Tag: food

Disgraced CNN Claims Egg Prices *Increased* Under Trump

CNN, a far-left propaganda outlet that spreads disinformation and promotes violence against Jews, is spreading Orwellian lies about the cost of eggs under President Donald Trump.

From Orwell’s 1984:

“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday […] it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”

Paraphrasing CNN this week:

Egg prices have increased under President Trump from an average of $6.55 a dozen to $2.89 a dozen.

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USAID food for nearly 30,000 hungry kids to be destroyed: Official

Food intended to feed 27,000 starving children in Afghanistan and Pakistan will soon be incinerated in the wake of President Donald Trump’s closure of the United States’ aid agency.

A senior US official on Wednesday said nearly 500 tonnes of high-energy biscuits, to be used as emergency food for malnourished young children, expired this month while sitting in a warehouse in Dubai.

Under questioning by lawmakers, Michael Rigas, the deputy secretary of state in charge of management, tied the decision to the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which closed its doors on July 1.

“I think that this was just a casualty of the shutdown of USAID,” Rigas said, adding that he was “distressed” that the food went to waste.

Aid officials managed to save 622 tonnes of the energy-dense biscuits in June – sending them to Syria, Bangladesh and Myanmar – but 496 tonnes, worth $793,000 before they expired this month, will be destroyed, according to two internal USAID memos reviewed by Reuters, dated May 5 and May 19, and four sources familiar with the matter.

The wasted biscuits will be sent to landfills or incinerated in the United Arab Emirates, two sources said. That will cost the US government an additional $100,000, according to the May 5 memo verified by three sources familiar with the matter.

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From the eggs to the courts: A clash over animals, eggs and affordability

In an escalating federal-state battle over food policy, the Trump administration this week sued California over its animal welfare laws, alleging they drive sky-high egg prices. The lawsuit, filed July 9 in Los Angeles federal court, argues California’s ballot initiatives—which banned restrictive hen cages and set space requirements for farm animals—violate federal authority. Agriculture Secretary Greg Zoeller called the state standards “bureaucratic red tape” suppressing supply and hiking costs in a market already strained by avian flu outbreaks.

Legal battle over animal welfare standards shelved under the spotlight of price increases

The lawsuit targets two key California laws: Proposition 2 (2008) and Proposition 12 (2018). These measures mandated that egg-laying hens, veal calves and breeding pigs be allowed to stand, lie down and turn freely without cages—a rule applied to all eggs sold in California, including out-of-state imports.

The Justice Department claims these voter-approved requirements conflict with the 1970 Egg Products Inspection Act, which grants federal regulators sole authority to set safety and quality standards. “California has blocked affordable farming practices,” argued Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate, citing a 20% statewide price hike post-Proposition 2.

Critics, however, frame this as a repackaging of the administration’s prior inflation-fighting rhetoric. “This is another chapter in Trump’s crusade to dismantle humane laws while blaming states,” said Humane Society director Kitty Block. Her organization points to studies linking crowded cage systems to salmonella risks—arguments unresolved in Friday’s filing.

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USDA’s Mass H5N1 Poultry Vaccination Plan Likely to Rely on Leaky Zoetis H5N2 Vaccine

The leading candidate appears to be the Zoetis vaccine targeting H5N2 — even though the dominant strain spreading through U.S. flocks is H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b.

The vaccine uses the N2 neuraminidase subtype deliberately to support DIVA (Differentiating Infected from Vaccinated Animals) surveillance — allowing authorities to detect field infections in vaccinated birds.

In February 2025, the USDA issued a conditional license to Zoetis for its Avian Influenza Vaccine, H5N2 Subtype, Killed Virus, specifically for use in chickens, based on a “reasonable expectation of efficacy based on serology data”. In other words, the approval rests on hope that antibody titers will translate into real-world protection—not on demonstrated effectiveness against infection or transmission.

A conditional license allows the vaccine to be used immediately, but only under specific circumstances—such as during an outbreak or in targeted populations. As of June 2025, Zoetis’s H5N2 vaccine remains the only avian influenza vaccine conditionally approved by the USDA for use in U.S. poultry. No other vaccines are currently authorized or ready for large-scale deployment.

However, according to the USDA, inactivated virus vaccines—such as the Zoetis H5N2 formulation—are non-sterilizing in the field. This means they do not prevent infection, do not eliminate viral shedding, and allow vaccinated birds to silently carry and transmit H5N1, particularly in densely populated commercial flocks.

