Five Ways to Avoid Eating Genetically Modified Food
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Food Policy
Five Ways to Avoid Eating Genetically Modified Food
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are foods that look the same as naturally grown foods, but have had their genetic makeup altered in some way. Most often, this genetic engineering makes foods herbicide-tolerant or able to produce their own internal insecticide. Soybeans, for example, can be altered to make them resistant to the herbicide glyphosate. When the herbicide is sprayed on the fields, everything—except the soybean plant—is killed. Corn plants are also often injected with the…
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Food Policy
The Truth Behind Animal Welfare Labels
Natural. Hormone-free. Cage-free. Pasture-raised. There are so many catch phrases on the front of meat, dairy, and egg labels that conjure up the images of happy, healthy animals being raised under idyllic farming practices. However, many of these terms are either not regulated or don’t quite mean all they seem. The Food Safety and Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is responsible for the inspection and quality standards for meat, poultry,…
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Food Policy
Food Miles: How Far Does Your Food Travel?
Chicken nuggets have become an American favorite with adults and children alike. Tyson Foods, Cargill Meat Solutions, and Perdue Farms are responsible for half the chicken production in the United States, primarily using contract farming. In 2007, Georgia alone produced 204,868,242 million chickens.1 It stands to reason, then, that if you’re in Georgia—say, in one of its top chicken producing counties, Franklin—you would expect that the chicken nuggets you eat there would be locally sourced.…