Tag: food

Disaster Declared as 2nd Screwworm Case Found in Texas near Border, Canada Bans Texas Cattle

A second case of the flesh‑eating New World screwworm has been confirmed in Texas, only miles from the Mexican border, prompting Canada to shut its border to Texas livestock and Governor Greg Abbott to declare a state of disaster over what he warns is an “imminent threat.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced on Friday that a second infestation of screwworm larvae had been found in a calf in Zavala County, Texas. The second finding took place on the ranch near the Texas-Mexico border, about 5.6 miles from the case found earlier this week. The discovery of the second incident of the flesh-eating screwworm prompted Governor Abbott to issue a disaster declaration and apply additional state resources to combat the outbreak.

In a statement on Friday, Governor Abbott stated:

First, I authorize the use of all available resources of state government to respond to this disaster and reassign resources from across the state as needed to address NWS. Second, I am making all state personnel available to accelerate the movement of sterile flies into Texas and the construction of the new sterile screwworm production facility in Edinburg. We have eradicated this pest before, and we will do it again.

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Where’s the Beef? A Long-Gone Livestock-Eating Bug Is Back, and I have a Theory As to Why.

It turns out that a flesh-eating larva, the screwworm, not seen in the U.S. since 1966, has found its way back onto livestock ranches in southern Texas, and I smell a stink badger in the perfume aisle.

The infected calf (rumors have it that a second cow has been located, but I cannot yet verify this report) is on a ranch very close to the Mexican border. Authorities have set up a 12-mile quarantine zone around the ranch.

You may recall the feds arrested three Chinese scientists spies at the Detroit airport, one of whom was busted for sneaking in a fungus that could be used to wipe out our crops, and another was caught sneaking in roundworms, which are also devastating to mammals, including livestock.  

Here’s the fun part: Texas authorities arrested six camo-clad Chinese nationals with backpacks on a ranch in Texas on May 26, allegedly with the help of Mexican cartels. Less than a week later, the first case of screwworm was discovered. Somehow, that didn’t make the big Operation Mockingbird headlines. 

We do not yet know what the authorities found in those aforementioned backpacks.

The ranch where the Chinese were discovered is about 41 miles away from the ranch where the first infected calf was located, roughly a day-and-a-half walk. Both ranches are located very close to the Mexican border, in an area where few Chinese illegal border-rushers have been apprehended in the open-border years of the Biden administration.

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Texas AG Launches Investigation Into Glyphosate In Food

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has initiated an investigation into glyphosate contamination in food, with major manufacturers such as PepsiCo and Bayer being subjected to the probe.

Glyphosate is a commonly used herbicide applied to genetically engineered crops and is the main ingredient in Roundup weed killer, Paxton’s office said in a June 2 statement. In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The organization also concluded that the herbicide showed “strong” evidence for genotoxicity, which refers to the ability to damage a cell’s genetic information.

“Since then, extensive human and animal research has shown that glyphosate contributes to endocrine disruption, infertility, kidney disease, and autoimmune diseases, in addition to its cancer-causing properties,” the attorney general’s statement read.

“More than 250 million pounds of glyphosate are sprayed in the United States each year. Research has found that over 70 percent of American adults have detectable traces of glyphosate in their bodies compared to a mere 12 percent in 1993. Scientists attribute much of this dramatic increase to the widespread use of glyphosate as a desiccant.”

Desiccation is the process of applying herbicides to crops prior to harvest to ensure they uniformly dry down, a practice responsible for more than 90 percent of glyphosate found in food.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deems glyphosate as an effective way to manage noxious and invasive weeds, the agency said in a May 5 update.

In agriculture, glyphosate is used in a wide range of crops, including corn, soybean, leafy vegetables, legumes, cereal grains, citrus, herbs and spices, nuts, oilseed crops, and sugarcane. The herbicide is also used for the conservation of pastures, forests, turf grass, rangeland, aquatic areas, parks, wildlife management areas, and paved areas.

The EPA said there are “no risks of concern to human health from current uses of glyphosate” and that there is “no indication that children are more sensitive to glyphosate.”

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Fighting for Food Freedom: A Georgia Farmer’s Stand Against Bureaucratic Overreach

“I never set out to battle county government. I simply wanted to sell the food I grow—healthy, local produce and value-added goods—to my neighbors,” Georgia farmer Stephanie Jones shared with The Gateway Pundit.

Recently, The Gateway Pundit spoke with Stephanie Jones, owner of Jones Creek Farm, a small family farm in Liberty County, Georgia.

In an era when Americans are increasingly demanding transparency and control over what ends up on their plates, the farm-to-table movement has emerged as a powerful counter to our industrialized food system.

By supporting small farmers and cottage food businesses, communities gain access to fresher, more nutritious food while strengthening local economies and preserving agricultural traditions.

