pressures, wasn’t nearly as front of mind — just 37 percent of voters considered the issue “very important” to their vote. Bishop said that may have something to do with how difficult it can be to understand how extreme weather impacts all aspects of the economy. She knows that “climate change has something to do with inflation,” but isn’t sure exactly what. 

    In 2022, inflation reached 9% in the U.S. — the highest rate in over 40 years. That was part of a global trend. The lingering impacts of the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, higher fuel and energy prices, and food export bans issued by a number of countries contributed to a cost of living crisis that pushed millions of people worldwide into poverty.

    Extreme weather shocks were another leading cause of escalating prices, said Alla Semenova, an economist at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. “Climate change is an important part of the inflationary puzzle,” she said.

    In February of 2021, Winter Storm Uri slammed Texas, causing a deadly energy crisis statewide. It also caused widespread shutdowns at oil refineries that account for nearly three-quarters of U.S chemical production. This disrupted the production and distribution of things necessary for the production of plastics, which Semenova says contributed to ensuing price hikes for packaging, disinfectants, fertilizers and pesticides. 

    Food prices are another area where the inflationary pressure of warming has become obvious. A drought that engulfed the Mississippi River system in 2022 severely disrupted the transportation of crops used for cattle feed, increasing shipping and commodity costs for livestock producers. Those added costs were likely absorbed by consumers buying meat and dairy products. Grain prices jumped around the same time because drought-induced supply shortages and high energy prices pushed up the costs of fertilizer, transportation, and agricultural production. Not long after, lettuce prices soared amid shortages that followed flooding across California, and the price of orange juice skyrocketed after drought and a hurricane hit major production regions in Florida. 

    Though overall inflation has cooled considerably since then, the economic pressures extreme weather places on food costs persist. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported that weather disruptions drove global food prices to an 18-month high in October. In fact, cocoa prices surged almost 40 percent this year because of supply shortages wrought by drier conditions in West and Central Africa, where about three-quarters of the world’s cocoa is cultivated. This can not only impact the price tag of chocolate, but also health supplements, cosmetics, and fragrances, among other goods that rely on cocoa beans. 

    “What we have seen, especially this year, is this massive price spike,” due to abnormal weather patterns, said Rodrigo Cárcamo-Díaz, a senior economist at U.N. Trade and Development. 

    But the impact on consumers “goes beyond” the Consumer Price Indicator, which is the most widely used measure of inflation, said Cárcamo-Díaz. His point is simple: Lower-income households are most affected by supply shocks that inflate the price of goods as increasingly volatile weather makes prices more volatile, straining households with tighter budgets because it can take time for wages to catch up to steeper costs of living. 

    Rising prices are expected to become even more of an issue as temperatures climb and extreme weather becomes more frequent and severe. In fact, a 2024 study found that heat extremes driven by climate change enhanced headline inflation for 121 countries over the last 30 years, with warming temperatures expected to increase global inflation by as much as 1 percent every year until 2035. Lead researcher and climate scientist Maximilian Kotz noted that general goods, or any physical things that can be bought, broadly experienced “strong inflationary effects from rising temperatures.” 

    Electricity is already getting more expensive as higher temperatures and disasters strain grids and damage infrastructure, driving higher rates of utility shutoff for lower-income U.S. households. Without significant emission reductions, and monetary policies set by central banks and governments to mitigate the financial impacts of climate change by stabilizing prices, this inequitable burden is slated to get much worse. Severe floods derailing major production regions for consumer electronics and auto parts have recently disrupted global supply chains and escalated costs for things car ownership in the U.S. Persistent climate shocks have even triggered an enormous increase in the cost of home insurance premiums.

    All told, the inflationary impact of climate change on cost of living is here to stay and will continue to strain American budgets, said Semenova. “The era of relatively low and stable prices is over,” she said. “Costs have been rising due to climate change. It’s the new normal.”

    That’s bad news for families like the Bishops, who are simply trying to get by. 

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Don’t blame Biden for inflation. Blame the climate. on Dec 5, 2024.

    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

  • Food Service Workers Can’t Afford to Eat the Food They Serve

    Workers in the food industry earn some of the lowest wages in the U.S. economy, and after a long day of preparing, cooking, or serving food at work, many struggle to put food on their own tables. A hefty 29% of U.S. jobs were linked to the food and agricultural industries in 2021, and job growth in food sectors is on the rise. But the low pay has consequences. According to the U.S.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Queer Farmers Are Working to Transform Our Food Systems — and Paying a Price

    The journey that led Anita Adalja, a 42-year-old queer South Asian farmer, to enter the agricultural field began when they were 25, living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Adalja worked as a social worker in supportive housing, trying to finish graduate school, and felt like they were in over their head. Along with their coworkers, they would often go to the roof of the supportive housing building…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Food Babe/Democrats Laboring

    Ralph welcomes Vani Hari, also known as “The Food Babe,” to tell us about her campaign against Kellogg’s to stop using artificial dyes in their cereals that have been linked to various health problems and have been banned in Europe. Plus, noted labor organizer, Chris Townsend gives us his take on the AFL-CIOs obeisant relationship to the Democratic Party.

    Vani Hari is an author and food activist. A former corporate consultant, she started the Food Babe blog in 2011, and she is the co-founder of the nutritional supplement startup Truvani.

    It is a game of whack-a-mole because we get these corporations to change, or they announce that they’re going to change, and then they go back on their commitment. And that is what’s happened with Kellogg’s.

    Vani Hari

    Chris Townsend is a 45-year union member and leader. He was most recently the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) International Union Organizing Director. Previously he was an International Representative and Political Action Director for the United Electrical Workers Union (UE), and he has held local positions in both the SEIU and UFCW.

    These workers who have been betrayed, lied to, wrecked, destroyed, poisoned, all of these things—this becomes the breeding ground for Trumpist ideology. And the Democrats won’t face this.

    Chris Townsend

    Our media largely ignores the labor movement. Our small labor press—left press—generally subscribes to the “good news only” school of journalism. So these endemic problems and even immediate crises are never dealt with. Now, some of that is because the existing labor leadership generally is not fond of criticism or is not fond of anyone pointing out shortcomings (or) mistakes.

    Chris Townsend

    We’re a cash cow—and a vote cow— to be milked routinely and extensively by this Democratic machinery… The leadership today in the bulk of the unions is an administrative layer, business union through and through to the core. The historic trade union spirit that always animated the unions in various levels is not extinguished, but in my 45 years, I would say it is at a low ebb. In the sense that we just have been sterilized because of this unconditional and unholy alliance or domination by the Democratic Party. And there’s no room for spark. There’s no room for dissent. There’s no room for anyone to even raise the obvious.

    Chris Townsend

    [Leaders of the AFL-CIO are] basically bureaucrats in that building on 16th Street, collecting their pay and their nice pensions. Completely out of touch with millions of blue collar workers that have veered into the Republican Party channels—the so-called Reagan Democrats, which have spelled the difference in election after election for the Senate, for the House, for the Presidency.

    Ralph Nader

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    News 11/20/24

    1. In his new book Hope Never Disappoints, Pope Francis writes “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of genocide,” and called for the situation to be “studied carefully…by jurists and international organisations,” per the Middle East Eye. These comments come on the heels of a United Nations committee report which found that Israel’s actions are “consistent with characteristics of genocide,” and alleged that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. The Catholic pontiff has long decried violence in all forms and has previously criticized Israel’s “disproportionate and immoral” actions in Gaza and Lebanon, per AP.

    2. On November 14th, the AP’s Farnoush Amiri reported that more than 80 Congressional Democrats sent a letter to President Biden on October 29th, urging the administration to sanction Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Only made public after the election, this letter called for sanctions on these individuals “Given their critical roles in driving policies that promote settler violence, weaken the Palestinian Authority, facilitate de facto and de jure annexation, and destabilize the West Bank.” This letter was principally authored by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, and in addition to dozens of House Democratic signatories, was signed by no less than 17 Senators.

    3. Another remarkable post-election Israel story concerns outgoing Congressman Jamaal Bowman, who was ousted from his seat by a flood of AIPAC money. In an interview with Rania Khalek, Bowman relates a remarkable anecdote about the presidential campaign. Bowman says he specifically requested to campaign for Kamala Harris in Michigan – where he was so popular his AIPAC-backed primary challenger disparagingly said “[Bowman’s] constituency is Dearborn, Michigan” – but the campaign ignored him and instead deployed surrogates that seemed almost designed to alienate Arab-Americans: Liz Cheney, Ritchie Torres, and Bill Clinton who went out of his way to scold these voters. These voters were likely decisive in Kamala Harris’ loss in that state.

    4. On November 13th, Senator Bernie Sanders announced that he intends to bring Joint Resolutions of Disapproval to the Senate floor. As Sanders writes in a press release, the “The JRD is the only mechanism available to Congress to prevent an arms sale from advancing.” Unlike previous efforts however, Sanders no longer stands alone. According to Reuters, “Two of the resolutions, co-sponsored with…Senators Jeff Merkley and Peter Welch, would block the sale of 120 mm mortar rounds and joint direct attack munitions (JDAMS). A third, sponsored by Democratic Senator Brian Schatz, would block the sale of tank rounds.” Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen have announced their intention to support the JRD. Certain heavy-hitting Democratic-aligned institutions have also bucked precedent to back this effort, including the massive Service Employees International Union and leading Liberal-Zionist group J Street.

    5. In the House, Republicans and many Democrats are pushing H.R. 9495, a bill which would grant the executive branch the power to unilaterally strip non-profit organizations of their tax-exempt status based on accusations of supporting terrorism. As the Intercept notes, “The law would not require officials to explain the reason for designating a group, nor…provide evidence.” The ACLU and over 150 other “civil liberties, religious, reproductive health, immigrant rights, human rights, racial justice, LGBTQ+, environmental, and educational organizations,” sent a letter opposing this bill in September, and celebrated when the bill was blocked on November 12th – but it is back from the grave, with Nonprofit Quarterly reporting the bill has cleared a new procedural hurdle and will now advance to the floor. Yet even if this bill is successfully blocked, little stands in the way of Republicans reviving it in the next Congress, where they will hold the House, Senate, and the Presidency.

    6. Back in October, we covered Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s letter to Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen expressing grave concern over the company’s decision to roll out facial recognition-based price gouging technology. According to Tlaib, Kroger has stonewalled Congress, so she is leading a group of House Democrats in a new letter demanding answers to the critical questions that remain, such as whether Kroger will use facial recognition to display targeted ads, whether consumers can opt out, and whether the company plans to sell data collected in stores. This letter is co-signed by progressives like AOC, Barbara Lee, and Eleanor Holmes Norton, among others.

    7. In new labor news, the NLRB has issued a rule banning anti-union “captive audience meetings,” per the Washington Post. This report notes that these meetings, in which employers warn workers of the risks in unionizing, are considered highly effective and are commonly used by companies like Amazon, Starbucks, Apple and Trader Joe’s. According to the Post, Amazon alone spent more than $17 million on consults to do exactly this between 2022 and 2023. On the other hand, Bloomberg Law reports a federal judge in Texas has blocked a Labor Department rule that would have expanded overtime eligibility to four million mostly lower-level white collar workers. This was seen as among the Biden Administration’s key achievements on labor rights and foreshadows the rollback of worker protections we are likely to see in a Trump presidency redux.

    8. Donald Trump has signaled that he will nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy will likely face a difficult confirmation process; his past environmental activism is anathema to Republican Senators, while his more recent vaccine-skepticism is unpopular among Democrats. Yet just as Donald Trump emerged as an improbable RFK ally, a surprising opponent has emerged as well: former Vice-President Mike Pence. In a “rare” statement Pence writes “For the majority of his career, RFK Jr. has defended abortion on demand during all nine months of pregnancy, supports overturning the Dobbs decision and has called for legislation to codify Roe v Wade. If confirmed, RFK, Jr. would be the most pro-abortion Republican appointed secretary of HHS in modern history…I…urge Senate Republicans to reject this nomination.” As with other unpopular Trump nominees, many expect RFK to be appointed on an acting basis and then possibly installed via the recess appointment process.

    9. In some positive news, Drop Site reports that in Sri Lanka, the Leftist president Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who wrested the office from the corrupt clique that has ruled the nation since independence has won a resounding victory in the recent parliamentary elections. Reuters reports that Dissanayake’s coalition won a “sweeping mandate,” with enough seats to pass his anti-corruption and poverty-alleviation agenda. More shocking is the fact that Dissanayake’s coalition ran up the score in the Tamil-dominated north and east of the country. As Drop Site notes, only 15 years ago the Sri Lankan government crushed the Tamil Tigers and carried out large-scale massacres of the Tamil minority. Dissanayake has vowed to end the occupation and release Tamil political prisoners, as well as take on the International Monetary Fund which is seeking to impose economic control on the country in exchange for a fiscal bailout. Neither goal will be easily achieved, but the size of Dissanayake’s victory at least provides the opportunity for him to try.

    10. Finally, AP reports that three of Malcolm X’s daughters have filed a $100 million lawsuit against the CIA, FBI, and NYPD. This lawsuit alleges that these agencies were “aware of and…involved in the assassination plot,” and that law enforcement was engaged in a “corrupt, unlawful, and unconstitutional [relationship with]…ruthless killers that…was actively concealed, condoned, protected, and facilitated by government agents.” Two of Malcolm X’s alleged assassins were exonerated in 2021 after an extensive re-investigation found that authorities withheld crucial evidence, per AP, and new evidence reported earlier this year by Democracy Now! supports the theory of an assassination plot involving collusion between the FBI and NYPD, if not others.

    This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Victory! Whole Foods Is Now Monkey-Free—No Thanks to Whole Foods

    Today we’re celebrating a huge victory: The 365 by Whole Foods Market brand coconut milk supplier no longer abuses monkeys through forced labor!

    Group of protesters dressed in chained monkey costumes protesting whole foods

    Whole Foods failed to take action to eliminate the cruel monkey labor from its supply chain, but our investigators and negotiators worked tirelessly to get rid of it.

    Whole Foods Didn’t Lift a Finger to Help Monkeys

    In January 2024, we sent Whole Foods evidence that endangered pig-tailed macaques were being illegally kidnapped from the wild, kept chained up, and abusively trained to produce its store-brand 365 coconut milk, but it didn’t respond to any of our pleas to fix its supply chain.

    In the face of Whole Foods’ callous disregard for these monkeys’ suffering, PETA launched a massive campaign—which included three damning PETA exposés, dozens of demonstrations across the U.S., creative advertising campaigns, hundreds of phone calls, a heartfelt plea from singer Morrissey, and e-mails from more than 100,000 concerned consumers.

