Tag: food

Why are we paying Canadian dairy farmers who are producing more?

Every once in a while, someone inside a tightly protected system decides to say the quiet part out loud. That is what Joel Fox, a dairy farmer from the Trenton, Ontario area, did recently in the Ontario Farmer newspaper. In a candid open letter, Fox questioned why established dairy farmers like himself continue to receive increasingly large government payouts — even though the sector is not shrinking, but expanding. His piece, titled “We continue to privatize gains, socialize losses,” did not come from an economist or a critic of supply management. It came from someone who benefits from it. And yet his message was unmistakable: the numbers no longer add up.

Fox’s letter marks something we have not seen in years — a rare moment of internal dissent from a system that usually speaks with one voice. It is the first meaningful crack since the viral milk-dumping video by Ontario dairy farmer Jerry Huigen, who filmed himself being forced to dump thousands of litres of perfectly good milk because of quota rules. Huigen’s video exposed contradictions inside supply management, but the system quickly closed ranks. Until now. Fox has reopened a conversation that has been dormant for far too long.

In his letter, Fox admitted he would cash his latest $14,000 Dairy Direct Payment Program (DDPP) cheque, despite believing the program wastes taxpayer money. The DDPP was created to offset supposed losses from trade agreements like CETA, CPTPP, and CUSMA. These deals were expected to reduce Canada’s dairy market. But those “losses” are theoretical — based on models and assumptions about future erosion in market share. Meanwhile, domestic dairy demand has strengthened.

Which raises the obvious question: why are we compensating dairy farmers for producing less when they are, in fact, producing more?

This month, dairy farmers received another 1% quota increase, on top of several increases totalling 4% to 5% in recent years. Quota — the right to produce milk — only increases when more supply is needed. If trade deals had truly devastated the sector, quota would be falling, not rising. Instead, Canada’s population has grown by nearly six million since 2015, processors have expanded, and consumption remains stable. The market is expanding.

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Brits are warned they could be prosecuted if they take bananas washed up on beach after cargo containers fell off ship

Brits have been warned they face prosecution if they take bananas that washed up on a beach after falling off a cargo ship. 

Thousands of bananas appeared on Selsey Beach, West Sussex on Saturday night after 16 huge containers toppled off the Baltic Klipper near the Isle of Wight coast.

Stunned beachgoers soon flocked to the scene to investigate, as police quickly installed a cordon and urged people to steer clear of the fruit, which must be reported to HM Coastguard.

Those who fail to declare a wreck without a reasonable excuse face a £2,500 fine under the terms of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995. 

A spokesperson for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) said: ‘HM Coastguard is continuing to work with relevant authorities after 16 containers went overboard from the cargo ship Baltic Klipper in the Solent on December 6.

‘This includes working with the vessel’s owners, who are responsible for recovering the containers.

‘The public are advised to avoid the area and are reminded that all wreck material found in the UK has to be reported to HM Coastguard’s Receiver of Wreck.’

Eight of the containers were filled with bananas, while two were packed with plantain and one with avocados – five were empty.

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Americans Worry Most Among Developed Nations About Food Security

Concerning nations surveyed in Statista’s Consumer Insights, Americans were among those most worried about food and water security.

Indeed, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, while for most European nations, worry about the topic peaked during the coronavirus pandemic and the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, concern has remained elevated in the United States into 2025.

Food and water supplies were not considered a particular issue among developed countries for a long time. But the data illustrates how that is starting to change.

As many as 1 in 5 respondents in France said that food and water security was one of the biggest challenges their country faced in 2025.

The proportion was similarly high in the United Kingdom and Italy (23 percent), while it had fallen a little lower again in Spain (16 percent) and Germany (13 percent).

As wars (trade and kinetic) continue to disrupt international trade and affairs in recent years, the constant chatter about climate change shifting droughts and destructive fires more top of people’s minds, and inflation (groceries becoming more expensive), more people are seeing how these and other issues can affect the security of their food and water supply even in richer countries.

In the United States, shifts in government benefit programs by the Trump administration might also add to peoples’ feeling around food security.