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US Orders “Immediate Shutdown” Of Mexican Cattle Trade After Cross-Border Parasitic Fly Threat

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has ordered the immediate suspension of all live cattle, bison, and horse imports from Mexico via the southern border. The move comes in response to a newly confirmed case of New World Screwworm in Mexico—a highly destructive parasite that poses a massive threat to U.S. livestock and the broader food supply chain.

“I have ordered an immediate shutdown of live cattle, bison, and horse trade through the southern U.S.–Mexico border,” Rollins wrote on X, adding, “This decisive action comes after Mexico confirmed another case of New World Screwworm in Veracruz. As promised, @USDA remains vigilant to ensure the protection of America’s livestock and food supply.” 

She quoted a U.S. Department of Agriculture press release that announced the trade suspension, which signals heightened biosecurity concerns within the USDA and reflects a zero-tolerance posture toward potential cross-border parasitic threats.

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USDA set to reopen Mexican beef imports despite concerns over flesh-eating screwworm infestation

Starting Monday, the United States will begin gradually reopening cattle imports from Mexico after a two-month suspension due to concerns over the spread of the screwworm, a dangerous livestock parasite.

Screwworms are parasitic larvae of the Cochliomyia hominivorax fly. Female flies lay their eggs in wounds or mucous membranes of warm-blooded animals, including humans, and those larvae then burrow into the animal. The larvae use tiny hooks in their mouths to eat the flesh of their victim and if that infestation is left untreated, an adult cow can die from it in just a few weeks.

Concerns were raised about the flies in 2024 after an outbreak was discovered in southern Mexico. Imports were restricted in November, then lifted in February before the screwworm made “unacceptable northward advancement” and the ban was implemented in May. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said at the time, “The protection of our animals and safety of our nation’s food supply is a national security issue of the utmost importance.”

The USDA announced that the first port to resume operations will be in Douglas, Arizona. The agency said this location poses the lowest risk due to its geographic position and its “long history of effective collaboration” with officials in Sonora, Mexico.

To support containment efforts, the USDA announced last month it would open a new sterile fly dispersal facility in Texas and invest $21 million to update a similar plant in Mexico. That facility will distribute sterile flies that are grown in Panama. No sterile fly factory exists right now in the United States.

Secretary Rollins confirmed the phased plan in a public statement, highlighting efforts by the Trump administration to contain the pest.

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MSM Claims MAHA “Threatens To Set Women Back Decades” 

An increasing number of Americans are abandoning processed foods and taking control of their own food supply chain—planting backyard gardens and sourcing meat, eggs, dairy, and pantry staples directly from local markets and farms. The trend, which is gaining momentum under the “Make America Healthy Again” movement—and even noted by Goldman—reflects a broader push for food independence and a return to community-based sourcing.

Not everyone is on board with MAHA — especially not the feminist journalists at SELF (owned by the corporate media company Condé Nast), who recently penned an article that reads like a hit piece against MAHA.

Erica Sloan’s critique of MAHA is that food independence is unrealistic and burdensome for women in the modern progressive world.

In her article titled “How the MAHA Food Agenda Threatens to Set Women Back Decades,” Sloan writes…

But it’s what MAHA isn’t saying that’s most important: Stoking so much fear around these vital industries implies that Americans—more specifically, the mothers of America—need to find a different way to feed their families.

“Women do a disproportionate share of the kind of work that the MAHA movement is asking people to do, which is to grow their own food, to prepare all of their food from scratch, and to avoid processed food and even packaged foods,” Norah MacKendrick, PhD, associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University and author of Better Safe Than Sorry: How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics, tells SELF. Even today, with approximately 60% of women working outside the home, women still spend about two hours more on housework daily and cook more than twice as many meals a week as men do. The implication that our current food system is inherently unsafe just stands to pile on the labor.

“In order for a family to eat a diet of mostly homegrown or even just homemade meals… that’s going to be a lot more work for women and mothers especially,” Dr. MacKendrick says. It’s an ideal that the MAHA moms have already embodied—and that would be not only unrealistic but unfair to expect from all American families.

Decades? 

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It’s Not a Broken System: From Food to Development, It’s a Masterpiece of Control

Industrial agriculture is not a system in crisis. It is a system in command. Engineered with precision, it reflects the civilisational logic of industrial modernity: domination over cooperation, profit over sufficiency, scale over ecology. It is not malfunctioning—it is functioning exactly as designed.