    PETA’s Whole Foods Campaign

    Investigation: PETA and Entities Did Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel’s Job for Him

    Since Whole Foods remained unresponsive, PETA Asia took matters into its own hands. It identified Merit Food Products as the supplier of Whole Foods’ 365 brand coconut milk and found that this supplier sourced some of its coconuts from third-party farms in Thailand that were using monkey labor.

    Video: The Thai Government Covers Up Forced Monkey Labor

    Sure enough, when PETA Asia’s investigators visited the Thai third-party farm that supplied Merit Food Products, they found rampant monkey abuse.

    Whole Foods once again failed to act on PETA Asia’s evidence, so PETA’s own investigators and negotiators went straight to Merit Food Products. The company was eager to help monkeys, so we worked together to remove monkey labor from its supply chain, and it committed to sourcing third-party coconuts only from countries that don’t use monkey labor.

    Urge Thai Officials to End Monkey Labor!

    Now that Whole Foods’ 365 brand coconut milk is free of monkey labor, we’re demanding that Thai officials take immediate action for the countless monkeys who are suffering in Thailand, including by doing the following:

    • Closing all “monkey-training schools”
    • Making it illegal to breed or sell monkeys
    • Investing in a law-enforcement team to end the illegal capture of monkeys from the wild
    • Developing a plan to retire monkeys currently used by the coconut industry
    • Replacing all tall-tree varieties with shorter ones and offering picking poles free of charge to coconut farmers

    Please help us put an end to monkey labor by urging the Thai government to make it illegal and to shut down “monkey-training schools”:

    Urge Thai Officials to End Monkey Labor!
    © Catalin Biedron

    When Thailand finally ends its rampant abuse of monkeys, it will regain the trust of socially conscious importers and consumers, who are dropping Thai coconut milk in record numbers.

    The post Victory! Whole Foods Is Now Monkey-Free—No Thanks to Whole Foods appeared first on PETA.

    This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.

  • Ukraine promises food and shelter to surrendering North Korean troops #ukraine #russia #northkorea


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Ukraine promises food and shelter to North Korean soldiers if they surrender | Radio Free Asia (RFA)


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Helene and Milton upended a key part of the nation’s food supply

    When Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida three weeks ago, Jason Madison was alone at his place, which doubled as a shrimp storefront in Keaton Beach. As the wind began to roar and the bay started to roil, Madison decided to flee. It was the right call. When he returned home the next morning, he found that the nearly 20-foot storm surge had torn it apart. Dead fish and broken furniture littered the landscape. Most everything in the building was lost, taking with it a cornerstone of his livelihood. 

    “I had five tanks under there where I stored shrimp, because we sell everything alive, but all that’s all gone now,” said Madison, a commercial bait and shrimp farmer for the last 23 years. He paused to take in the strewn debris. “Well, the pieces are around.” Anything Helene left behind is a waterlogged shell of what used to be. He doesn’t know how, or even if, he’ll rebuild.

    Stories like this are playing out all through the Southeast. The storm battered six states, causing billions of dollars in losses to crops, livestock, and aquaculture. Just 13 days later, Milton barreled across Florida, leaving millions without power and hampering ports, feed facilities, and fertilizer plants along the state’s west coast. 

    Preliminary estimates suggest Helene, one of the nation’s deadliest and costliest hurricanes since Katrina in 2005, upended hundreds of thousands of businesses throughout the Southeast and devastated a wide swath of the region’s agricultural operations. Milton’s impact was more limited, but the two calamities are expected to reduce feed and fertilizer supplies and increase production costs, which could drive up prices for things like chicken and fruit in the months and years to come.

    The compounding effect of the two storms will create “a direct impact on agricultural production,” said Seungki Lee, an agricultural economist at Ohio State University. 

    When a farm, an orchard, a ranch, or any other agricultural operation is damaged in a disaster, it often leads to a drop in production, or even brings it to a screeching halt. That slowdown inevitably ripples through the companies that sell things like seeds and fertilizer and equipment. Even those growers and producers who manage to keep going — or weren’t directly impacted at all — might find that damage to roads and other critical infrastructure hampers the ability to bring their goods to market.

    Early reports indicate this is already happening. Downed trees, flooded roads, and congested highways have disrupted key transport routes throughout the Southeast, while ports across the region suspended operations because of the storms, compounding a slowdown that followed a dockworker strike along the Gulf and East Coast.

    Helene dismantled farming operations that serve as linchpins for the nation’s food supply chain. Cataclysmic winds destroyed hundreds of poultry houses across Georgia and North Carolina, which account for more than 25 percent of the machinery used to produce most of the country’s chicken meat. An analysis by the American Farm Bureau Federation found that the region hit by Helene produced some $6.3 billion in poultry products in 2022, with over 80 percent of it coming from the most severely impacted parts of both states. In Florida, the storm flattened roughly one in seven broiler houses, which the Farm Bureau noted, compounding losses throughout the region that “will not only reduce the immediate supply of poultry but also hinder local production capacity for months or even years.”

    The storm uprooted groves, vegetable fields, and row crops throughout the region. Georgia produces more than a third of the nation’s pecans, and some growers have lost all of their trees. Farmers in Florida, one of the nation’s leading producers of oranges, bell peppers, sugar, and orchids, also have reported steep production losses, facing an uncertain future. The rain and floods unleashed by Helene hobbled livestock operations in every affected state, with the situation in western North Carolina so dire that local agricultural officials are crowdfunding feed and other supplies to help ranchers who lost their hay to rising water. Those working the sea were impacted as well; clam farmers along the Gulf Coast are grappling with the losses they incurred when Helene’s storm surge ravaged their stocks.

    Residents in Black Mountain, North Carolina prepare to tow donated hay across Helene’s floodwaters with a paddleboard to feed horses and goats on a nearby farm on October 3, 2024.
    Mario Tama via Getty Images

    All told, the counties affected by Helene produce about $14.8 billion in crops and livestock each year, with Georgia and Florida accounting for more than half of that. If even one-third of that output has been lost to the two hurricanes, the loss could reach nearly $5 billion, according to the Farm Bureau. 

    Preliminary estimates from the Department of Agriculture suggest the one-two punch may incur more than $7 billion in crop insurance payouts. On October 15, the USDA reported allocating $233 million in payments to producers so far. 

    As bad as it is, it could have been worse both for consumers and for farmers nationwide. Florida is home to the highest concentration of fertilizer manufacturing plants in the nation. Twenty-two of the state’s 25 phosphate waste piles, several owned by industry powerhouse Mosaic, were in Milton’s path. The company, which did not respond to a request for comment, shuttered operations ahead of the storm, and has since announced it sustained  “limited damage” to its plants and warehouses. (But the Tampa Bay Times reported that one facility was grappling with water intrusion following Helene and was inundated during Milton, likely sending water polluted with phosphate waste flowing into Tampa Bay.) The storm also halted operations for several days at Port Tampa Bay, which handles around a quarter of the country’s fertilizer exports.  

    Production impacts from both hurricanes may be felt most acutely by the Sunshine State’s struggling citrus industry, which has long been embattled by diseases and destructive hurricanes. Any additional losses could further inflate costs for goods like orange juice, which reached record highs this year, according to Lee, the agricultural economist. “In the face of hurricane shocks, agricultural production in southern states like Florida will take it on the chin,” he said. 

    But teasing out the effect of a single storm on consumer prices is not only exceedingly difficult, it requires many years of research, Lee warned. Although all signs indicate that Hurricane Ian was partly responsible for the record food prices that followed that storm in 2022, the strain the hurricane placed on costs compounded other factors, including global conflict, droughts in breadbasket regions and the bird flu epidemic that decimated the poultry sector.  

    Even so, there’s still a chance that ongoing disruptions to ports and trucking routes could cause “the entire food supply chain to experience additional strain due to rising prices” associated with moving those goods, said Lee. If that turns out to be the case, “eventually, when you go to the supermarket, you will end up finding more expensive commodities, by and large.”

    One of the greatest unknowns remains the question of how many storm-weary operations will simply call it quits. Industrial-scale businesses will surely rebound, but the rapid succession of ruinous hurricanes may well discourage family farms and small producers from rebuilding, abandoning their livelihoods for less vulnerable ventures.

    “It’s what we call a compound disaster. You’re still dealing with the effects of one particular storm while another storm is hitting,” said economist Christa Court. She directs the University of Florida’s Economic Impact Analysis program, which specializes in rapid assessments of agricultural losses after disasters. “We did see after Hurricane Idalia that there were operations that just decided to get out of the business and do something else because they were impacted so severely.”

    A man surveys the damage from Hurricane Helene to his property
    Jason Madison, pictured, surveys the damage caused by Helene to his waterfront property in Keaton Beach, Florida on September 28, 2024.
    Ayurella Horn-Muller / Grist

    Madison isn’t sure what’s next for his shrimp operation. He’s too focused on salvaging what he can to think that far ahead. “I don’t really know what I’m going to do,” he said. He hasn’t been able to afford flood insurance, so he’s not sure how much financial support he’ll end up getting to help him rebuild even as he’s still recovering from Hurricane Idalia, which pummeled Florida’s Big Bend area in August. “The last few years, it’s just things are dropping off, and times are getting hard … it’s like, what can you do?” 

    As the world continues to warm, more and more farmers may find themselves confronting the same question. 

    Jake Bittle contributed reporting to this story. 

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Helene and Milton upended a key part of the nation’s food supply on Oct 24, 2024.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Ukraine urges North Korean soldiers to surrender, offers food, shelter

    Ukraine urged North Korean soldiers arriving in Russia to surrender, offering them food and shelter, as the United States and NATO confirmed for the first time they have evidence of North Koreans deployed to Russia. 

    North Korea and Russia have denied that North Korean soldiers are being sent to help Russia with its war in Ukraine but South Korea and its allies have warned of a dangerous escalation of the conflict.

    “We appeal to the soldiers of the Korean People’s Army who were sent to support the Putin regime. Don’t die senselessly on foreign soil. Do not repeat the fate of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers who will never return home,” said the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Directorate, or GUR, in a Korean-language message on its Telegram messaging channel on Wednesday. 

    “Surrender! Ukraine will provide you with shelter, food, and warmth,” it added, introducing its surrender hotline “I Want to Live.”

    The project was originally designed to help Russian servicemen in Ukraine who did not want to participate in the Russian invasion, launched in February 2022, to safely surrender to Ukrainian forces.

    As of June, more than 300 Russian soldiers had surrendered through the hotline, according to the Ukraine government.

    “It doesn’t matter how many soldiers Pyongyang sends or to which sector – they will be accepted. Ukrainian prisoner-of-war camps are ready to receive soldiers of any nationality, religion, or ideology,” the GUR said.

    The message was posted with a video, just over a minute long, showing facilities where surrendered North Korean soldiers would stay. 

    “In camps, prisoners of war are housed in large, warm, bright rooms with separate sleeping quarters. They receive three meals a day, and their diet includes meat, fresh vegetables, and bread,” the narrator of the video said in the Korean language.  

    north-korea-ukraine-hotline_10242024_2.png
    A message posted on the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Directorate’s Telegram channel for the surrender hotline “I Want to Live” project. (Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Directorate)

    Ukraine’s message to North Korean soldiers came after the U.S. and NATO confirmed they had evidence that North Korean troops had deployed to Russia.

    Lloyd Austin, the U.S. defense chief, said it remained to be seen what exactly Pyongyang’s forces were doing there, but according to South Korean and Ukrainian warnings, they were preparing to join Russia’s side in the war in Ukraine.

    Austin added the U.S. was also still attempting to determine what North Korea would get in return for helping Russia with manpower.

    RELATED STORIES

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    ‘Security consequences’

    NATO spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah said in a statement that alliance members had “confirmed evidence of a DPRK troop deployment to Russia.”

    “If these troops are destined to fight in Ukraine, it would mark a significant escalation in North Korea’s support for Russia’s illegal war and yet another sign of Russia’s significant losses on the front lines,” Dakhlallah said.

    The Democratic People’s of Republic of Korea, or DPRK, is North Korea’s official name. 

    NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has warned that the involvement of North Korean troops could significantly escalate the conflict.

    The U.S. and NATO confirmation followed a report by South Korea’s spy agency that more than 3,000 North Korean troops had been sent to Russia, with the total expected to reach 10,000 by December.

    The South has vowed to take “phased” measures in response to growing military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow, including sending weapons to Ukraine for the first time.

    In response, Russia’s foreign ministry warned on Wednesday that South Korea would pay a heavy price if it got involved.

    “They should think about the security consequences if they get involved in the Ukrainian crisis. The Russian Federation will react to those aggressive steps, if our citizens are under threat, under peril,” said ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.

    “We sincerely hope that the Seoul authorities are guided by common sense,” she added.

    north-korea-ukraine-hotline_10242024_3.JPG
    Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova attends a press conference in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, June 11, 2024. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

    Zakharova also dismissed the reports of the North’s troop dispatch as “fake.”

    “The armed forces of North Korea exist, but you should turn to Pyongyang to identify their location,” she said. “I cannot [understand] why there has been so many gossips, so many loud noises around this. This is a propaganda work.”

    “Russian cooperation with North Korea in military and other areas corresponds to international law … That is the first, and the second is that we don’t inflict any damage to South Korea,” she added. 

    “I cannot understand so much fuss about it coming from Seoul.”

    On Monday, North Korea’s representative to the United Nations dismissed reports it was sending soldiers to support Russia in its war as “groundless rumors,” adding that its cooperation with Moscow was “legitimate and cooperative.”

    Edited by Mike Firn.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • More schools than ever are serving vegan meals in California. Here’s how they did it.

    Three years ago, Erin Primer had an idea for a new summer program for her school district: She wanted students to learn about where their food comes from. Primer, who has worked in student nutrition within California’s public school system for 10 years, applied for grant funding from the state to kick off the curriculum, and got it. Students planted cilantro in a garden tower, met a local organic farmer who grows red lentils, and learned about corn. “Many kids didn’t know that corn grew in a really tall plant,” said Primer. “They didn’t know that it had a husk.” 

    The curriculum, focused on bringing the farm into the school, had an effect beyond the classroom: Primer found that, after learning about and planting ingredients that they then used to make simple meals like veggie burgers, students were excited to try new foods and flavors in the lunchroom. One crowd pleaser happened to be totally vegan: a red lentil dal served with coconut rice. 

    “We have had students tell us that this is the best dish they’ve ever had in school food. To me, I was floored to hear this,” said Primer, who leads student nutrition for the San Luis Coastal district on California’s central coast, meaning she develops and ultimately decides on what goes on all school food menus. “It really builds respect into our food system. So not only are they more inclined to eat it, they’re also less inclined to waste it. They’re more inclined to eat all of it.”