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Trump Admin To Stop Food Stamp Payments To Democrat States Covering Up Welfare Fraud

he Trump administration announced that it will soon stop food stamp funding to 21 Democrat-led states and Washington, D.C., because they refuse to provide data about recipients, choosing instead to run cover for illegals and massive welfare fraud.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a Tuesday cabinet meeting that 28 states and Guam, run by Republicans, have provided data like names and immigration statuses for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients, but that the remaining Democrat-run states are refusing to comply.

“So as of next week, we have begun and will begin to stop moving federal funds into those states, until they comply and they tell us and allow us to partner with them to root out this fraud and to protect the American taxpayer,” Rollins said at the White House.

Over 20 million SNAP recipients live in the Democrat-run states, nearly half of all 42 million recipients — a enormous number that should make anyone suspicious of the program.

The data was requested earlier this year, but the Democrat states filed a lawsuit claiming the data request violated privacy laws, essentially arguing that the government and taxpayers are not allowed to ensure accountability by tracking people who use the program.

The lawsuit is really a ploy to keep illegal immigrants in the country and on public welfare. As the lawsuit points out, the data could be used to inform better immigration enforcement. While the Trump administration maintains that the data will be used to clean up waste, fraud, and abuse, it should absolutely use the data to help deportation enforcement as well.

SNAP, much like other welfare programs, is notorious for fraud and abuse and often allows people who do not really need food assistance to game the system, not to mention the fact that the program allows recipients to purchase massive amounts of junk food that are clearly not “nutrition” as the program implies.

What’s worse is that 59 percent of illegal immigrant households use at least one welfare program, and 52 percent of legal immigrant households do the same. Native-born households account for 39 percent.

Food assistance like SNAP is one of the biggest categories of welfare for immigrants.

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USDA Will Withhold SNAP Funds From 21 States That Refused To Provide Data

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins says she will be moving to stop federal funding to 21 non-compliant states that have refused to provide data from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

In February, the Trump administration had asked all states to provide their SNAP data to the federal government as part of the administration’s efforts to root out waste and fraud in the welfare program.

29 mostly Republican-led states provided the data and revealed 500,000 cases of duplicate benefits as well as 186,000 deceased individuals’ Social Security numbers in use.

But 21 mostly Democrat-led states, including California, Minnesota and New York,  have dug in their heels and refused to provide the information, citing concerns over privacy.

Secretary Rollins told reporters that if a state refuses to share data on criminal use of SNAP benefits, “it won’t get a dollar of federal SNAP administrative funding.”

Rollins said that cooperation is needed from all states in order to root out fraud in the SNAP program and that action is impending for those states that refuse to provide names and immigration status of aid recipients.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Rollins said, “We asked for all the states for the first time to turn over their data to the federal government to let the USDA partner with them to root out this fraud, to make sure that those who really need food stamps are getting them, but also to ensure that the American taxpayer is protected.”

Rollins accused former president Joe Biden of trying to “buy an election” by ramping up food stamp funding by 40% last year.

Roughly 42 million recipients currently use SNAP benefits to help buy their groceries, at an annual cost to taxpayers of nearly $100 billion a year.

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They have been pushing for carbon labelling on food for years – why?

Carbon food labels are rapidly moving from experimental initiatives to a mainstream trend, with significant developments indicating they are poised to become widespread. The global market for carbon-labelled packaged meals is projected to reach USD 1,252 million by 2035, reflecting a growing consumer demand for climate-conscious food choices.

In a move that could reshape the food industry’s supply chains, Unilever announced in June a comprehensive plan to introduce carbon footprint labels on all 70,000 of its products, a major step toward transparency and sustainability, though a specific timeline for full rollout has not been clarified.

While the UK government currently has no plans for mandatory eco-labelling, industry-led schemes are gaining momentum, with companies like Oatly, Quorn and Just Eat already implementing carbon labels on products and menus.

Related: These Food Companies Put Their Carbon Footprint On Their Packaging, Ecochain, 25 June 2025

Voluntary initiatives are expanding across various sectors, including universities (e.g., Bournemouth University Food) and event venues (e.g., ExCeL London), where carbon footprint information is being integrated into menus and food service.