These direct connections between growers and consumers are vital—not only for economic resilience, but for restoring personal agency over the food we eat.

This push for greater food sovereignty sits at the heart of the growing MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement, which seeks to reduce chronic disease by reforming agricultural policy, empowering small producers, and challenging the dominance of ultra-processed foods.

In this interview, this dedicated Georgia farmer shares her firsthand battle with local bureaucracy and her vision for a more resilient, community-centered food system.

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Food Stamp Fraud Pipeline Exposed: U.S. Taxpayer-Funded Groceries Shipped Overseas And Sold For Profit

Food stamps and food pantries are intended to keep struggling Americans fed.

What we found is that, in some communities, that food never reaches an American table. Instead, it gets shipped overseas and sold for profit.

The scheme works like this. Residents in cities like Lawrence, Massachusetts collect food through two channels: purchasing it at local markets using EBT cards, and picking it up for free from food banks and churches. That food is then packed into large blue barrels, dropped off at shipping companies, and sent by container ship to the Dominican Republic. Once it arrives, it is sold for profit in local stores. The people doing this see nothing wrong with it. In many cases, they do it openly.

According to a local that assisted us with this story, this fraud has been happening for over a decade.

Over the course of several weeks, Muckraker Foundation traced the full pipeline from food pantry lines in Lawrence, Massachusetts, through shipping warehouses in New York, to store shelves in Santo Domingo. This is what we found.

Lawrence, Massachusetts

Lawrence is a small city about 30 miles north of Boston. It has the highest concentration of Dominican immigrants of any city in Massachusetts, and the highest rate of SNAP enrollment in the state.

John has been delivering goods in Lawrence for over 11 years, six days a week, 35 stops a day. He knows the community intimately.

“I’ve been witnessing the Dominican residents going to food bank lines and collecting non-perishable goods,” he told us, “and then packing it in barrels and in boxes, and then they ship it back to the Dominican Republic.”

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Report: Zohran Mamdani’s Harlem Grocery Store Already Received $25M in Taxpayer Funds, Bringing Total to $55M

Socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s chosen site for a $30 million, government-owned grocery store in East Harlem was approved for a $25 million taxpayer-funded facelift several years ago, setting up the total price tag at a whopping $55 million.

The proposed location is La Marqueta, a food-forward market located between East 111th and East 119th streets under the elevated Metro North tracks on Park Avenue. The purpose of the city-run store would be to offer super low prices because the store would not pay rent or taxes. 

“That same site, however, already won approval from the city’s Economic Development Corporation nearly a decade ago for a $25 million project to redevelop La Marqueta — bringing the total price tag of the market’s proposed makeover to a staggering $55 million, city officials confirmed,” New York Post first reported. 

Stephen Zagor, adjunct associate professor of food studies at Columbia Business School, told the outlet the $30 million price tag was already “an outrageous number,” and “you’d expect the doorknobs and cash registers to be solid gold.”

“And to think there is another $25 million allocated years ago for the rest of La Marqueta, which is well past its prime, I’d think they would have to revisit that,” Zagor added.

Anthony Pena, president of the National Supermarket Association, said city leaders have “not been transparent and open about anything they are doing” and noted that Mamdani never mentioned the location’s previous project in the report. 

Mamdani has allocated approximately $70 million for five government-run stores, one for each borough. Pena said the final cost raises questions about why the city would be spending so much on the East Harlem location specifically. 

“They are going to spend $10 million on a 20,000-square-foot store and $30 million on a 9,000-square-foot store,” Pena said. “There is a massive disconnect right now and there are more questions than answers.”

The Economic Development Corporation (EDC) confirmed to the Post that the $25 million deal and the $30 million store are two separate investment items. 

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Oregon petition to criminalize hunting, fishing reaches signature threshold

Supporters of an effort to criminalize the killing of animals for food in Oregon are one step closer in getting a measure on the November ballot.

Initiative Petition 28 would make it illegal to injure or kill animals and would effectively ban hunting, fishing and the breeding of animals.

Supporters have been collecting signatures for this since 2024 and this past week, they reached the number necessary to make it onto the November ballot.

But it’s not official yet. The Secretary of State’s Office still needs to verify the signatures.

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We Are 6 Months From Global Food Shortages Because Farmers Are Facing A Quadruple Whammy Crisis

We have never faced anything quite like this. Diesel fuel and fertilizer have become far more expensive as a result of the conflict in the Middle East, and extreme weather is playing havoc with crops all over the planet. Here in the United States, we just experienced the driest first three months of a year in recorded history. No, that isn’t an exaggeration. Now a “Super El Niño” is coming, and that means that drought conditions are going to get even worse in many areas of the world. The “Super El Niño” of 1877-1878 resulted in widespread droughts that killed more than 50 million people, and now we are being warned that the upcoming “Super El Niño” could be even worse. Our farmers have never faced a “perfect storm” of this magnitude, and global food production is going to be way down in the months ahead.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization is publicly warning that a severe global food crisis could strike about 6 months from now if something really dramatic does not happen…

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz could trigger a severe global food price crisis within six to 12 months unless governments act quickly, the Food and Agriculture Organization warned Wednesday.