    Primer’s summer program, which the district is now considering making a permanent part of the school calendar, was not intended to inspire students to embrace plant-based cooking. But that was one of the things that happened — and it’s happening in different forms across California. 

    Kids seated at a lunch table try three new school lunch menu options at a taste testing event.
    Students participate in an annual food-testing event for the Los Angeles Unified School District, with a menu that included vegan chickpea masala.
    Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

    A recent report shows that the number of schools in California serving vegan meals has skyrocketed over the past five years. Although experts say this growth is partly a reflection of demand from students and parents, they also credit several California state programs that are helping school districts access more local produce and prepare fresh, plant-based meals on-site. 

    Growing meat for human consumption takes a tremendous toll on both the climate and the environment; the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that livestock production contributes 12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, cattle and other ruminants are a huge source of methane. Animal agriculture is also extremely resource-intensive, using up tremendous amounts of water and land. Reducing the global demand for meat and dairy, especially in high-income countries, is an effective way to lower greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the rate of global warming. 

    The climate benefits of eating less meat are one reason that school districts across the country have introduced more vegetarian — and to a lesser degree, vegan — lunch options. In 2009, Baltimore City Public Schools removed meat from its school lunch menus on Mondays, part of the Meatless Mondays campaign. A decade later, New York City Public Schools, the nation’s largest school district, did the same. In recent years, vegan initiatives have built upon the success of Meatless Mondays, like Mayor Eric Adams’ “Plant-Powered Fridays” program in New York City. 

    But California, the state that first put vegetarianism on the map in the early 20th century, has been leading the country on plant-based school lunch. “California is always ahead of the curve, and we’ve been eating plant-based or plant-forward for many years — this is not a new concept in our state,” said Primer. A recent report from the environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth found that among California’s 25 largest school districts, more than half — 56 percent — of middle and high school menus now have daily vegan options, a significant jump compared to 36 percent in 2019. Meanwhile, the percentage of elementary districts offering weekly vegan options increased from 16 percent to 60 percent over the last five years. 

    Interior shot of a greenhouse with tables holding plant sprouts
    A view of the greenhouse used for a Los Angeles magnet school’s after-school program focused on climate knowledge.
    Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

    Student nutrition directors like Primer say the foundation that allows schools to experiment with new recipes is California’s universal free lunch program. She notes that, when school lunch is free, students are more likely to actually try and enjoy it: “Free food plus good food equals a participation meal increase every time.”

    Nora Stewart, the author of the Friends of the Earth report, says the recent increase in vegan school lunch options has also been in response to a growing demand for less meat and dairy in cafeterias from climate-conscious students. “We’re seeing a lot of interest from students and parents to have more plant-based [meals] as a way to really help curb greenhouse gas emissions,” she said. A majority of Gen Zers — 79 percent — say they would eat meatless at least once or twice a week, according to research conducted by Aramark, a company provides food services to school districts and universities, among other clients. And the food-service company that recently introduced an all-vegetarian menu in the San Francisco Unified School District credits students with having “led the way” in asking for less meat in their cafeterias. The menu includes four vegan options: an edamame teriyaki bowl, a bean burrito bowl, a taco bowl with a pea-based meat alternative, and marinara pasta.

    Stewart theorizes that school nutrition directors are also increasingly aware of other benefits to serving vegan meals. “A lot of school districts are recognizing that they can integrate more culturally diverse options with more plant-based meals,” said Stewart. In the last five years, the nonprofit found, California school districts have added 41 new vegan dishes to their menus, including chana masala bowls, vegan tamales, and falafel wraps. Dairy-free meals also benefit lactose-intolerant students, who are more likely to be students of color.

    Still, vegan meals are hardly the default in California cafeterias, and in many places, they’re unheard of. Out of the 25 largest school districts in the state, only three elementary districts offer daily vegan options, the same number as did in 2019. According to Friends of the Earth, a fourth of the California school districts they reviewed offer no plant-based meal options; in another fourth, the only vegan option for students is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “I was surprised to see that,” said Stewart. 

    In their climate-focused after-school program, students learn about farm-to-table cooking, composting, greenhouse sciences, and more.

    Making school lunches without animal products isn’t just a question of ingredients. It’s also a question of knowledge and resources — and the California legislature has created a number of programs in recent years that aim to get those tools to schools that need them. 

    In 2022, the state put $600 million toward its Kitchen Infrastructure and Training Funds program, which offers funding to schools to upgrade their kitchen equipment and train staff. This kind of leveling up allows kitchen staff to better incorporate “scratch cooking” — essentially, preparing meals on-site from fresh ingredients — into their operations. (The standard in school lunch sometimes is jokingly referred to as “cooking with a box cutter,” as in heating up and serving premade meals that come delivered in a box.) Another state program, the $100 million School Food Best Practices Funds, gives schools money to purchase more locally grown food. And the Farm to School incubator grant program has awarded about $86 million since 2021 to allow schools to develop programming focused on climate-smart or organic agriculture. 

    Although only the School Food Best Practices program explicitly incentivizes schools to choose plant-based foods, Stewart credits all of them with helping schools increase their vegan options. Primer said the Farm to School program — which provided the funding to develop her school district’s farming curriculum in its first two years — has driven new recipe development and testing. 

    All three state programs are set to run out of money by the end of the 2024-2025 school year. Nick Anicich is the program manager for Farm to School, which is run out of the state Office of Farm to Fork. (“That’s a real thing that exists in California,” he likes to say.) He says when state benefits expire, it’s up to schools to see how to further advance the things they’ve learned. “We’ll see how schools continue to innovate and implement these initiatives with their other resources,” said Anicich. Stewart says California has set “a powerful example” by bettering the quality and sustainability of its school lunch, “showing what’s possible nationwide.” 

    One takeaway Primer has had from the program is to reframe food that’s better for the planet as an expansive experience, one with more flavor and more depth, rather than a restrictive one — one without meat. Both ideas can be true, but one seems to get more students excited. 

    “That has been a really important focus for us. We want [to serve] food that is just so good, everybody wants to eat it,” Primer said. “Whether or not it has meat in it is almost secondary.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline More schools than ever are serving vegan meals in California. Here’s how they did it. on Oct 15, 2024.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • “Every Day Is a Breaking Point”: North Gaza Desperate for Medicine, Fuel, Food, Water & Shelter


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Chef Ashleigh Shanti on being the inspiration that others might need

    You begin your cookbook, Our South: Black Food Through My Lens, by giving the reader a clear sense of your focus. You write that the cookbook is not going to be a Southern cookbook, or a chef cookbook. It’s more about challenging the belief that Black cuisine is monochromatic. Did you always know that this would be the lens for the book?

    When I thought about why I wanted to embark upon this very special yet very challenging thing that I’ve never done before, one of the things that I kept coming back to was that I knew that there were recipes that were very familiar to me and very special to the regions that I felt like made me who I am as a chef that needed to be highlighted, documented, talked about. And one of the moments that I kept going back to was me being a young chef and having a really hard time finding this lens. And I just know that having that information and having those food ways [and] their history talked about on such a platform—having that readily available for me, I think, would’ve been very transformative. So, no, I didn’t know initially that this is how it was all going to play out.

    I appreciate the way that you take us through your early childhood. You describe yourself as a precocious only child in Coastal Virginia, and how that was really important as one of your earliest food experiences. And then you also talk about your grandparents, their relationships to food and the land, and the visits that you made to family members throughout the South. What was it like to revisit these memories?

    Revisiting the memories of my childhood was a really large part of writing this. And doing that was very nostalgic. I learned a lot about my family—some things that I didn’t know. It helped me to see the power of food. It really showed me how powerful food was in my family because, I mean, I even was finding skeletons in closets. And ones that I couldn’t believe were right in front of me growing up, all along. Those moments where we allowed the kitchen to be the gathering place, those integral moments where food was at the center—that just showed me how food truly is the great unifier. So, yes, it was a very special and emotional time diving back in that way.

    You give us this great visual of your journey, going to Hampton University to study business marketing, but spending your time watching Food Network and cooking. You’d later go on to be a finalist in Top Chef. How have TV and pop culture been important in your journey?

    For my family— my parents—me wanting to be a chef was a really hard sell. And for me, knowing that this is something that I wanted to do, I felt that I needed proof that I could do it. I wouldn’t call Virginia Beach a food city. I didn’t live in New York City, where you know who’s cooking the food in the kitchen. So when I was actually looking for tangible examples, it was easy to turn to places like Food Network and see someone like Rachael Ray or Bobby Flay and find inspiration in that. And also, being a latchkey kid, my parents worked quite a bit growing up, so I wasn’t supposed to be, but I did watch a lot of Food Network when they were at work… That was an introduction to ingredients that I didn’t have readily available and I wasn’t accustomed to. Things like Food Network had a pretty big impact on my formative years, and just falling in love with food.

    Was it surreal, then, to be on Top Chef later?

    Yes. Definitely, I feel like for the first time, I was able to understand what that phrase “out-of-body experience” meant. It was really important for me at that time to ground myself, and just remember that I had worked really hard to get there, but also that I was so grateful to be in that space with such amazing talent. Yeah, it was a pretty wild experience.

    One thing that you’re really transparent about is how the food you grew up with, you didn’t really see as the food that you “should be” making as a chef. You write that you fantasized about going to restaurants that you read about in magazines like Food & Wine and that you felt like earning the respect of your peers in the kitchen meant cooking the food that you were seeing in these magazines. Why was it important to include this internal struggle?

    It was important to include because there was a moment—this intersection in my career—where I just stopped caring what people thought. I just turned away from what I felt was this box that I was put in as a Black chef. In doing that, I readily turned to the food that was most familiar to me. And I was in a position where I was able to put that food in the same restaurants that I would’ve never expected to [see it] before. And the response was very warm… It was a really defining moment for me as a chef.

    You mentioned that sometimes you felt like leaving the industry entirely. One thing that came to mind for me was just this, I think, push and pull that sometimes creative folks have—it’s like the industry itself as an institution can really get you down, but it’s not always necessarily about the craft. What fueled you to keep going?

    I mean, it’s that thing you said: It’s the institution, I think, that can really grind my gears—this French hierarchy that doesn’t have the same warm, fuzzy feelings that I grew up with. And for me, people talk about hating their jobs often—and that’s not something I’ve ever experienced because I’ll never stop loving food. As long as my job relates to food, I’m always going to love it, and that’s always the thing that continues to pull me back in. So, I mean, I think it’s that—and just the respect of the humble Southern ingredient, and the makers that work so hard to get these beautiful things on our tables. Those are the things that allow me to continue to have that drive, even when the industry itself doesn’t always feel so good.

    In 2020, you started to collaborate with other chef friends, putting on pop-up events, and then you were able to open your own restaurant, Good Hot Fish, in 2024. What were your priorities when you were starting your own space?

    I was so focused on finding a creative space. I knew that, at the time, that creative space was owning my own restaurant and finally feeling like I have ownership of my own stories. And having that autonomy that I never really felt like I had as a chef—and being able to travel and cook with chefs that I really admire.

    My biggest thing as a Black chef, as a woman that’s only worked for white people [is] I never felt like I had a seat at the table. And while I’ve put in so much sweat equity, I’d never felt like I learned the guts of how to run a restaurant. I helped so many people open their own restaurants, but I still just felt like I didn’t get it.

    And that was the one thing that was really special about that time—I had friends that would sit me down and we would just go over their P&L statements for hours. And they would go over food and labor costs with me. That was something that I really cherished. Beyond that, of course, it was [about] having that platform where I could cook food without any real boundaries, and get some honest immediate feedback about it as well.

    You shared that you realized, later in your career, that you weren’t the first person in your family who had multiple side hustles—that you were part of this long lineage of women who were also using their talent in the kitchen. What’s your advice, or what are some insights, for folks in creative careers that are maybe feeling unsure about this feeling of patching together side hustles? Or, maybe, folks who aren’t feeling ready for the leap, but they have something in mind that they want to pursue?

    A lot of my drive is driven by just my personality. I don’t know if this is advice, but just in describing my personality and where that drive comes from, it is because of—even your question, what advice for other creators, because there isn’t a lot of advice out there. People often feel like there’s a glass ceiling and they can’t [do it] because there aren’t a lot of examples and they don’t see a lot of people like them doing it. And that is part of what drives me and why I push myself.

    So I don’t even know if that is advice necessarily, but it is something to reflect on as a creative, especially Black and Brown creatives. Sometimes what keeps me in the game is that there’s going to be a lot of people, I would hope, that look like me and can find a reflection of themselves and find hope in that. It’s easy for me to note how much fulfillment I find in my career as well. And of course, there are things about what I do that can feel thankless, but I’ve been able to find such reward in what I do. So I think just focusing on what that reward and fulfillment is for you, and going after that is probably the best bit of advice I can give. Because it’s going to be really hard, so sometimes you really do just have to stare at the finish line.

    Yeah, definitely. You’ve also mentioned that, in Asheville, you’re really surrounded by a lot of writers, and makers, and artists, and how you feel really grateful for that community. I’m curious: Is community and collaboration something that also feeds your drive at this point in your career?

    Yes, and part of my gratitude in living here is that there’s just so much creativity around me, and that also fuels me. I talk about that in the book—we have so many makers around us, even just from the folks that grow our iceberg lettuce for our wedge salad to the trout farmers. And the folks that mill our cornmeal 15 miles down the road. That inspires me. And when I have a really special product like that in my hand, I want to make sure that I do it its due diligence. So, I mean, even down to the ingredient and just knowing that there’s a restaurant a couple blocks away that is doing some really cool things too. There’s a really incredible chef community here that’s super tight-knit, and that certainly helps when times get tough.

    I would imagine you keep very busy, but I was curious if there are any non-cooking, non-food avenues of inspiration that you find?

    Yes, but it’s funny because it all ends up tying back to food. I really enjoy nature and specifically foraging, fishing. Those are things I really enjoy. And of course, I usually do something with my harvest. But, yeah, I’m starting to get into more design stuff. My wife and I just bought a house not too long ago, so that’s been a fun and very, very new undertaking. So maybe a new interest, we’ll see if it sticks.

    That’s exciting, congratulations!

    Thanks.

    In your cookbook, there’s such a visual lushness both in the photography that you include, but also just in your writing and the way that you’re setting these scenes from your childhood to present time. Why was this an important part of your process?

    So, I mean, obviously, I’m a new writer, so I think I was doing a lot of what just comes naturally to me. I talked about just going back and revisiting a lot of those places. I did that physically as well. And even my proposal was written in my childhood home—a lot of times, I was just sitting in my backyard, the first place I ever foraged. And so maybe I was cheating a little, but that made it really easy to put all of these descriptors around these places, because I was in it. And also, the memories are so vivid. I can often close my eyes and just be in them again. And of course, like you said, the photography—I was able to go back to all of these places and just instantly feel like a kid again, and [access] a lot of those memories as an adolescent just learning what food meant to me.