And carbon labelling fever is hitting Europe as well.  As part of its Single Market for Green Products Initiative, which was launched in 2013, the European Commission is advancing a mandatory Product Environmental Footprint (“PEF”) labelling scheme to standardise carbon and environmental data across food and other goods, creating a unified system across the European Union. 

PEF is supported by Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (“PEFCRs”), which standardise calculations for specific product groups such as beer, clothing, IT equipment, leather and pet food.

The pilot phase of the PEF ran from 2013 to 2018.  From 2019, the project has been in the “transition phase” focusing on monitoring the implementation of existing PEFCRs, developing new ones and advancing methodological developments. The “transition phase” is expected to be concluded this year.  “After the transition phase, the [Environmental Footprint] methods are expected to enter a phase of more stability and gradually wider application,” the European Commission says.

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New Scientific Findings Expose the Hoax Behind Meat Eating Climate Alarm

Sensational new scientific findings have blown holes in the climate hoax opinion that humans need to give up eating meat to save the planet. The effect of methane (CH4), a minor ‘greenhouse’ gas, have been grossly exaggerated to suggest that animal farming poses a significant threat to the global climate. But the invented threat relies on multiplying by around ten the length of time that CH4 stays in the atmosphere – an invention under Global Warming Potential 100 know as GWP100 that is in widespread use in activist circles, including the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. At current emission levels, five Italian scientists predict 54% less warming than under GWP100, while small decreasing emissions, possible with some changes in animal diets, produce only tiny amounts of claimed warming.

Load the vital protein-stuffed steaks on the barbie and celebrate the removal of another key plank in the climate hoax backing the ultimate luxury fantasy of Net Zero. You can go grubbing around the tropics for ‘superfood’ berries and grains, but meat is the core component of the evolved human diet. So much so that one fears the natural Darwinian process will in future start to reduce the numbers of weedy and increasingly feeble-minded individuals trying to get by on only ‘vegan’ sustenance.

Despite its obvious flaw, meat haters have persisted in using GWP100 to throw fuel on the climate crisis fire. But the fakery is exposed by the Italian scientists’ work, which accounts for methane’s short time in the atmosphere and shows large reductions in claimed warming at current levels, and even some cooling with relatively modest reductions.

Nevertheless, the Italian scientists break from the ‘consensus’ pack only up to a point, since they term all the greenhouses gases as climate ‘pollutants’ rather than trace atmospheric gases essential for all life on Earth. A rising methane emission pathway is presented showing little change from the proposed warming under GWP100, but the scenario depends on agricultural emissions rising an improbable three times faster than recent growth would suggest. Methane emissions may rise in future, but, if the need is felt, they can be controlled by a number of natural means. The cow produces protein rich natural food for humans by eating inedible grasses and vegetation that leads to enteric fermentation in its stomach. Reductions in the resulting gases between 10–30% have been achieved by non-chemical means such as rotating diet optimisation, selective breeding with animals with lower emissions and changes in husbandry techniques.

In essence, the new science paper shows that GWP100 gets it hopelessly wrong when it is used to promote the climate crisis hoax. Anti-meat eating has long been a fad of extreme environmentalism but, under cover of the command-and-control Net Zero project, it has been introduced into the mainstream. The new science findings suggest that wiping out methane emissions from livestock farming is unnecessary. If CH4 is your thing and you fear the addition of tiny amounts of cow burps and farts into the atmosphere, you need do little more than keep meat consumption at its current level. However, that might not be that relevant anyway since most methane emissions arise from a variety of sources and are subject to large natural variations.

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Bovaer has been suspended in Norway and Sweden

3-Nitrooxypropanol (“3-NOP”), marketed as Bovaer, is, so it is claimed, a feed additive used to reduce methane emissions in ruminants.  UK residents will recall the suspicious product from an Arla trial of feeding it to dairy cows that began in November 2024.

Peter Imanuelsen gives an update on developments in Sweden.  It seems the Bovaer project has come to an end in Sweden, he says.

The largest dairy supplier in Norway has suspended the use of Bovaer after multiple reports from Denmark of collapsing cows.  Now, it seems like the Bovaer project has come to an end in neighbouring Sweden. 