Decisions now by farmers and governments on fertilizer use, imports, financing and crop choices will determine whether food prices spike later this year or in early 2027, the agency said.

I don’t know what national governments around the world are supposed to do.

They can’t create fertilizer out of thin air.

Thanks to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran, millions of farmers all over the northern hemisphere didn’t get the fertilizer that they needed for the spring planting season.

UNDP Administrator Alexander De Croo is telling us that as a result “many places in the world will have problems of food shortage” once harvest season arrives…

Food shortages are expected to hit many parts of the world from September or October following a fertilizer production plunge, the U.N. Development Program’s head said on Monday.

“In September, (or) October, many places in the world will have problems of food shortage,” as agricultural production is expected to be much lower following the fertilizer production slump resulting from high oil prices amid Middle East conflicts, UNDP Administrator Alexander De Croo said in an interview in Tokyo.

Even if fertilizer is available, many farmers simply cannot afford it.

In fact, one recent survey discovered that 70 percent of U.S. farmers could not afford to buy all of the fertilizer that they needed for the spring planting season because it has become so expensive.

Meanwhile, diesel has become painfully expensive as well.

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Ottawa spent more than $1 million on Yukon ‘Indigenous food systems’ project

A federal agency handed more than $1 million to a small Yukon school board to promote “Indigenous food systems,” according to records tabled before the Senate agriculture committee.

According to a story broken by Blacklock’s, the funding came through the federal government’s Northern Isolated Community Initiatives Fund, a program that costs taxpayers roughly $6 million annually and is set to run until 2027.

According to the records, the Yukon First Nation Education Directorate received a total of $1,015,646 from the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency.

The largest portion of the funding, $845,000, went toward planning a “traditional processing kitchen” in Whitehorse.

“This one-year project focused on completing architectural and detailed design plans for a centralized traditional and local foods commercial kitchen,” the agency told senators.

According to the agency, the proposed facility would support the processing and storage of wild game in an urban setting and help promote traditional food-processing knowledge in First Nations curriculum.

Another $170,646 was spent on the Directorate’s urban nutrition program, including the purchase of a temperature-controlled delivery van.

Federal officials defended the spending as part of Ottawa’s broader push to address food security in remote northern communities.

“The fund plays a targeted role in advancing food initiatives that build local capacity,” agency managers wrote.

The Northern Isolated Community Initiatives Fund was launched in 2019 and bankrolls projects ranging from greenhouse operations and farming initiatives to traditional harvesting, food distribution systems and “food innovation” programs.

Records show taxpayers also funded:

  • $800,000 for an egg farmer in Hay River;
  • $600,000 for a grocery store in Wekweeti, Northwest Territories, population roughly 130;
  • $250,000 for a grocer in Arctic Bay;
  • $710,000 for fish freezers in Cumberland Sound.

“These examples show how the Agency supports food security, infrastructure and economic growth across the North in line with community needs and regional priorities,” managers wrote.

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Bizarre academic paper about releasing ticks resurfaces amid surging bites

An estimated 31 million people living in the U.S. are bitten by ticks annually, but this year, the number may hit a record. If a pair of radical professors had their way, then the surging bites would go unchecked, leaving multitudes of Americans sick — and unable to eat meat.

Citing its Tick Bite Tracker dashboard, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced late last month that visits to emergency rooms for tick bites were higher than normal in many parts of the country and that in all but the South Central U.S., “weekly rates of ER visits for tick bites are the highest for this time of year since 2017.” The Midwest is the most affected region.

This is especially concerning because tick bites can lead to various serious and potentially debilitating diseases including Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and every carnivore’s nightmare: alpha-gal syndrome.

Amid this surge in tick bites and hospitalizations, a July 2025 academic paper defending the intentional spread of AGS via genetically modified ticks is once again in the spotlight.

AGS is a serious, potentially deadly allergy to alpha-gal, a molecule found in most mammals including cows and pigs. According to the CDC, the body of an afflicted individual registers alpha-gal in red meat and other mammal products as a threat and triggers an allergic reaction. This allergy can develop after a bite from a tick, most commonly the lone star tick.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are believed to presently be affected by AGS.

A pair of professors at Western Michigan University School of Medicine said in an article titled “Beneficial Bloodsucking,” which was published in the journal Bioethics, that tick-borne AGS should be regarded as a “moral bioenhancer if and when it motivates people to stop eating meat.”

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