    What are some recent or significant interactions that you’ve had with other folks who have resonated with your story?

    One thing I will never forget is this little sweet girl named Marley, who I think, at the time, was in the fourth grade. It was when I was a chef at Benne on Eagle, and it was during Black History Month. She did her Black History Month project on me and did her presentation in front of the class. Her mom took pictures, and at the time, I think I wore a bandana almost every day to work. She wore a bandana and had a little chef shirt on. It was really cool. And I still have the pictures from that.

    We have another little regular that comes into Good Hot Fish all the time and wrote us this letter that inspired some merchandise. And it’s just things like that that really keep me going and make me smile… Like I said, some days can feel a little thankless, and those are things I hold onto.

    Ashleigh Shanti recommends:

    All About Love by Bell Hooks. This book has taught me a lot about love and its many forms. Profound but straight to the point, I find myself referring to this book through just about every phase of life.

    Photos of old Black Asheville by photographer Andrea Clark. I’m thankful Andrea captured such a special time in Asheville’s Black history. Her photos hang in my restaurant and looking at them gives me a sense of joy and hope for the future.

    Citric acid. I love citric acid. It’s the white powder that coats your favorite sour candy. It’s fun to use to adjust the acid in cocktails or to give your favorite spice blend a punch.

    Brittany Howard – “What Now”. I can’t stop playing this funky album at the restaurant. It feels groovy and nostalgic but fresh. It’s fun to see people in our dining room getting down while they dine.

    Hoka Ora Primo. These are my new kitchen shoes for as long as I can find them. Good kitchen shoes are nearly impossible to find and naturally, after 10+ hours on your feet, you experience discomfort. These foot pillows make me feel like I’m walking on clouds.

    This post was originally published on The Creative Independent.

  • Denver Voters: THESE Initiatives Would Prevent Animals From Being Killed for Their Fur, Flesh

    Two pro-animal measures could raise the Mile High City to even greater heights! Next month, voters in Denver will have the chance to support two exciting initiatives that would prevent countless animals from being slaughtered for their fur and flesh.

    denver, colorado landscape with photos of lamb and fox

    Denver Residents: Vote YES on These Bills to Ban Fur Sales and Slaughterhouses!

    Ordinance 308 would end the sale, manufacture, trade, and display of all new fur products in the city. This ban would spare countless minks, foxes, rabbits, chinchillas, and other animals who would otherwise be held captive in cramped, filthy conditions and ultimately slaughtered via the cheapest possible methods, including suffocation, electrocution, gassing, and poisoning.

    Ordinance 309 would prohibit the operation of existing slaughterhouses and ban the construction of new ones in Denver. There is currently one known slaughterhouse in the city, responsible for killing at least half a million lambs each year. This initiative would spare a vast number of animals annually and allow the city to be a leader in the switch to more ethical food production.

    Here’s What YOU Can Do

    If you live in Denver, please support these lifesaving bills—every vote matters! If you aren’t a registered voter in the city, there are still ways you can help animals suffering on farms and in slaughterhouses. Pledge never to wear fur, leather, feathers, or any other animal-derived material, and go vegan today!

    Take the Feather-Free Pledge
    Order a FREE Vegan Starter Kit

    Note: PETA supports animal rights and opposes all forms of animal exploitation and educates the public on those issues. PETA does not directly or indirectly participate or intervene in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office or any political party.

    The post Denver Voters: THESE Initiatives Would Prevent Animals From Being Killed for Their Fur, Flesh appeared first on PETA.

    This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.

  • A conservation treasure is threatened by Indonesian plans for food security

    Indonesia’s military is taking a leading role in plans to convert more than 2 million hectares of wetlands and savannah into rice farms and sugarcane plantations in a part of the conflict-prone Papua region that conservationists say is an environmental treasure.

    The military’s involvement has added to perceptions it is increasingly intruding into civilian areas in Indonesia and prompted a warning it will bring bloodshed to Merauke, the region slated to become a giant food estate. It’s an area of easternmost Indonesia that has largely avoided violence during the decades-long armed conflict between Indonesia and indigenous Papuans seeking their own state. 

    The plans are part of the government’s ambitions for the nation of 270 million people to achieve food and energy self-sufficiency. They highlight the tension globally between the push for economic development in lower-income countries and protection of the diminishing number of pristine ecosystems.

    Taken together, the sugarcane and rice projects for Merauke represent at least a fifth of a 10,000 square kilometer (38,600 square mile) lowland known as the TransFly that spans Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Its name comes from the Fly River – a squiggle on the otherwise straight line on the map that marks the border of the two countries on the island of New Guinea. 

    The great expanse of wetlands, grasslands and pockets of tropical rainforest in the south of the island is “globally outstanding,” said Eric Wikramanayake, a conservation biologist who wrote about its significance for a book on conservation regions in Asia.

    Researchers say it is home to half of the bird species found in New Guinea including about 80 that exist nowhere else and other endemic animals such as the pig-nosed turtle and cat-like carnivorous marsupials. The World Wildlife Fund, or WWF, has called it a “global treasure” and a proposed World Heritage listing says no other place in the region compares to it, including the famous Kakadu national park in northern Australia.  

    “If you were to convert a lot of the TransFly into agriculture then it’s going to change the conservation assessment, it will make it much more threatened,” Wikramanayake said.

    “There is going to be some impact and those impacts, it’s like opening the can of worms” in paving the way for further development, he said.  

    000_1EN4OO.jpg
    In this picture taken on March 14, 2019 an Indonesian police officer inspects boxes full of endangered pig-nosed turtles in Merauke regency–part of the TransFly Eco Region–after they were seized from a wildlife smuggler. (Abdul Syan/AFP)

    For Ahmad Rizal Ramdhani, the major-general who heads Indonesia’s National Food Security Taskforce, the area targeted for development is swamps that should be converted to agriculture to realize their “extraordinary” fertile potential.

    He told a 40-minute long podcast with state broadcaster Radio Indonesia in August that the 1 million-hectare rice component of the agricultural plans is funded by the government and overseen by the military and agriculture ministry. The sugar cane plantations and a related bioethanol industry are funded by private investors, he said.

    Wearing an indigenous Papuan headdress, Ramdhani said he envisioned that Papuans would ask “Mr. TNI” – the initials of the name of the Indonesian military – for help with cultivating their customary lands. 

    Sacred and conservation areas would be protected and the land would remain in the ownership of indigenous Papuans, he said.

    “To the people of Papua, especially those in Merauke, there is no need to worry and doubt, there is no need to be afraid,” Ramdhani said.

    In seemingly contradictory remarks, Ramdhani said the conversion to rice paddy needed to be carried out in three years to ensure food security, but rice would also be exported – to Pacific island countries and Australia because it’s too expensive to send it to Java, Indonesia’s most populated island. 

    Analysis of land-use maps shows areas designated for rice overlap with conservation areas, indigenous sacred places and ancestral trails and hunting grounds, said Franky Samperante, director of Indonesian civil society organization Pusaka. 

    Pusaka said in a report in September that more than 200 excavators had begun clearing wetlands, customary forests and other lands belonging to the Malind Makleuw indigenous people in Ilwayab, Merauke. 

    protest grab 1 (1).jpg
    Indigenous Papuans protesting against land clearance in Wanam, Merauke regency, Indonesia for a military-led rice-growing project on Sept. 24, 2024. (Pusaka)

    Members of the community protested against the rice project during a Sept. 24 reception for Indonesian officials, video shows. Women with faces caked in white mud to symbolize grief wore cardboard signs around their necks that said “We reject Jhonlin Group company” – an Indonesian conglomerate that is reportedly a key part of the agricultural projects.

    Earlier government and military-led attempts to develop agriculture in Merauke, including in the last decade, led to land grabs and other problems.

    ‘Risk of resentment’

    The military’s leadership of the rice program adds to perceptions it is increasingly intruding into civilian areas, according to three Indonesian security researchers.

    The large agricultural projects could fuel pro-independence sentiment and grievances over environmental destruction, said military analyst Raden Mokhamad Luthfi at Al Azhar University Indonesia.

    “There’s a real risk that the project could spark new resentment from OPM [Organisasi Papua Merdeka-Free Papua Movement], who may view it as further evidence of inequality, injustice, and environmental harm faced by Papuans,” he told BenarNews, a RFA-affiliated online media organization.

    Justification for the military’s role in the Merauke project, Luthfi said, is based on the concept of food security outlined in Indonesia’s 2015 defense white paper. 

    Officers at the army staff college perceived a security threat from possible food shortages in the future caused by climate change and population growth, he said. However, the white paper also said food security efforts should be led by civilian ministries.

    Hipolitus Wangge, a researcher at Australian National University, said the military silenced discontent among Papuans during a failed program last decade to make Merauke into a major center of food production.

    “We should expect more discontent, even bloodshed in Merauke in the next five years,” he told Radio Free Asia.

    RELATED STORIES

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    The Indonesian government’s development plans for the region and armed conflict were likely behind the demise of a once ambitious plan to protect the TransFly environment.

    WWF’s Indonesia and Papua New Guinea chapters made a concerted attempt in the early-to-mid 2000s to develop a conservation plan and expand protected areas. Within a few years, the effort had foundered. 

    At the time, the WWF waxed lyrical about the environmental significance of the TransFly but the conservation group’s Indonesian chapter now says it “recognizes the importance of national strategic projects, such as the Food Estate initiative in Merauke, in addressing Indonesia’s food security challenges.” 

    The conservation program ended in 2016 because of insecurity in Papua and lack of resources, WWF Indonesia spokeswoman Diah Sulistiowati told RFA.

    “We understand that the government prioritizes this [agricultural] development to meet the growing demand for food and to support national food security goals,” she said.

    WWF Indonesia is helping to ensure development of the TransFly region respects “rich ecological and cultural values,” Sulistiowati said, through its past recommendations for protection of high conservation value forests, cultural heritage sites and areas crucial to indigenous communities.

    A lesser heralded aspect of the TransFly’s importance is that it’s one of a diminishing number of wetland stopovers for migratory birds that make epic journeys along a millenia-old Asian “flyway” stretching from Alaska to New Zealand.

    “Whatever few wetlands and bird habitats that are used by these birds should be conserved,” said Wikramanayake, the conservation biologist. “There could be some sort of tipping point that causes the flyway to collapse.” 

    Edited by Mike Firn.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Stephen Wright for RFA.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • South Korea offers adoptions ahead of ban on dogs bred for food | Radio Free Asia (RFA)


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The election could shape the future of America’s food system

    Nathan Ryder raises livestock and grows vegetables on 10 acres of pasture in Golconda, Illinois with his wife and three kids. They also live in a food desert; the local grocery store closed a few months ago, and the closest farmers market is at least 45 miles away, leaving their community struggling to access nutritious food. 

    Opening another supermarket isn’t the answer. The U.S. government has spent the last decade investing millions to establish them in similar areas, with mixed results. Ryder thinks it would be better to expand federal assistance programs to make them more available to those in need, allowing more people to use those benefits at local farms like his own. 

    Expanding the reach of the nation’s small growers and producers could be a way to address growing food insecurity, he said, a problem augmented by inflation and supply chains strained by climate change. “It’s a great opportunity, not only to help the bottom-line of local farmers, instead of some of these giant commodity food corporations … but to [help people] buy healthy, wholesome foods,” said Ryder.

    That is just one of the solutions that could be codified into the 2024 farm bill, but it isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. The deadline to finalize the omnibus bill arrives Monday, and with lawmakers deadlocked along partisan lines, it appears likely that they will simply extend the current law for at least another year. 

    Congress has been here before. Although the farm bill is supposed to be renewed every five years, legislators passed a one-year extension of the 2018 policy last November after struggling to agree on key nutrition and conservation facets of the $1.5 trillion-dollar spending package. 

    Extensions and delays have grave implications, because the farm bill governs many aspects of America’s food and agricultural systems. It covers everything from food assistance programs and crop subsidies to international food aid and even conservation measures. Some of them, like crop insurance, are permanently funded, meaning any hiccups in the reauthorization timeline do not impact them. But others, such as beginning farmer and rancher development grants and local food promotion programs, are entirely dependent upon the appropriations within the law. Without a new appropriation or an extension of the existing one, some would shut down until the bill is reauthorized. If Congress fails to act before Jan. 1, several  programs would even revert to 1940s-era policies with considerable impacts on consumer prices for commodities like milk.

    After nearly a century of bipartisanship, negotiations over recent farm bills have been punctuated by partisan stalemates. The main difference this time around is that a new piece is dominating the Hill’s political chessboard: The election. “It doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen before the election, which puts a lot of teeth-gnashing and hair-wringing into hand,” said Ryder. He is worried that a new administration and a new Congress could result in a farm bill that further disadvantages small farmers and producers. “It’s like a choose-your-own-adventure novel right now. Which way is this farm bill going to go?”

    A combine harvests wheat in an expansive hillside field in rural Washington.
    The Farm Bill covers everything from crop subsidies to food assistance programs and even conservation measures. Typically a bipartisan effort, it has of late been bogged down by politics.
    Rick Dalton for Design Pics Editorial / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    The new president will bring their own agricultural policy agenda to the job, which could influence aspects of the bill. And, of course, whoever sits in the Oval Office can veto whatever emerges from Congress. (President Obama threatened to nix the bill House Republicans put forward in 2013 because it proposed up to $39 billion in cuts to food benefits.) Of even greater consequence is the potential for a dramatically different Congress. Of the 535 seats in the House and Senate, 468 are up for election. That will likely lead to renewed negotiations among a new slate of lawmakers, a process further complicated by the pending retirement of Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the Democratic chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee. Although representatives are ramping up pressure on Congressional leadership to enact a new farm bill before this Congress reaches the end of its term, there is a high chance all of this will result in added delays, if not require an entirely new bill to be written.

    That has profound implications for consumers already struggling with rising prices and farmers facing the compounding pressures of consolidation, not to mention efforts to remake U.S. food systems to mitigate, and adapt to, a warming world, said Rebecca Wolf, a senior food policy analyst with Food & Water Watch. (The nonprofit advocates for policies that ensure access to safe food, clean water, and a livable climate.) “The farm bill has a really big impact on changing the kind of food and farm system that we’re building,” said Wolf. 

    Still, Monday’s looming deadline is somewhat arbitrary — lawmakers have until the end of the calendar year to pass a bill, because most key programs have already been extended through the appropriations cycle. But DeShawn Blanding, who analyzes food and environment policy for the science nonprofit the Union of Concerned Scientists, finds the likelihood of that happening low. He expects to see negotiations stretch into next year, and perhaps into 2026. “Congress is much more divided now,” he said. 