The dairy producer Gäsene has now ended their Bovaer project, the last remaining dairy producer that still used Bovaer in the country. Earlier, the dairy producer Norrmejerier discontinued their ”climate milk.” So now there is no known dairy producers giving their cows Bovaer in Sweden anymore. This is very telling…

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Campbell’s Soup VP recorded ridiculing ‘poor people’ for eating ‘bioengineered meat’ in ‘s**t’ product: Lawsuit

ACampbell’s Soup executive was allegedly recorded mocking the company’s customers and making racial comments against its Indian employees, according to a lawsuit from a former employee.

Robert Garza of Monroe, Michigan, says that he was fired from the company after complaining about the comments made by the executive in an hour-long rant he recorded from a meeting at a restaurant.

The executive, Martin Bally, is now the vice president of the company.

“He has no filter,” Robert Garza said to WDIV-TV. “He thinks he’s a C-level executive at a Fortune 500 company and he can do whatever he wants because he’s an executive.”

Garza was hired as a remote security analyst in September 2024 for the company’s headquarters in Camden, New Jersey. He said he recorded the conversation with Bally because he felt there was something off about his former supervisor.

“We have s**t for f**king poor people. Who buys our s**t? I don’t buy Campbell’s products barely anymore. It’s not healthy now that I know what the f**k’s in it. … Bioengineered meat — I don’t wanna eat a piece of chicken that came from a 3-D printer,” said the man identified as Bally by Garza on the recording.

He also derided the workers from India at the company.

“F**king Indians don’t know a f**king thing,” the man said on the recording. “Like they couldn’t think for their f**king selves.”

Garza said he felt “pure disgust” after hearing the rant. He says that Bally admitted to being high on marijuana edibles on the job as well, which is included in the filing.

In Jan. 2025, Garza went to his supervisor to complain about the comments, but Garza says he was fired weeks later.

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Milk without cows? Inside the science of lab-grown milk shaking dairy world

Starting early next year, Israelis will find a new kind of milk on their supermarket shelves – one made without cows. Remilk, a food-tech startup, announced it will begin selling its lab-produced milk made from dairy proteins through a partnership with Gad Dairies from next year, according to a report by The Times of Israel. 

The company claims its “cow-free” milk tastes exactly like the dairy one. From January, two variants: a 3 per cent fat milk and a vanilla-flavoured version will be available under the label New Milk. Both are lactose-free, cholesterol-free, and made without antibiotics or hormones. 

A separate ‘Barista’ line, meant for cafés and restaurants, will appear within days, the report said. 

Remilk’s founders say prices will be similar to other milk alternatives like soy or almond milk but unlike them, this one is “real” dairy. The only difference being that no cows will be involved. 

Remilk may enter US market

The launch comes more than two years after Israel’s health ministry approved Remilk’s products for sale, clearing the path for one of the world’s first large-scale rollouts of lab-grown milk. The company is also in talks to enter the US market.

Remilk isn’t alone in lab-grown dairy farming. Food giant Strauss Group has also launched cow-free drinks and cream cheese made using similar precision fermentation technology through another Israeli startup, Imagindairy. It’s the beginning of what some call a “post-cow era”, a shift that could transform the global dairy industry. 

What is lab-grown milk?

Lab-grown milk, sometimes called ‘animal-free dairy’, is real dairy produced without cows. Unlike almond, oat, or soy milk, which are plant-based substitutes, lab-grown milk contains actual milk proteins (casein and whey), identical to those found in cow’s milk. 

There are two main production methods: 

  • Mammary cell cultures: Cow mammary cells are grown in bioreactors that naturally produce milk.
  • Precision fermentation: Scientists insert milk-producing genes into microbes like yeast, which secrete milk proteins when fed sugar. These proteins are then blended with fats and carbohydrates to make milk.

The result then is dairy that looks, tastes, and behaves like the real thing despite it being completely grown in a lab. You can froth it for coffee, make cheese, or churn it into ice cream but without the environmental costs or ethical concerns of traditional dairy farming.

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