Across three volumes—Food, Dependency and Dispossession (2022), Sickening Profits (2023) and Power Play: The Future of Food (2024)—I have mapped this critique in layered terms. What emerges is not a sectoral failure but a planetary regime of dispossession: a machinery that converts ecological life into economic assets, undermines autonomy under the banner of development and metabolises resistance into market-friendly reform.

The food system is not broken. It is a weapon. And it is intended as such. It concentrates power, severs people from land, deskills and displaces producers and commodifies nourishment. It benefits financial capital and corporate actors while externalising its costs—to health, biodiversity, labour and culture.

In the Global South, ‘development’ is the velvet glove of structural dependency. It arrives cloaked in the language of poverty reduction and climate resilience—while deepening indebtedness, consolidating proprietary seed systems and subordinating food sovereignty to export-driven logic. For all its rhetoric and well-laundered PR, Bayer is not saving Indian agriculture. It is enclosing it.

Behind the slick brand messaging lies a familiar pattern. Corporate contracts replace commons. Proprietary inputs replace knowledge. The land is enclosed—not always by fences, but by code, debt and bureaucratic abstraction. This is not progress. It is programmed disempowerment. Weber’s ‘iron cage’ of rationalisation is no longer metaphor—it is agronomic policy, algorithmic governance and institutional capture.

Post-development theorists like Arturo Escobar and Gustavo Esteva have long exposed ‘progress’ as a colonial narrative—one that erases plurality and imposes a singular vision of modernity. Barrington Moore’s study of agrarian class structures illuminated a deeper truth: the fate of democracy and dictatorship often hinges on how land is owned, who controls surplus and which coalitions form around agricultural production.

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GM crops fuel rise in pesticide use despite early promises, study shows

Spread of GM crops has not contributed to chemical reductions or land reclamations, but to increased use of the pesticides they were claimed to curtail. Report: Claire Robinson

GM crops have increased agriculture’s dependence on pesticides rather than reducing it, a study published in April 2025 found.

Drawing on data from four GM crops – Bt cotton, herbicide-tolerant (HT) soybean, HT and/or Bt maize, and HT canola, the researchers – including agricultural development expert Prof Glenn Davis Stone from Washington and Lee University and Bt cotton expert K. R. Kranthi of the International Cotton Advisory Committee – traced the surge in chemical use over three decades.

They found a paradox: while GM seeds were supposed to reduce pesticide use, their introduction caused pesticide use to soar. The researchers explain this outcome using the Jevons paradox, an economic theory that dates back to 1865. British economist William Stanley Jevons argued that efficiency in resource use often leads to more, not less, consumption. The study applies this idea to GM crops, which were claimed to reduce pesticide use, but in reality have made it skyrocket.

The researchers consider the two most prevalent GM seed-pesticide technology regimes: Bt crops and herbicide-tolerant (HT) crops. Both seeds are billed as efficient technologies: HT crops are claimed to facilitate more efficient weed control, and Bt crops are claimed to control insect pests more efficiently.

However, the researchers found that, “Like other technological efficiencies… the increased use of GM crops over the past 30 years has not contributed to input reductions nor to land reclamations, but to the expansion of agricultural land and increased use of the very pesticides these technologies are purported to curtail.”

This is due to the complexity of agricultural systems: “The efficiencies of GM crops not only lower the cost for individual farmers to use, in aggregate, more pesticides; they also make those pesticides ever more essential to the political economy of agriculture through the input-intensive monocultures in which they are embedded. In fact, increases in chemical usage occur throughout these GM crop systems because technological substitutions like GM seeds cannot be separated from their cascading impacts on labour, weed and pest ecology or agricultural decision-making.”

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Smells Like Bureaucratic Overreach: FDA Greenlights Lab-Grown Salmon

In a move that reeks of bureaucratic overreach and questionable priorities, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has rubber-stamped Wildtype Inc.’s lab-grown salmon, the first of its kind approved for human consumption in the U.S.

Derived from mesenchymal lineage cells and mixed with plant-based goo to mimic sushi-grade saku cuts, this franken-fish is being hailed as a “sustainable” solution to overfishing. 

Meanwhile, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is shaking up the public health establishment, firing all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) in a bid to root out conflicts of interest and restore trust in vaccine science. 

The contrast couldn’t be starker: one agency pushes untested biotech food on the public, while another tries to clean house of industry-aligned insiders. Welcome to the brave new world of “Gold Standards.”

Wildtype’s cultured salmon, approved in June 2025 under FDA consultation CCC 000005, is grown in bioreactors over four to six weeks, sidestepping nature’s blueprint for a lab-bred alternative. 

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