    The House Agriculture committee passed a draft bill in May, but the proposal has not reached the floor for a vote because of negotiating hang-ups. Meanwhile, the Senate Agriculture committee has yet to introduce a bill, although the chamber’s Democrats and Republicans have introduced frameworks that reflect their agendas. Given the forthcoming election and higher legislative priorities, like funding the government before December 20, the last legislative day on the congressional calendar, “it’s a likelihood that this could be one of the longest farm bills that we’ve had,” Blanding said.

    As is often the case, food assistance funding is among the biggest points of contention. SNAP and the Thrifty Food Plan, which determines how much a household receives through SNAP, have remained two of the biggest sticking points, with Democrats and Republicans largely divided over how the program is structured and funded. The Republican-controlled House Agriculture committee’s draft bill proposed the equivalent of nearly $30 billion in cuts to SNAP by limiting the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ability to adjust the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan, used to set SNAP benefits. The provision, supported by Republicans, met staunch opposition from Democrats who have criticized the plan for limiting benefits during an escalating food insecurity crisis. 

    The farm bill “was supposed to be designed to help address food insecurity and the food system at large and should boost and expand programs like SNAP that help do that,” said Blanding, which becomes all the more vital as climate change continues to dwindle food access for many Americans. Without a new farm bill, “we’re stuck with what [food insecurity] looked like in 2018, which is not what it looks like today in 2024.” 

    Nutrition programs governed by the current law were designed to address pre-pandemic levels of hunger in a world that had not yet crossed key climate thresholds. As the crisis of planetary warming deepens, fueling crises that tend to deepen existing barriers to food access in areas affected, food programs authorized in the farm bill are “an extraordinarily important part of disaster response,” said Vince Hall, chief government relations officer at the nonprofit Feeding America. “The number of disasters that Feeding America food banks are asked to respond to each year is only increasing with extreme weather fueled by climate change.” 

    That strain is making it more critical than ever that Congress increase funding for programs like the Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP. Its Farm to Food Bank Project Grants, established under the 2018 law, underwrites projects that enable the nation’s food banks to have a supply of fresh food produced by local farmers and growers. It must be written into the new bill or risk being phased out. 

    David Toledo, an urban farmer in Chicago, used to work with a local food pantry and community garden that supplies fresh produce to neighborhoods that need it. To Toledo, the farm bill is a gateway to solutions to the impacts of climate change on the accessibility of food in the U.S. He wants to see lawmakers put aside politics and pass a bill for the good of the people they serve.

    “With the farm bill, what is at stake is a healthy nation, healthy communities, engagements from farmers and rising farmers. And I mean, God forbid, but the potential of seeing a lot more hunger,” Toledo said. “It needs to pass. It needs to pass with bipartisan support. There’s so much at the table right now.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The election could shape the future of America’s food system on Sep 27, 2024.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Starbucks Becomes the Largest Chain in the US to Offer Free Vegan Milk

    In a major victory for cows, Starbucks announced that it will stop charging extra for vegan milks, effective November 7! The move follows a vigorous four year campaign, letters from more than 160,000 PETA supporters, protests at Starbucks around the country, and help from actor James Cromwell who glued his hand to a café counter in protest and starred in a satirical video calling out the upcharge, as well as an appeal from Sir Paul McCartney.

    In September 2024, PETA paused our campaign to allow Starbucks’ new CEO Brian Niccol time to course correct. We’re thrilled that he made the right decision for everyone from cows to compassionate customers. To thank him, we’re sending over a box of cow-friendly vegan chocolates.

    Starbucks cup on left side, cow in field on right side

    What Does a Surcharge-Free Starbucks Mean for Animals—and the Planet?

    Starbucks is a top user of cow’s milk and prioritizes it above all other types of milk. Cow’s milk is a product of the dirty dairy industry, which forcibly impregnates cows, kidnaps their babies, and treats mother cows like milk machines instead of the deeply emotional individuals they are.

    cow and calf drinking milk

    Now, customers are free to choose whichever vegan milk they prefer in their latte and they won’t be unfairly charged for making a compassionate choice!

    PETA’s Campaign of Action Against Starbucks

    Since 2019, PETA has made business as usual impossible for Starbucks. Here’s what we and our supporters have done so far to push the company to ditch its vegan milk upcharge.

    Icons of Protest: We Took a ‘Dead Calf’ and ‘Polar Bears’ on Tour

    To remind Starbucks and its customers about the cruelty that goes into drinks made with cow’s milk, PETA protesters took an extremely lifelike “dead calf” stuffed into a giant Starbucks cup to demonstrations outside the chain’s stores across the country.

    ‘Dead Calf’ at Starbucks? PETA Challenges Vegan Upcharge
    ‘Polar Bears’ Swarm Starbucks Over Pro-Dairy Policy

    We also had a pack of “polar bears” occupy several Starbucks cafés to illustrate how the dairy industry contributes to melting the ice caps, killing polar bears, and otherwise driving the climate catastrophe.

    100+ Days of Nonstop Protests

    Because Starbucks agrees that animal-friendly vegan milks are better for the planet yet continues to charge extra for them, PETA and Animal Rights Initiative supporters descended on the café at Starbucks headquarters in Seattle and protested every single day for over 100 days, starting in January 2022.

    two PETA supporters in cow costumes urge Starbucks to drop the vegan milk surcharge

    We Brought the Action to Starbucks and Its Execs

    PETA and our allies brought our A game to direct actions in protest against Starbucks’ vegan milk upcharge.

    Read The Reports

    November 15, 2019: On the day when the largest Starbucks location in the world opened its doors in Chicago, PETA supporters marked the occasion by sitting outside the store all day with posters proclaiming, “Soy Milk Surcharge Sux.”

    Protesters pointed out that Starbucks’ extra charge for dairy-free milk punishes those who are lactose intolerant—most of whom are people of color—and anyone who simply wants to reduce methane gas emissions or opposes cruelty to cows.

    January 29, 2021: After Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson acknowledged that vegan milk is “a big part of the solution” in reducing the company’s carbon footprint, PETA’s “climate change cow” hand-delivered a letter to the company’s Seattle headquarters calling out Johnson and his disingenuous pledge to make changes to benefit the environment.

    December 9, 2021: A mock website called out Starbucks for claiming to be committed to inclusion and diversity while still charging extra for nondairy milk—something that PETA has been challenging the company on for years, in light of the dairy industry’s cruelty to cows and people’s concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and their own health.

    PETA cheered on these pranksters—who are apparently from the group Switch4Good—and their hoax news release (which took the internet by storm and even had multiple outlets reporting on it before realizing that it was all a ruse).

    December 23, 2021: Christmas came early for Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson when PETA’s little helpers delivered a heaping pile of coal and a letter of admonishment to his door. The bold stunt was a reminder to the company that until it stops penalizing customers who care about animals, their own health, and the environment, it will remain on PETA’s naughty list.

    March 16, 2022: PETA supporters joined Animal Rights Initiative in a spirited demonstration outside Starbucks’ headquarters in Seattle in which activists dressed as cows took center stage, drenched themselves in fake blood, and performed as a mother cow mourning the abduction of her baby—which is a reality for mother cows, whose calves are torn away from them by the dairy industry.

    April 6, 2022: As new Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz started his first day on the job, PETA supporters joined Animal Rights Initiative for a spirited demonstration in Seattle. Udderly fed-up “cows” stood inside the company’s headquarters with signs explaining that the dairy industry is a leading cause of the climate catastrophe, and PETA supporters outside encouraged passersby to tell Starbucks to ditch the upcharge for dairy-free milk.

    May 1, 2022: Members of PETA and Animal Rights Initiative protested outside Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s lakeside gated community, calling him out for charging customers extra for animal-friendly vegan milk. The company gave former Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson a $60 million payout when he stepped down in March, which alone could have offset nearly 86 million70-cent vegan milk upcharges.

    starbucks campaign demo

    July 13, 2022: On the day Starbucks opened its new grab-and-go café in the lobby of The New York Times Building—directly across the street from Sir Paul McCartney’s PETA billboard calling on the chain to stop charging customers extra for vegan milks—PETA was on hand to cause a ruckus with our “bloody calf” prop. Customers who missed PETA’s bold demonstration could still see our powerful billboard featuring the former Beatle.

    August 18 and November 18, 2022: PETA supporters encased their feet in blocks of concrete and blocked the driveway and drive-through at Starbucks stores in Detroit and Nashville, Tennessee, while wearing shirts emblazoned with messages such as “Not Your Mom, Not Your Milk.”

    Celebrities Brought PETA’s Message to New Heights

    Our celebrity friends, staunch defenders of cows and the Earth, lent their images to sky-high billboards that called for an era of change for the coffee chain.

    Paul McCartney calls out starbucks via billboard
    James Cromwell ads on boardwalk
    Read The Reports

    May and June 2022: PETA billboards featuring Sir Paul McCartney are going up during his national tour at prominent locations in East Rutherford, New Jersey; New York City; Seattle; and Winston-Salem, North Carolina—including one near the company’s headquarters. They urged Starbucks to end its unethical upcharge for vegan milk, a request the pop legend also made in a letter to former Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson. PETA also joined McCartney on his tour, bringing along information about our Starbucks campaign and other animal rights issues.

    May 22, 2023: Ahead of Succession’s May 28 series finale, actor James Cromwell took over the Atlantic City Boardwalk in New Jersey with a message for Starbucks: Stop milking customers who choose vegan options. The actor’s appeal was blasted on nearly 100 screens along the busiest stretch of the iconic walkway and within sight of two Starbucks locations.

    PETA Blitzed Starbucks in North America With Our ‘Weeks of Action’

    During PETA’s Weeks of Action against Starbucks, supporters occupied Starbucks locations across North America to protest the chain’s vegan milk upcharge.

    Read The Reports

    January 23, 2020: While PETA’s 2020 Week of Action was underway, Starbucks announced that it would add more vegan menu options and push customers to ditch dairy to combat the climate catastrophe, but we remained strong in our demands since the chain only responded with half-measures.

    June 21, 2022: PETA took on Starbucks and its unethical vegan milk upcharge during our Starbucks Week of Action from June 20 to 26. Supporters took to the streets in bold demonstrations in Atlanta; Dallas; Orlando; Seattle; St. Paul, Minnesota; and more than a dozen other cities across the U.S. Activists also blasted the company on social media, blitzed the company’s phone lines, demanded change on Yelp, and took other actions.

    April 12, 2023: Supporters of PETA and Switch4Good kicked off a weeklong push for Starbucks to drop its “penalty charge” for dairy-free milk, culminating in a sit-in with Animal Rights Initiative at a local Starbucks store. Accompanied by a social media uproar and protests in 23 cities across North America, the week of action followed PETA’s shareholder resolution, which won so many votes that PETA was able to submit it for a new vote in 2024.

    Celebs and Others Glued Themselves to Starbucks Counters

    To really get the message of outrage at Starbucks to stick, celebrities, a Buddhist monk, and other PETA supporters found a way to put a little more skin into our disruptions—literally.

    Chef Babette in front of Starbucks to protest vegan milk upcharge
    james-cromwell-against vegan milk surcharge at Starbucks
    Read The Reports

    April 20, 2022: With Earth Day looming, two climate and animal rights activists superglued their hands to the café counter at Starbucks’ headquarters, chanting, “Save the planet, save the cows, stop the plant milk upcharge!”

    May 10, 2022: Succession star and PETA Honorary Director James Cromwell superglued his hand to the café counter at a New York City Starbucks to protest the vegan milk upcharge. Police arrived to shut down the store.

    June 16, 2022: After spending over an hour superglued to the café counter at a downtown Chicago Starbucks, two PETA supporters, including a Buddhist monk in traditional robes, were arrested and charged with criminal trespassing.

    PETA Starbucks protest in Chicago

    March 8, 2024: On International Women’s Day, 74-year-old grandmother and renowned chef Babette Davis made headlines by supergluing her hand to the counter of a Starbucks store in Inglewood, California, in support of PETA’s campaign against the chain. 

    James Cromwell Became a Greedy Starbucks Exec in a Cutting Ad

    In his first acting role since Succession, actor James Cromwell played Ewan Roy’s worst nightmare—a greedy, fictional Starbucks executive who exploits eco-conscious customers by charging them more for vegan milk—in a PETA video released in time for National Coffee Day (September 29, 2023).

    Starbucks Sent Police to Arrest a Law-Abiding 13-Year-Old?!

    On March 8, 2024, Evan and his family were joining other PETA supporters at a Starbucks store near Orlando, Florida—and although the store manager had given the protesters permission to hold a sit-in there, the coffee giant later called the police on the group.

    13-year-old arrested at PETA protest of Starbucks in Orlando, FL

    Evan, at just 13-years-old, was wrongfully arrested on trespassing charges while peacefully protesting against Starbucks for charging extra for vegan milks. His charges were dropped in June.

    Celebrities Penned Letters to Starbucks’ Top Brass

    Kate Nash, Paul McCartney, and Alan Cumming all contacted Starbucks executives to ask them to put an end to the vegan milk upcharge.

    Cow in a field with many other white and black cows, Kate Nash from Coffee Wars movie poster with pink speckled background
    Sir Paul McCartney writes letter to Starbucks on behalf of cows
    Read The Reports

    March 1, 2021: PETA Honorary Director Alan Cumming joined PETA’s campaign by writing to Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson. His letter urged Starbucks to drop the upcharge on vegan milks, noting that the dairy industry produces huge amounts of greenhouse gases and that manure from dairy farms contaminates waterways and creates dead zones in the ocean where no life can survive.

    The most responsible move would be to stop selling cow’s milk altogether. But at the very least, you can end the upcharge on vegan milk that penalizes customers who are making the humane, environmentally friendly choice, along with those who are lactose intolerant—most of whom are people of color.”

    —Alan Cumming

    March 30, 2022: Ahead of Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson’s upcoming retirement on April 4, Sir Paul McCartney sent a letter to the outgoing exec, urging him to take the coffee giant’s problematic vegan milk upcharge out the door with him as he leaves the company.

    “My friends at PETA are campaigning for this,” wrote McCartney. “I sincerely hope that for the future of the planet and animal welfare you are able to implement this policy.”

    August 22, 2023: Hot off the set of Coffee Wars, actor, singer, and longtime vegan Kate Nash sent a letter on PETA’s behalf to Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan urging him to end the chain’s shameless upcharge on vegan milks in the U.S.

