Tag: food

DOJ Announces Walmart, Costco, Amazon Are Under Investigation in Beef Affordability Probe

The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it’s investigating several major American grocers concerning massive spikes in beef prices.

“@JusticeATR has expanded its investigation to include 8 of the largest grocers when it comes to beef affordability,” the DOJ posted on X.

“@ASGWoodward sent letters to the following regarding the recent increases in the retail price for beef: Kroger, Publix, Walmart, Albertsons, Aldi, Ahold Delhaize USA, Costco, Amazon.”

“Beef prices are a critical concern to Americans, and a priority for this Justice Department.”

This news comes nearly four months after the DOJ launched a probe against top meatpackers JBS, Cargill, Tyson Foods, and National Beef to investigate possible antitrust violations, Fox Business reported.

Attorney General Todd Blanche held a press conference back in May, revealing that federal officials have been examining three million pertinent documents while contacting “industry participants, including ranchers, cattlemen, producers, and processors,” for potential interviews.

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SNAP Junk Food Bans in Two States on Hold Due to Court Rulings

The battle over SNAP benefits might be being waged from state to state, but federal courts are part of the action, too.

Two states that had planned restrictions on the foods that can be purchased by those using Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cards have put the moves on hold after a federal court ruled in favor of SNAP recipients in a case covering five other states, Newsweek reported Monday.

Six states still have restrictions in place.

SNAP, formerly known as “food stamps,” is a federally funded program administered by the individual states. It is overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Some states restrict its use from purchasing junk food, such as sodas, candy, and some juices and energy drinks. Others have plans to do so.

The states that already have restrictions that are unaffected by the ruling, according to the grocery tracking website Greenchoice, are Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah.

South Carolina and North Dakota were only days away from implementing similar bans beginning Sept. 1 when Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, struck down restrictions that had already been in place in Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

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‘Industrial, Human and Hospital Waste’: What’s Really in ‘Organic Compost’ Sold in Garden Stores?

Sewage sludge is being sold in garden stores as “organic compost,” with consumers taking it home and using it in their gardens without knowing what it truly is, filmmaker Galassia Grassetto said in an interview this month.

“It’s a mixture of industrial, human and hospital waste, all concentrated together,” Grassetto said. “You can buy it as organic compost in bags. And people don’t realize, and they take it home and they put it in their gardens.”

That discovery is at the center of a new documentary, “The Sludge War.” In the film, Grassetto investigates what happens to the waste left behind after sewage is treated — a practice she said “has been deliberately hidden from the American public.”

After reviewing the film, John Stauber, who writes for the Organic Consumers Association, said the film documents the “poisoning” of a nation.

“For the very first time a major documentary exposes the massive, ongoing poisoning of every state in America, as each year billions of pounds of toxic sewage sludge is spread on crops, pastures, gardens, parks and lawns, disguised as ‘harmless organic fertilizer and compost,’” Stauber wrote.

In-person screenings of the new film are scheduled in New York, with additional showings planned in other states.

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Russia Hits Kiev Ammo Dump Next To Homes; Ukraine Admits 90% Of Retail Food Logistics Wrecked

A Russian drone struck a Ukrainian Defense Forces ammunition storage site in the village of Myla Friday evening, just west of Kiev. The resulting fire and hours of secondary detonations killed at least 37 people, injured dozens more, damaged around 50 residential buildings and a care home for the elderly and disabled, and forced the evacuation of hundreds. Among the dead was the local community head who had gone to help.

In response, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the placement of a weapons depot next to civilians was “terrible negligence.” The first impact, he said, hit a depot storing shells, mines, other munitions, and drones that “definitely shouldn’t have been there” – while prosecutors in Kiev opened a criminal investigation into the legality of storing explosives next to civilian housing. This is the second such incident in two months. A July strike on a depot in nearby Vyshneve produced similar secondary blasts, deaths, and later detentions of state defense-company executives.  

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Dog-eaten meat, rats and urine: Stomach-churning details of 10K LA street food complaints revealed

A dog eating meat out of a street vendor’s bag before it was served to customers. Cockroaches crawling out of a food truck. Mice scurrying beside open salsa. Raw meat baking unrefrigerated in the heat. People urinating around cooking equipment.

These are just a handful of the stomach-churning allegations listed in a staggering 662-page dossier of 9,746 public health complaints about street food vendors filed across Los Angeles County from 2023 until early 2026.

The disgusting details, obtained by the California Post through a public records request, emerge as LA Mayor Karen Bass ordered the LAPD this week to stop issuing criminal citations to street vendors who flout the rules.