    “I’m currently starring in Coffee Wars, a movie in which my character, like me, is all about creating delicious coffee drinks that no animal had to suffer for. And while I love Starbucks coffee, it left a bitter taste in my mouth when I learned from my friends at PETA that customers who choose non-dairy milk still have to pay extra in the US. There’s no surcharge for plant-based milk in the UK, so that just doesn’t add up.”

    —Kate Nash

    PETA Crafted Special Gifts for Starbucks Execs

    Our creative gag gifts to the people in charge at Starbucks symbolized the harm that prioritizing cow’s milk over vegan milks does to the planet.

    gift bag behind a mock Starbucks bottle containing a cow fart that PETA sent to the coffee giant's CEO for Earth Day
    Read The Reports

    July 28, 2022: It’s the golden global warming awards, and PETA presented three Starbucks executives—CEO Howard Schultz, Chief Sustainability Officer Michael Kobori, and Head of Sustainability Una Hrnjak—with a Climate Catastrophy. With each award—which included a personalized placard and a letter—we let the coffee chain’s leaders know that if they really gave a frap about the planet, then they would drop the upcharge for vegan milks.

    April 21, 2023: Gear up for a gas! New Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan got a cheeky gift from PETA in honor of Earth Day: a “cow fart” in a jar. Hoping Narasimhan would help clear the air, PETA urged him to stop “milking” customers and harming animals and the planet.

    PETA Headed to Starbucks’ Boardroom

    Since 2019, we’ve given Starbucks a piece of our mind at its shareholder meetings and submitted shareholder resolutions to advocate against the nonsensical charge for vegan milks.

    PETA’s ‘Dead Calf’ Protests Starbucks’ Vegan Milk Upcharge
    Read The Reports

    March 18, 2020: Clueless actor and PETA Honorary Director Alicia Silverstone joined Starbucks’ virtual annual meeting to ask the company to stop charging extra for nondairy milks.

    “When will Starbucks put its money where its mouth is and remove the barrier to customers choosing climate-, health-, and animal-friendly vegan options by dropping the surcharge on nondairy milk?”

    —Alicia Silverstone

    March 16, 2022: PETA caused a stir during Starbucks’ annual meeting by calling out the company for being all talk and no action. We pointed out that the CEO himself—Kevin Johnson—has claimed that Starbucks wants to “give more than [it takes] from the planet,” but if that were really the case, the company would incentivize consuming animal- and environmentally friendly vegan milks by not charging extra for them.

    Producing cow’s milk generates around three times more greenhouse gas emissions and uses nine times more land than vegan options do. It takes 628 liters of water to make 1 liter of cow’s milk—oat or soy milk requires 90% less water.

    “Starbucks claims to value ‘challenging the status quo and … holding ourselves accountable.’ Words have to mean something.”

    —From PETA’s question to Starbucks at its annual meeting

    September 19, 2022: In PETA’s first-ever Starbucks shareholder resolution, we called on the company’s board of directors to commission a report examining whether the coffee chain is harming its reputation—and losing customers—by charging a premium price for the vegan milks it agrees are better for the planet.

    PETA members caused a stir outside Starbucks’ headquarters in Seattle to call on the chain to stop penalizing customers who care about animals and the environment.

    March 23, 2023: At Starbucks’ latest virtual shareholder meeting, PETA asked four pressing questions—one of our own and three on behalf of fellow shareholders who are also passionate about ending the vegan milk upcharge.

    Since Starbucks’ new CEO Laxman Narasimhan started two weeks early and led the meeting, PETA hopes he received our input with fresh urgency.

    We explained how the dairy industry condemns cows exploited for their milk to a relentless cycle of forced impregnation, birth, and nearly round-the-clock milking before sending them to a gruesome death after four or five years. Then we asked, “Knowing that dairy is the product of immense suffering, environmental destruction, and dietary racism, how do you justify supporting and even actively promoting its consumption by continuing to impose an ‘ethical tax’ on vegan milks?”

    Following introductory lead-in comments for each, the three other questions were read:

    “When will Starbucks return to the values that made me an investor by listening to its customers, leading the coffee industry instead of lagging behind, and dropping the upcharge on vegan milks?”

    “Since Starbucks has admitted that dairy is the biggest contributor to the company’s carbon footprint and is a major factor in climate change, why doesn’t Starbucks institute a dairy upcharge or, even better, drop dairy altogether?”

    “Given Gen Z’s aversion to dairy, why doesn’t Starbucks make vegan milk the default option instead of charging more for it?”

    During the meeting, we also presented our shareholder resolution—originally submitted in September 2022—urging the company to commission a report examining how dropping the upcharge for vegan milks could increase Starbucks’ sales.

    PETA supporters with Animal Rights Initiative descended on Starbucks’ headquarters in downtown Seattle at the start of the meeting to make their position known.

    April 13, 2023: After PETA submitted a shareholder resolution calling out Starbucks’ problematic vegan milk upcharge, we received enough votes from the company’s shareholders to qualify to submit another resolution in 2024. This was great news, as submitting back-to-back shareholder resolutions allows us to keep pressure on the chain.

    While we won a victory in the boardroom, we also kept the heat on Starbucks by partnering with Switch4Good—a nonprofit run by Olympian Dotsie Bausch dedicated to “[d]isrupting norms around dairy and health, working to abolish dietary racial oppression, and fighting climate change”—to hold a day of action against the company.

    During the action-packed day, we hosted protests across the U.S. and Canada, mobilized supporters to blast the company on social media, held sit-ins, encouraged everyone to call the company to express their opposition, and more.

    September 25, 2023: In our second-ever Starbucks shareholder resolution submission, PETA pressed the company’s executives to examine the true cost of alienating consumers who can’t stomach cow’s milk for ethical, religious, environmental, or dietary reasons.

    According to multiple studies, Gen Zers—whose spending power has more than doubled in three years to reach an estimated $360 billion—view cow’s milk as “basic” or “uncool.” So by charging a premium price for vegan milks, Starbucks may be harming its reputation and actually losing customers in the process.

    What Does Dairy Have to Do With the Climate Catastrophe?

    An environmental assessment revealed that Starbucks reportedly found that dairy-based items are the leading source of carbon dioxide emissions across its operations and supply chain. This isn’t surprising, considering that the production of dairy is to blame for a significant percentage of planet-warming emissions.

    The most significant thing that you can do to combat the climate catastrophe is to go vegan.

    And what makes it so easy to be vegan is accessibility. Visit a Noah’s New York Bagels, Philz Coffee, or Costa Coffee store and get dairy-free milk in your drinks for free! Visit a Starbucks, however, and you’ll be forced to pay upwards of 90 cents for vegan milk in your handcrafted drink—and vegan food choices there are very limited.

    Do Animals and the Planet a Favor: Go Vegan

    Why stop at coffee creamer? Whether your goals include being healthier, showing animals more kindness, or saving the planet, being vegan is the only way to go. And you won’t believe how easy it is! Click on the link below to get started on your journey of compassion.

    Join PETA’s 3-Week Vegan Challenge!

    The post Starbucks Becomes the Largest Chain in the US to Offer Free Vegan Milk appeared first on PETA.

    This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.

  • ‘They See These Price Hikes as a Good Thing’CounterSpin interview with Freddy Brewster on supermarket megamerger

     

    Janine Jackson interviewed journalist Freddy Brewster about the supermarket megamerger for the August 30, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

     

    Lever: Kroger and Albertsons’ Dirty Tricks To Preserve Greedflation

    Lever (8/26/24)

    Janine Jackson: In October of 2022, the largest supermarket chain in the US, Kroger, announced a plan to take over the second-largest supermarket chain in the country, Albertsons, in a merger that would create the country’s third-largest private-sector employer overall—after Walmart and Amazon—a conglomerate of some 5,000 stores and 710,000 employees. What could go wrong?

    A lot of things, the Federal Trade Commission suggested, as they sued to block the merger this February, including less competition, lower quality products and weaker bargaining positions for workers. Legal proceedings began this week.

    Our guest is helping make sense of this story. Writer and journalist Freddy Brewster’s latest piece on the proposed Kroger and Albertsons merger, and the maneuvering behind it, appears at LeverNews.com. He joins us now by phone from the Bay Area. Welcome to CounterSpin, Freddy Brewster.

    Freddy Brewster: Hi, thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

    JJ: If we could first situate this in common sense and lived experience: Americans have been seeing the price of eggs and milk and other staples go way up, to the point where already-struggling people are pressed to the limit. Asking why this is happening, we’ve been told for years now, well, Covid, and related supply chain problems, and inflation. It’s out of companies’ control.

    I have problems already with that, because the notion that companies have to maintain a certain profit margin, no matter what’s happening in the world, is a choice. Companies could always accept less profit, or pay managers less, if keeping prices down was their aim.

    But, OK, Covid, supply chain, inflation: That’s no longer the reality, yet it’s still somehow the story. Did Kroger not just acknowledge in testimony that, oh yes, we did push prices higher than inflation just because we could, but still if you give us more market power, you should believe we won’t do that anymore? I want to ask you about specifics, but this whole baseline, to begin with, almost seems like a joke at the expense of people already struggling. Am I missing something there?

    Freddy Brewster

    Freddy Brewster: “Kroger’s CEO, on a shareholder call, admitted that inflation is a good thing, because it’ll allow the company to raise prices.”

    FB: No, no, you’re kind of right on it. And just add to that, in 2021, Kroger’s CEO, on a shareholder call, admitted that inflation is a good thing, because it’ll allow the company to raise prices, pass the cost on to consumers and keep prices high. In fact, I have a quote right here from Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen, from that shareholder call, and it says, “We view a little bit of inflation as always good in our business, and we would expect to be able to pass those costs through to consumers on things that are permanent in nature.” And so, right here, he is admitting that they can use inflation to raise prices, and then keep those prices high.

    JJ: And that sounds like exactly what they’re saying they won’t be doing in this sort of PR talk about lower prices and better choices.

    I went to look up this story, and I found a website called KrogerAlbertsons.com, which opens with this, I find, hilarious disclaimer, and I just want to read it:

    Certain information included in this website is forward-looking, and involves risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the assumptions and beliefs of Kroger and Albertsons companies management in light of information currently available to them.

    And it goes on:

    Such statements are indicated by words or phrases such as “accelerate,” “create,” “committed,” “confident,” “continue,” “deliver,” “driving,” “expect,” “future,” “guidance,” “positioned,” “strategy,” “target,” “synergies,” “trends” and “will.”

    Now companies call this skating where the puck’s going to be, right? You just act as though you’ve already gotten the thing that you’re demanding. And then if the deal doesn’t happen, you’re encouraging people to see it as nature’s path being interfered with, rather than public-protecting processes being followed.

    FB: Yeah, that website is funny, and it’s almost like, if there’s any young people out there who are aspiring to work in PR, you can read that website. It is just like those words that they highlight themselves are rather interesting, and kind of like buzzwords, to be able to push a certain type of narrative that they find benefits them, or would be profitable to their narrative.

    Reuters: Surging grocery prices in focus as US tries to stop Kroger deal

    Reuters (8/28/24)

    JJ: What information is the FTC working with when they set up to question or potentially block this merger? Why are they doing that?

    FB: They want to block this merger because, like you had mentioned earlier on, this merger could result in poor-quality products, higher prices and worse employment options for employees, especially for employees who are trying to unionize or who want to threaten to be able to go work at the competitor.

    Just to give you kind of a sense of Kroger’s market power, in an attempt to allay the concerns from the FTC about this merger, Kroger had promised to sell off 600 stores, slash prices by a billion dollars, and invest a billion dollars in wages if the merger is allowed to go through.

    So what this kind of says and highlights is that Kroger is already buying Albertsons for $24.6 billion, and is willing to invest another $2 billion to bring down prices and to get more wages. That shows that they already have quite a bit of market power. They have $29 billion sitting around that they can use to buy another company and lower prices and give people better wages. Well, why aren’t they lowering prices and giving people better wages right now?

    That statement itself just highlights the market power that Kroger has, and if this merger is allowed to go through, they’ll have even greater market power. And Kroger says that they want this merger to go through to be able to compete with Walmart and Amazon, which may be legitimate, but Walmart and Amazon, they operate in different spheres than what traditional grocery stores do.

    Boise Dev: Albertsons and Kroger supermarket brands

    Boise Dev (2/20/23)

    JJ: Right. So the idea that all four of these companies… we as citizens are meant to be excited about a bigger behemoth getting into the fight with other behemoths.

    FB: Yeah, exactly. And Kroger already owns a handful of common grocery stores that people know about. There’s Fred Meyer, there’s Harris Teeter, they own King Soopers and Ralphs. And then also Albertsons owns Safeway. They own…

    JJ: Acme, I think….

    FB: Shaw’s and Vons. Yeah, exactly. And so all of this would put it all under one roof.

    And then also, if this merger’s allowed to go through, what puts it under that same roof, too, are also all those store-brand products. Like Kroger has Kroger brand salad dressing, for example, or different sauces or snacks or whatever. And Albertsons has the same thing. But then that puts it all under one roof, one house in one store, and that leaves less options for consumers.

    And an expert I talked to highlighted about how when there’s less options, that these companies are focused on profits, and they often use emulsifiers and other things that really aren’t the best to be consuming for the average human, and that can affect health in different ways, weight in different ways.

    JJ: Among other tactics, Kroger is declaring that the FTC’s whole case should be thrown out because it’s unconstitutional, because it involves Kroger’s “private rights.” What legal legs do they think they’re standing on there?

    Vox: The Supreme Court just lit a match and tossed it into dozens of federal agencies

    Vox (6/27/24)

    FB: So, historically, the courts have ruled in favor of these government agencies. The FTC, for example, and similar with the Securities and Exchange Commission, have these internal courts that rule on certain matters. So, for example, the FTC internal administrative court, they hear evidence, kind of like a standard court, and will issue initial decisions. And companies have sued in the past to try to say this is unconstitutional, and has to be fought in federal court. But the courts have largely ruled in favor of these government agencies.

    Up until recently; that’s begun to change. Now the Supreme Court, earlier the summer, ruled that the in-house courts issuing civil penalties for securities fraud, for the Securities Exchange Commission, is unconstitutional. And then, also, there was a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that allowed companies facing an FTC enforcement action to challenge those actions that the companies deemed unconstitutional in federal court, before those actions are deliberated inside the internal FTC court. So it’s a little convoluted, but those are the two main cases that Kroger is relying on to say that the internal FTC court is unconstitutional.

    JJ: Listeners will know that we’ve been instructed to see corporations as people since Citizens United, but if I’m in court and I’m deleting relevant text messages, I’m not sure that I could just say, “Oh, well, you know, stuff happens.” Tell us a little bit about some of the behind the scenes actions, if you will, that seem meaningful here to this case.

    CPI: Judge Accuses Google of ‘Clear Abuse’ in Antitrust Case Over Deleted Employee Chats

    CPI (8/29/24)

    FB: So deleting text messages and internal chats has seemed to become the go-to tactic for business executives facing enforcement actions and regulations from the federal government. Jeff Bezos and Amazon executives were caught using Signal, which is an encrypted messaging app, but it also has the option for auto delete. And so a lot of these messages that they were exchanging between each other were automatically deleted.

    Google executives were also caught deleting messages. So Google has this internal policy where it directs employees to use a feature that automatically deletes Google Chat messages after 24 hours. And Google received an order from regulators to preserve these messages, but a judge found that the executives did not properly notify employees to stop using the auto delete feature, and some messages were deleted.

    And there’s also, in the case of Google, messages that have been preserved that show that some of these executives realized the fact that the auto delete function was not turned off. And so it’s preserved in court documents that show that they know that they were supposed to turn off this auto delete function, but they had left it on.

    But then Albertsons, some of their executives were using auto-delete features on iPhone, and recent filings from the FTC, I’ll just quote right from it, it says: “Of the eight Albertsons executives set to testify at this evidentiary hearing, four exhibited a pervasive practice of deleting business-related text messages,” the FTC found. And these text messages allegedly included details on whether selling off certain stores will remedy the merger’s anticompetitive impacts, and FTC investigators urge the court to view the executive’s testimony with skepticism, meaning that they should view what they have to say in light of these guys deleting text messages talking about details about the merger.

    Chicago Trib: Albertsons-Kroger merger should be allowed, but we need assurance the sale of Mariano’s won’t harm consumers

    Chicago Tribune (8/27/24)

    JJ: Yeah. I’ll bring you back to that big regulatory picture in just a second, but let me just ask you about corporate media response. There’s been some coverage. I’ve seen some coverage.

    It includes things like the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board, who weighed in saying that, yes, food prices in America are a real problem, but that it’s “only politicians who want to be seen as doing something about them” that “conveniently focus merely on retail operations, because those are price stickers most voters see.” Well, yeah, OK. But they go on to say:

    In reality, supermarkets are a famously high-volume, low-margin business, and their price increases are downwind from wholesale price increases with those flowing from suppliers with increased costs. And the retail operations have their own costs dominated by the price of labor, which has seen hefty increases in recent years.

    Now, I think listeners can likely parse that: It’s supply chains and it’s unions that are driving those high grocery prices—even as Kroger’s own senior director for pricing admits in testimony that, yeah, we’re actually price-gouging, but if you let us merge, well, we pinky promise to stop. What do you make of media response here?

    FB: Yeah, so I haven’t read that Chicago Tribune article, but I’d imagine that they don’t take in consideration the billions of dollars that Kroger has spent in stock buybacks over recent years. And so it’s not like they’re hurt or cash-strapped in a way that they’re having to pinch pennies to get by. They pay their executives handsomely. They’re paid well, and they have billions of dollars in leftover money to buy back stocks to juice shareholder value. I don’t really see that mentioned too often in corporate media, but that is a key context to consider when it comes to these issues and food prices.

    JJ: Yeah, consumers and workers and competition, those terms get thrown around a lot in stories like this. But the Consumer Federation of America opposes the merger, the Food Workers Union opposes the merger, state attorney generals who are interested in competition oppose the merger. So there’s this gap between media and political rhetoric, and what folks on the ground actually see and have seen happening, it seems like.

    FB: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and folks on the ground know really what’s affecting them, and what’s affecting them largely, as of late, has been high prices at the grocery store. And we know from Kroger’s own internal conversations that they see these price hikes as a good thing.

    JJ: While it is hard, understandably, for many of us to see past the price of eggs, which is alarming, but there is also, as you write about, a long game here that has to do with hobbling government’s ability to protect consumers, or to regulate businesses, period. I think Kroger seems to see, and other businesses seem to see, a longer-term gain here by undermining the whole system.

    FB: Imagine Kroger’s case against the FTC. This is a bit of a prediction from me. I’d imagine it’ll make its way to the Supreme Court, because if the federal court in Cincinnati, where Kroger sued, if they rule in favor of Kroger, then that says the FTC control of courts is unconstitutional, and I imagine the FTC would challenge that or appeal that. And if Kroger loses, I’d imagine they would appeal as well, because they want to be able to fight this in federal courts, which have largely been stocked with corporate-friendly judges over the past few decades.

    FAIR: WSJ Attacks Antitrust Champion Lina Khan Every 11 Days Since FTC Appointment

    FAIR.org (6/23/23)

    JJ: We try to always say, notice those down-ballot elections. Notice those electoral judge positions. All of this is so integral to the rules and policies that govern our lives, but we don’t always see it highlighted as those races or those positions as important as they absolutely are.

    Well, corporate America hate them some Lina Khan, don’t they? I mean, we have seen this, in terms of the FTC. It’s almost like there’s something wrong with a person in a government agency just straight up saying, “I’m looking to protect the public interest here.” It’s almost as though we’re being told to see regulatory agencies as just kind of refereeing the game between big corporations, and we, the public, are just not in it.

    FB: And a lot of these executives, they get brought onto CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and they praise Vice President Harris, and are happy she’s running, but they also pressure her to fire Lina Khan and other regulators. And the news anchors there failed to mention the cases that those business executives or those billionaires have in front of the FTC, or have in front of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. Or some of the motivations on why they would want to get rid of regulators who have a strong anti-monopoly type of mindset, and a very pro-consumer mindset. That doesn’t really get mentioned too often on some of these corporate media outlets.

    JJ: What do you think happens now? You’ve indicated it a little bit, but we’re still very much in the midst of this case. What do you think is likely to happen, and what would you look for journalists to be keeping an eye on?

    FB: Yeah, so it’s hard to determine what’s going to happen. I think it’s really going to be interesting on the federal case out of Cincinnati, Ohio, where Kroger sued, challenging FTC’s internal court being constitutional. The current case that’s playing out right now, that’s a temporary halt to the merger. That’ll have some ramifications for sure, but the big one to pay attention to is the Kroger v. FTC federal case out of Cincinnati, and what the ramifications of that will be, because that could also have, if that rules in Kroger’s favor, then that case could be cited to challenge other regulators, their internal administrative courts as well.

    JJ: I won’t put words in your mouth, but I’m guessing that you think that independent journalism has a role to play here, in terms of informing the public about these sorts of things?

    FB: Absolutely, absolutely. Independent journalists have been ones that have been spearheading some of the pro–consumer protection type stuff. This stems back all the way from a consumer protection advocate, Ralph Nader, back in the ’70s, all the way to our current system now. Independent media is very important in our current age.

    And if you are interested about the corporate takeover of America and America’s courts, we have a really good podcast out right now called Master Plan that tracks the beginnings, the origins of how money in politics came to be. Like all good political conspiracies, it goes back to Watergate, in the Nixon administration, that involves the milk lobby, that involves Lewis Powell and the infamous Powell Memo, and then goes all the way to Citizens United and the billions of dollars that are being spent on our current election. So if listeners are interested in that, then they can check out Master Plan.

    JJ: All right, then. We’ve been speaking with writer and journalist Freddy Brewster. The piece we’re talking about, on the Kroger/Albertsons merger, can be found at LeverNews.com. Thank you so much, Freddy Brewster, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

    FB: Thank you so much for having me on.

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Freddy Brewster on Supermarket Megamerger

     

     

    Lever: Kroger and Albertsons’ Dirty Tricks To Preserve Greedflation

    Lever (8/26/24)

    This week on CounterSpin: The country’s largest and second-largest grocery store chains want to merge and, surprising no one, they claim that giving them that tremendous market power will lead to lower prices, better quality food and better conditions for workers. The FTC says, hold on a second, how does that square with on-the-record statements that Kroger is currently raising the prices of things like eggs and milk above inflation rates, simply because they can get away with it—a practice known as price-gouging? The response, dutifully reported in corporate news media is: We won’t do that anymore! And also: If you try to stop us, that’s illegal!

    It could hardly be clearer that the public—consumers and workers—needs advocates willing to go behind talking points to enforceable law. Freddy Brewster is a writer and journalist; his report on the possible Kroger/Albertsons megamerger, its implications, and the behind the scenes shenanigans attendant to it, appears on LeverNews.com. We hear about that this week on CounterSpin.

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent press coverage of the Golan Heights bombing.

     

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Gaza: World Food Programme suspends aid


    This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • A far cry from sweet and sour: Hong Kongers bring their food to the UK

    Hong Kongers fleeing a political crackdown in their home city are the biggest wave of migrants to settle in Britain since the Windrush generation arrived from the Caribbean — and they’re bringing their food with them. 

    While previous generations of Chinese immigrants would gravitate towards Chinatowns in London and Manchester to make and sell dim sum or roast Cantonese duck to local diners, this cohort is bringing an updated menu of Hong Kong food that offers fellow migrants a nostalgic taste of home.

    Instead of being concentrated in inner city areas like their forerunners, the nearly 200,000 holders of the British National Overseas passport are making use of a lifeboat visa program to fan out across the country, from Sutton in Surrey, to Brick Lane and Canary Wharf in East London, to affordable neighborhoods in Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester.

    They’re even growing their own vegetables in their backyards instead of relying on the fresh foods available through chains of Asian foods wholesalers.

    ENG_CHN_FEATURE HKUK FOOD_08212024.2.jpg
    A shop in the U.K. sells Hong Kong-style milk tea. (Cynthia Hung Jones/RFA)

    The Hong Kong food stall with the longest line of waiting diners at a weekend food market in the Canary Wharf financial district in early June 2024 offers salt beef tripe, brisket and tendon braised Hong Kong style, attracting a mixed crowd of expectant customers.

    For some, it’s the taste of home, and for others raised on typical fare from earlier British Hong Kong takeaways, it’s a far cry from sweet and sour chicken balls.

    “Food has always been an important part of the way that immigrant communities construct their identities,” says Hong Kong columnist Carpier Leung. “I have high hopes for the influence that this wave of immigration can have on Hong Kong cuisine.”

    The new wave is already breaking on British shores.

    Over the past two years, more supermarkets have started selling packages of dim sum like har gau shrimp dumplings and char siu pork buns, while Hong Kong-style egg tarts and the city’s signature mix of strong black tea with evaporated milk have started popping up in trendy cafes in areas where Hong Kongers have congregated.

    You can buy street snacks like egg waffles and French toast, Hong Kong diner (or cha chaan teng) style, in Sutton and Manchester these days.

    Dreams of Mong Kok

    Nicole, who founded the Hong Kong nostalgia restaurant HOKO in Brick Lane, said she was drawn to the area because its grittiness and trendiness reminded her of Kowloon’s Mong Kok district. 

    That was home to the “fishball revolution” of 2016 when disgruntled young people — some of them supporters of the city’s independence movement — ripped up paving bricks from the area’s narrow shopping streets and hurled them at police.

    ENG_CHN_FEATURE HKUK FOOD_08212024.3.jpg
    Founder Nicole outside her Hong Kong nostalgia restaurant HOKO in London’s Brick Lane. (Cynthia Hung Jones/RFA)

    The first thing you see when you walk into HOKO is a row of evaporated milk tins used by cha chaan teng, with their distinctive red-and-white packaging. The next is the diner-style layout with high-backed, partitioned seating of the kind where low-paid office workers would rub shoulders with blue-collar workers in search of an affordable breakfast or set lunch deal.

    The tables are stacked with orange melamine chopsticks, with menus in glass cases, throwbacks to Nicole’s memories of these eateries that date back to the 1960s and ‘70s in her home city. Cantopop by Justin Lo is blaring from the speaker system, while posters of Hong Kong bands bedeck the walls.

    “We sell Hong Kong food that tells a story,” she says, listing milk tea, French toast, pork chop, Swiss chicken wings and borscht, all staples of cha chaan teng — food that arrived in a global free port from somewhere else, only to acquire a peculiarly Hong Kong twist, making it quite unlike the original.

    “Swiss chicken wings” was the result of a miscommunication between English-speaking tourists and Hong Kong chefs, who heard “Swiss” when the customer said “sweet,” according to HOKO’s menu. Milk tea was brought in during British colonial times and persisted long after British tea-drinkers had forgotten all about evaporated milk.

    Nicole thinks the latest generation of migrants from Hong Kong is “braver, and truer to ourselves and to Hong Kong cuisine.”

    Telling the difference

    Another Hong Kong eatery in east London, Aquila, has directly imported some of its ingredients from Hong Kong to ensure its dishes remain authentic. 

    “We have to insist on that authenticity so that British people will be able to tell the difference between Hong Kong and China [when it comes to food],” says co-founder Lucas.

    ENG_CHN_FEATURE HKUK FOOD_08212024.4.jpg
    The founders and manager of Hong Kong restaurant Aquila in London’s Leytonstone pose for a photo under the flags of British Hong Kong and the Republic of China (Taiwan) in June 2024. (Cynthia Hung Jones/RFA)

    The first thing you see when you walk into this joint is a political statement — the flags of British Hong Kong and the Republic of China, currently located in democratic Taiwan, alongside photos from the 2019 protest movement against the loss of Hong Kong’s promised freedoms that would land a person in hot water back home, under two national security laws.

    But the founders don’t worry much about annoying China, which took back control of Hong Kong in 1997 and still insists on a territorial claim on Taiwan.

    “I’m running a British business — what is there to be afraid of?” says Lucas. “My grandfather’s business was ruined by the Chinese Communist Party, and my family has been anti-communist ever since.”

    “I hope that customers will ask why these things are on display, so I can tell them the story of Hong Kong,” he adds.

    Chicken hotpot

    Not all food translates easily, however. Hong Kongers have developed a passion in recent years for a local form of chicken hotpot. But Hong Kong migrant and entrepreneur Sam says he doesn’t think the dish has taken off with British diners, who prefer their chicken boneless and not floating around in scalding hot soup.

    Sam started Lulu Chicken Pot, a business selling hotpot soup base, chicken nuggets and spicy sauce, but orders fell off sharply in the second year, and he was unable to pay the #3,000 (US$3,925) a month rent on his kitchen.

    ENG_CHN_FEATURE HKUK FOOD_08212024.5.jpg
    Lulu Chicken Pot founder Sam, out delivering hotpot orders to customers in the U.K. (Cynthia Hung Jones/RFA)

    “It doesn’t matter how many Hong Kongers you have following you on your Facebook page,” he says. “It’s not the same as reaching tens of millions of consumers in the U.K.”

    In New Malden, south London, organic farmer Wong Yu-wing is growing vegetables that Hong Kongers love to eat, but which aren’t widely available in British stores.