The move will give un-permitted food carts free reign across the city, potentially letting the conditions get even worse.

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4 Giant Pesticide Companies Also Control Global Seed Market — That’s Bad for Consumers and Farmers

As the number of seed companies, which are also pesticide companies, consolidates through mergers, farmers face challenges associated with fewer seed choices, higher prices, less diversity and proprietary genetically engineered (GE) organisms.

To combat these problems, a nationwide action has been launched to tell members of the U.S. Congress to cosponsor the Fair Seeds for Farmers Act (H.R. 9681 and S. 5104).

A contributor to the high cost of food, seeds as an input account for up to 25% of farmers’ operating budgets. Four companies, the “Big 4,” control 51% of the global seed market — and they are the same four companies that control 62.3% of the agricultural chemical market — Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta (owned by ChemChina) and BASF.

The top four companies selling genetically modified seeds are the same. This concentration in the industry leads to higher costs and less choice for farmers, and less research into varieties suitable for organic systems.

The Fair Seeds for Farmers Act attempts to reduce these impacts. A 2023 U.S. Department of Agriculture report (USDA), “More and Better Choices for Farmers: Promoting Fair Competition and Innovation in Seeds and Other Agricultural Inputs, summarizes many of the problems.”

Farmers in the U.S. have not always needed to buy seed. The federal government — through the Patent Office until 1862 and the USDA thereafter until 1924 — mailed seeds free of charge to farmers throughout the country.

USDA collected seeds (germplasm) from farmers who experimented with varieties to meet regional needs, saved the seeds and shared them. In 1924, responding to pressure from seed companies, the practice ended.

Further support for the commercialization of seed production came from the Plant Patent Act (PPA) of 1930, applying to asexual reproduction of plants (e.g., grafting scions, cuttings, and runners), and the Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA) of 1970, applying to seeds.

Under the PVPA, plant breeders were granted an exclusive right to propagate and sell their new varieties for 20 years, but those varieties were available to researchers who could use them for breeding new varieties, and farmers could save seeds to replant (and, until 1994, sell).

A number of Supreme Court decisions from 1980 to 2001 resulted in utility patents being issued for seeds and plants. Utility patents (“patents for invention” or “patents”), which can be issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for inventions that are novel, nonobvious and useful, apply to all users and can restrict seed saving, research and breeding.

Thus, patents eliminate resources from the pool of genetics available to plant breeders for improving crops. If breeders are allowed to use patented plants for breeding, they are often subject to restrictive licensing agreements.

Organic farmers can lose certified crops when genes (pollen) drift from GE plants. But they and others are also subject to lawsuits for patent infringement from the large seed/pesticide/biotech companies.

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Mayor Karen Bass: Hands Off Thousands of Migrant Food Vendors Operating Illegally in L.A.

Mayor Karen Bass just made it official: Los Angeles is a sanctuary city when it comes to enforcing food safety laws with thousands of street stands that have popped up all over the city — many of them run by illegal aliens.

Bass’s announcement this week ordering police to stop issuing violations to unpermitted vendors follows a Breitbart News investigation last month that revealed the widespread lack of enforcement of city and county food safety laws, with street food stands run by illegal migrants getting a free pass while citizen restaurateurs and licensed food stands are subject to fines, high costs, burdensome regulations and even closure.

Bass’s office told the California Post Thursday that the mayor “stands firmly with street vendors” and has directed the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to stop issuing criminal citations to unpermitted vendors.

“Street vending is a quintessential part of LA’s world-class food scene and a livelihood for thousands of hardworking Angelenos. Supporting LA’s street vendors is more important than ever given ongoing attacks by ICE,” her office told the outlet.

The message is clear, say critics. If you’re in the United States illegally and operating a business illegally, you get a free pass. If you are a citizen, you must follow all the rules or face fines and even closure.

As Breitbart News reported in July, an estimated 50,000 vendors operate throughout Los Angeles but fewer than 700 have active permits, with only 53 of those for food vendors.

Besides presenting food safety problems for America’s second largest city, the tent canopies and smokey grills that accompany many operations have become a blight on neighborhoods and business districts, contributing — along with the homeless and widespread littering — to the kind of streetscape typically found in impoverished Third World countries.

Current city statutes require a city vending permit to sell food or merchandise on city sidewalks and in city parks. It must be renewed annually. Food vendors must also obtain a county heath permit, demonstrating they have met all the requirements of food safety, such as refrigeration, sanitation stations and other commonsense practices that restaurants must follow.