    He also partners with the local government to grow his vegetables in public spaces, as well as selling seeds and seedlings to other Hong Kong migrants who want to start their own vegetable plots.

    ENG_CHN_FEATURE HKUK FOOD_08212024.6.jpg
    Organic farmer Wong Yu-wing inspects cabbages he’s growing in New Malden, U.K., June 2024. (Cynthia Hung Jones/RFA)

    But the shadow of China still looms large in many people’s lives, even on British soil.

    The Hong Kong March cultural festival now in its second year has seen a sharp fall in participating businesses, which organizer and former pro-democracy District Councilor Carmen Lau says is likely linked to the chilling effect of bounties and arrest warrants placed by national security police on the heads of overseas democracy activists last year, including several based in the United Kingdom.

    At the same time, funding from the U.K. government has been cut or canceled, leaving several groups representing Hong Kongers in the lurch financially, she says.

    ‘Milk tea alliance’

    Nonetheless, food and drink is still bringing Hong Kongers together.

    In Reading, a town to the west of London, the local Hong Kongers’ group holds a Hong Kong market every month.

    ENG_CHN_FEATURE HKUK FOOD_08212024.7.jpg
    Former democratic District Councilor Carmen Lau (left), one of the organizers of the Hong Kong March cultural festival in the U.K. (Courtesy of Hong Kong March)

    Stallholder and former pro-democracy politician Wilber Lee sells milk tea, while displaying photos from the 2019 protests. His “Double Price For Drinks Only” stall is popular, and customers line up to get their brew.

    It’s as much a political statement as a hot beverage.

    “A lot of people know me and come to support me by buying my milk tea,” Lee says, adding that his stall’s branding is largely aimed at Hong Kongers, and is a humorous nod to the way cha chaan teng diners would charge double for drinks if customers didn’t buy food.

    Lee’s product is deliberately aligned with the “milk tea alliance” of pro-democracy protesters across several East Asian nations, who routinely support each other online and face down the army of pro-Beijing commentators known as the “little pinks.”

    He sees himself as continually engaged in the struggle to make Hong Kong free again.

    “Everything I do now is to prepare for that day,” he says.

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Cynthia Hung Jones for The Reporter/RFA Mandarin.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Zelenskiy Advisor Says Ukraine Is Helping Civilians Amid Food Shortages In Kursk Region


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Investing in breastfeeding: Sustainable solutions for global health

    In a recent paper published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization (WHO), we argued that women’s unpaid work needs better recognition through decent time use statistics as well as by counting investments in breastfeeding.

    A gender budgeting perspective on the Australian Breastfeeding Strategy highlights that while successive governments are happy to spend money on consultants and the formula industry, they are less willing to invest in the measures to help women with breastfeeding such as better maternity care, longer paid maternity leave, and full implementation of the Code of Marketing on Breastmilk Substitutes. This has implications for planetary health, as well as human health.

    It is well known that both women and children’s health benefits from breastfeeding. What is less understood is its importance for environmental health. In a recent special issue of the WHO Bulletin on the economics of health for all, we argued that the lack of visibility of unpaid work such as breastfeeding contributes to gender-blind policies on the environment, as well as a misguided view of what is valuable economically.

    A rethink on the global economy and health inequities

    Reflecting on the inequities and failures of global governance on the COVID19 pandemic, the Director-General of the World Health Organization commissioned an all-female team to examine the economics of health for all. The WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All included one of the pioneers of feminist economics, Dame Professor Marilyn Waring, as well as UCL professor Mariana Mazzucato an expert in ‘financialisation’ and investment flows. Dr Tedros called for a ‘rethink of what matters’.

    During the pandemic, gross inequities in health policy responses became apparent. Women who were pregnant or breastfeeding were not included in COVID-19 vaccine research.

    Putting ‘women and children last’ likely harmed their health. Maternity care practices and policies, including in Australia, were poorly aligned with WHO recommendations on breastfeeding during the pandemic emergency.

    The WHO efforts to ensure global equity in access to protections and treatments for COVID19 were also undermined by ‘vaccine protectionism’ as high income countries and pharmaceutical companies prioritised populations in countries while using international investor protection and intellectual property laws to block the equitable sharing of research on COVID19 vaccines and treatments.

    Meanwhile, the pandemic was overlaid on multiple crises including the glacial response to climate change and related issues including escalating problems of malnutrition and food insecurity and antibiotic resistance.

    Maternity care chaos

    Early in the pandemic, WHO issued guidance for health professionals indicating that breastfeeding should be protected in maternity care and mothers and newborns should not be separated. Instead, there were egregious violations of women’s and children’s human rights, as health care protocols ignored this advice to prioritise resources away from maternity care and breastfeeding support. In some locations, caesarean section was mandated, and breastfeeding was not permitted. This resulted in needless distress and disruption for new mothers and newborns.

    Since that time, research has reinforced the value of breastfeeding in strengthening children’s immune systems, and demonstrating its role in protecting against coronavirus disease. In 2022 WHO and UNICEF leaders emphasised that breastfeeding is the first immunisation, following a study demonstrating that more babies were likely to die from lack of breastfeeding than from COVID19.

    While poor data collections mean that the effects of pandemic responses on breastfeeding, infant and child health are not clear, lack of time use data also hinders assessment of the economic burdens of the COVID19 pandemic. Women’s unpaid workloads soared as childcare and schools closed, and healthcare systems came under strain.

    The increased productivity of women juggling these additional roles remains unmeasured and invisible to economic policymakers, who missed the opportunity to ‘rethink what matters’, and instead exhorted the importance of ‘back to work’ and ‘return to normal’.

    Measuring what matters

    At the foundation of measuring what matters is collecting adequate data, and the WHO Council recommendations were built on a call for better time use statistics as the basis for measuring economic burdens and economic productivity. Our proposal for considering breastfeeding investments as a carbon offset is founded in the need for full recognition and appropriate measurement of women’s unpaid work including breastfeeding.

    Although it is well established that excluding mothers’ milk production from measures of food production biases policy priorities, most countries (other than Norway) continue to do so. When breastfeeding declines, the economy, as currently measured, expands, because only commercial baby food sales are counted in GDP. The Mothers Milk Tool developed at ANU with Alive & Thrive Southeast Asia Pacific demonstrates the large magnitude of this omission: if women’s production of milk for babies were counted as economically valuable, its monetary value in Australia would exceed $5 billion a year, compared to less than a billion dollars of commercial milk formula.

    Our proposal also calls for better time use data, so that who does the work provides the foundation for valuing the economy and for more appropriate distribution of income and wealth.

    Investing in what matters – sustainable food systems

    Central to our proposal that investments in enabling breastfeeding should count as a carbon offset is the science on the huge environmental impacts of the global dairy industry, of which commercial milk formula products are part. Only quite recently has it been acknowledged that the global food system, and particularly meat and dairy, is a key contributor to environmental damage, through pressures for land clearing, as well as emissions associated with production, distribution and consumption. Recent discussion of sustainable food systems asks whether impacts on animal welfare should also be part of the equation.

    Research has shown that as much as 11-14 kilograms of greenhouse gases are emitted during the product life cycle of commercial milk formula. This includes during the production of raw milk with huge methane gas production of cows, through the processing, packaging and transportation of powdered milk, and the emissions and waste during the consumption and disposal phases of the product life cycle.

    Globally, production and use of CMF by infants under 6 months results in annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of between 5.9 and 7.5 billion kg CO2 eq. and consumes 2,562.5 billion liters of water. If populous countries like China and India were to adopt western feeding practices, the effects on the environment as well as population health would be dire. An infant that is not breastfed generates around a quarter of a tonne of greenhouse gas emissions during the first six months of life, as it requires around 20-21 kilograms of milk powder. Breastfeeding a baby by contrast involves minimal ‘food miles’, even after accounting for ensuring mothers diets are adequate.

    This harm to planetary health and early nutrition is avoidable through investments in better maternity care, such as programs which implement the WHO/UNICEF Ten Steps to Succecsful Bresatfeeding, as well as through longer paid maternity leave. These are well evidenced ways of enabling women to breastfeed. Countries like Brazil have shown that integrated packages of breastfeeding support – including community milk banking replacing use of commercial milk formula – can increase breastfeeding rates at country level.

    The dairy industry is adept at adapting to new challenges, and the growing phenomenon of ‘greenwashing’ is used to convince consumers that technology can fix the problem by feeding cows seaweed in their diets, or using renewable energy in baby formula factories.

    However, this doesn’t help the environment or human health if CMF sales continue to rise. A recent series on breastfeeding in the top medical journal The Lancet documented industry marketing practices which exploit the vulnerabilities and anxieties of new mothers and their families, as well as targeting health professionals  and health facilities – seen in the baby food industry as ‘category entry points’. Another study has demonstrated that more than half of CMF sales in the Asia Pacific region are of ‘toddler formula’, which the WHO has stated is unnecessary and possibly harmful to children’s nutrition and health.

    Researchers from Ireland, a major dairy exporting country, have shown that achieving global nutrition targets for breastfeeding – for 70% of infants to be exclusively breastfed for the first six months, and for 80% to continue breastfeeding to 2 years and beyond – would do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than improving the energy efficiency of CMF production.

    Young mother choosing baby formula for her newborn. Picking different options from the shelf and reading the labels.

    Young mother choosing baby formula for her newborn. (Please note: Stock photo)

    The Paris Agreement on Climate Change

    Global public policy addresses climate change through three policy pillars, mitigation, adaptation and resilience. That is, preventing climate change, getting used to it, and coping with the resulting adversities. Breastfeeding assists all three, through minimising environmental harms, delivering good nutrition and clean fluids and strengthening the immune system, and via its potential to ameliorate the care, nutritional and health vulnerability of infants and young children in emergencies and disasters when usual infrastructure is unavailable. Australia, like other high income countries, has been poorly prepared to protect mothers and babies during such crisis. Ukraine is another tragic example.

    Although progress is glacial and inadequate, global agreements for a ‘clean development mechanism’ including a recent ‘loss and damage fund’ have potential to redistribute global development financing to low and middle income countries to tackle climate change challenges.

    Our proposal is that countries’ investments in breastfeeding, such as through better paid maternity leave, should be eligible for such funding.

    Using the Green Feeding Tool, the impact of such measures on greenhouse gas emissions and water use can be estimated, based on data on infant feeding practices. Maternity care services investments could also contribute. Recognition of the economic and environmental importance of breastfeeding would also help generate improvements in support for women and gender equity.

    The transition to a sustainable food system and health for all must be equitable, including for women. Advancing the proposal for investments to better enable women to breastfeed is one important way that will be achieved.

     

    Picture at top: Nicholas Felix/Adobe Stock

    The post Investing in breastfeeding: Sustainable solutions for global health appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • Yangon widow sells pigeon food for a living | Radio Free Asia (RFA)


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Yangon widow sells pigeon food for a living | Radio Free Asia (RFA)


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Closed borders with India cause food, fuel shortages in western Myanmar

    Residents in western Myanmar who rely on trade with India said they are experiencing food shortages due to the closure of some border crossings with India amid Myanmar’s civil war.

    People in Chin state, western Sagaing region and northern Rakhine state said their supplies of  rice, cooking oil, salt, fuel and medicine are dwindling because of the trade disruption following the border gate closures.

    Indian authorities cited the need to check the flow of illegal goods from Myanmar as the reason, according to local sources.

    But Reeta Meena, an Indian Embassy diplomat in Yangon, told Radio Free Asia that the Indian government permits movement through designated border crossing points, including ones at Tamu-Moreh, Rikhawdar-Zokhawthar and Zorinpui-Paletwa.

    Any restrictions might have been imposed by Myanmar or local authorities, she told Radio Free Asia.

    Thousands of civilians from Chin state and Sagaing region have fled across the Indian border and into neighboring Mizoram and Manipur states to escape fighting between junta troops and rebel forces following the Myanmar military’s February 2021 coup d’état.

    But those who have stayed behind have struggled to get goods from India amid periodic border closures due to fighting in their areas, while communication blackouts have cut them off from key cities in Myanmar. 

    In April, 2023, India locked the gates to key border crossings with Myanmar’s Chin state after three Indian citizens were killed that February during an intensified junta offensive against rebel forces in the western states. 

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    Myanmar permits legal international trade with India via the two crossings at Tamu-Moreh in Sagaing region and Rikhawdar-Zokhawthar in Chin state.

    The Moreh-Tamu border gate has remained closed on the Indian side since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

    ‘Severe difficulties’

    But the recent closures of other crossings have led to shortages of basic food items, said a Tamu resident.

    “Indian products, such as food and basic consumer goods, are no longer available to local residents living along the border, creating severe difficulties for them,” the resident said. “Job opportunities are scarce, making it increasingly challenging for them to afford basic necessities.”

    Indian authorities announced that the Myanmar-India border gate, which connects Rikhawdar in Chin state with India’s Mizoram state, would be closed from July 25 to Aug. 7, though Myanmar residents say it is unlikely to reopen until Aug. 12.  

    As a result of this closure, prices of goods in Rikhawdar have surged, with people paying twice as much for goods as they did before, Myanmar locals said.

    Since November 2023, Rikhawdar has been under the control of Chin defense forces who oppose Myanmar’s ruling military junta and have jointly established a public administration focused on the India-Myanmar border trade, public security and regional stability.

    A spokesman for the Regional Defense Force-Hualngoram, the other organization involved in setting up the town’s administration, expressed hope that the Mizoram state government would take measures to help locals obtain essential supplies from India.

    “The closure of the bridge, which we rely on for the flow of goods, has made things more difficult,” he said. “We are currently facing a crisis.”

    Because Mizoram residents rely on produce from Myanmar, a prolonged border crossing closure would negatively impact both sides, said Salai Van Sui Sang, deputy director of the Institute of Chin Affairs.

    It also could lead to tensions between residents of Mizoram and their state government, he added.

    Arakan Army

    Some internal trade routes, which run directly between towns in India and western Myanmar, have been cut off because of fighting between junta soldiers and resistance forces in Chin state’s Paletwa and in Rakhine state — areas controlled by the rebel Arakan Army. As a result, Myanmar residents must rely on products from Lawngtlai in Mizoram state.

    But since June 24, the Central Young Lai Association, an influential NGO in Lawngtlai, has banned the export of goods. Though it allowed some items, including basic foodstuffs, to be transported again in July, restrictions on fuel and fertilizer remain in place.

    On Aug. 7, the organization warned it would take action against the transport of prohibited fuel and fertilizer from Lawngtlai, but did not provide specifics.

    Goods transported from Lawngtlai have been banned because the Arakan Army said they were being used to supply junta forces attacking Chin armed groups.

    Translated by Kalyar Lwin for RFA Burmese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.