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‘They are my family’: Government scolds want to stop woman from feeding neighbors breakfast

Government scolds are insisting that a woman who opened her home to a few friends and neighbors stop offering them breakfast.

Because she hasn’t obtain official permission to be a good neighbor, and, of course, subjected herself to the government inspections that officials like.

It is the Center Square that has the details about “small-town Missouri resident Kathy Kite.”

The grandmother has been warned by her local health department to stop being a nice neighbor, and now the Goldwater Institute has taken up her cause, giving the government a deadline to respond or face a lawsuit.

“Citizens should not be required to get the government’s permission before offering passers-by some coffee and a bite to eat while they socialize,” Dave Roland, of the Goldwater Institute.

The report explained how the situation developed several months ago: A local convenience shop stopped serving breakfast and when Kite asked about that, the store employees suggested she do it, and sent some locals her way.

“I said, OK, come on over, guys. I’ll make you breakfast,” Kite told the Center Square. “So the next morning, I got up at like 4 o’clock in the morning because they come at like five.”

Currently, she’s been making about two dozen servings, for about eight or 10 people, six days a week. Without charge.

She does take donations.

“My mom and dad were raised in the Depression, and so we were raised hearing the stories of how they went hungry,” Kite told The Center Square. “My mom once told me, she said, ‘You never know when you’re entertaining an angel. So if someone comes to your door, you welcome them in, and you give them something to drink. If they’re hungry, you feed them.'”

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The CFIA slaughtered their ostriches — now it won’t pay the farmers a cent

Nine months after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) slaughtered hundreds of ostriches at a British Columbia farm, the owners have been dealt another blow: the federal agency says it won’t pay them a cent in compensation.

On this week’s episode of The Gunn Show, I’m joined by Rebel News B.C. Bureau Chief Drea Humphrey, who has followed the battle at Universal Ostrich Farms from the beginning and was on the ground as the fight to save the flock unfolded.

The CFIA destroyed more than 300 ostriches at the Edgewood farm following a lengthy legal battle over a suspected avian flu outbreak, despite the farmers maintaining the surviving birds were healthy and had recovered.

Under federal rules, compensation could have reached as much as $3,000 per ostrich, meaning the farm potentially stood to receive up to $942,000. Instead, the CFIA informed the family in a July 20 letter that “compensation will not be awarded,” citing alleged violations of the Health of Animals Act and incidents of alleged non-compliance.

Farm co-owner Karen Esperson believes the decision is punishment for fighting the government’s destruction order.

“They’re saying we’re actually going to destroy your livelihood,” Esperson told Rebel News.

The family, already carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from its legal battle, plans to appeal.

Drea also joins Sheila to discuss Rebel News’ upcoming full-length documentary, Culling the Cure: The Aftermath of Canada’s Ostrich Slaughter, which chronicles the farmers’ fight, the controversial cull and what happened after the cameras left.

The documentary premieres in Kelowna on September 18 before additional screenings across Canada.

Tonight, Drea takes us behind the scenes of the story, what the farmers are facing now, and what Canadians will see in Culling the Cure.

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China Rejected 22 Tons of Argentine Beef Over a Banned Antibiotic as Trump Opens the Door to 300,000 Tons

President Donald Trump’s plan to allow up to 300,000 metric tonnes of foreign beef into the US has sparked an unusual backlash from Republican ranchers and cattle groups, who warn that cheaper imports could make it harder to rebuild America’s depleted herd.

Trump says the move will lower grocery costs while giving American ranchers time to rebuild cattle supplies. Critics see a contradiction, arguing that increasing imports could weaken the incentive for US producers to expand.

The controversy also puts Argentina under scrutiny. In March, China rejected a 22-tonne shipment of Argentine beef after detecting chloramphenicol, an antibiotic prohibited for livestock use in Argentina. There is no evidence that this rejected shipment is connected to Trump’s import plan.

On August 21, Trump announced that the US would allow up to 300,000 metric tonnes of product for ground beef to enter over 90 days without the additional out-of-quota tariff.

Trump said foreign exporters had committed to selling the beef at 25% below current market prices. The White House said an executive order with further details was expected within two weeks.

The plan concerns lean beef trimmings used for ground beef, rather than 300,000 tonnes of assorted beef cuts. Trump initially declined to identify the supplying countries, later naming Argentina as one of them.

That leaves a major question hanging over the Trump beef import plan: who exactly will supply the new imports?

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