Manure Digesters – Another Climate Solution Scam?
by John E. Peck, April 23, 2024

Factory farms collect billions in taxpayer handouts to install expensive manure digesters that capture and burn methane – and generate profits from the waste. But the systems don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions – they just move the pollution around.

There has been much media hype about manure digesters and how they will "solve" climate change by capturing and burning methane from confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) – aka factory farms.

Billions in taxpayer handouts and other incentives through pollution offset trading markets are encouraging factory farms to expand and profit from their waste stream.

Some economists now speculate that factory farms are earning more from making methane than milk!

A recent Friends of the Earth and Socially Responsible Agriculture Project report goes even further, suggesting that if the U.S. really wanted to reduce its agricultural contribution toward greenhouse gases, it would make more sense for regulators to phase out or split up CAFOs and shift taxpayer support toward smaller grass-based livestock operations instead.

Sadly, the misguided notion of manure digesters as a "solution" to the climate crisis is nothing new.

Back in 2009 at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, I almost fell off my chair when then-U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that manure digesters on factory farms were going to be a key part of former President Barack Obama’s climate change agenda.

He later admitted that less than 10% of dairy farms (i.e., CAFOs) would be large enough to qualify for these USDA digester grants – another example of how federal policies support industrial agribusiness to the detriment of smaller farmers.

This manure digester-building binge has ramped up even more under President Joe Biden – with Vilsack once again back at the helm of the USDA.

Read the full story  the Defender

Industry associations push back on EPA wastewater guidelines
by Bob Sims, March 27, 2024

An alliance of meat and poultry industry associations said the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has underestimated the cost of its proposed wastewater guidelines.

The Meat and Poultry Products Industry Coalition (MPP), made up of the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Meat Institute, National Chicken Council, National Pork Producers Council, National Turkey Federation, North American Renderers Association and the US Poultry & Egg Association, believes the guidelines will cost hundreds of millions more than the estimate, eliminate tens of thousands of jobs and close many processing facilities, resulting in hardship for livestock and poultry producers.

"We believe that the proposed Effluent Limitations Guidelines (ELG) would thwart the Biden administration’s efforts and limit, or reverse, these outcomes for small processors, rural job creation, producer livelihoods and a resilient food supply chain," MPP said.

MPP submitted the remarks in comments responding to EPA’s proposed rule revising the ELGs for wastewater discharged by meat and poultry processing and rendering facilities. Meat and poultry ELGs currently apply to about 180 of the estimated 5,300 meat and poultry facilities nationwide. EPA estimated between 845 and 1,620 facilities would be subject to and incur costs should the proposed ELGs become final. EPA last amended the estimate in 2004. The full comments are here.

Read the full story  MEAT + POULTRY

UK’s Food Standards Agency wants to fast-track and greenlight lab-grown meat
GMWATCH, April 3, 2024

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) – the regulator responsible for food safety in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – is seeking to fast-track approval for lab-grown ("cultivated") meat and synbio ("precision fermented") food by slashing UK regulations surrounding novel food and feed products, as well as food additives. This will also involve less oversight for GMO foods.

As part of the regulatory streamlining, the FSA is proposing to fast-track novel food approvals by relying on other countries’ regulators. In the case of synbio food, this could see the FSA depending in particular on the judgements of regulators in the US, which has already approved several such products for sale and consumption. In the case of lab-grown meat, Israel and Singapore, as well as the US, have been the first to approve lab-grown products.

The FSA’s director, Rebecca Sudworth, justifies such dependence as avoiding pointlessly duplicating the work of "another trusted regulator". And according to the UK food industry publication The Grocer, "The FSA and its counterpart north of the border, Food Standards Scotland, are drawing up a list of international collaborators to use in enabling products to hit UK shelves."

Sham regulatory system promoting product acceptance – not safety

Read the full story  GMWATCH

Anti-ESG Farmers Waging Manure War: 2 Dead, 5 Injured; Police Splattered, Roads Slick with Waste Over Last Several Months
Warner Todd Huston April 3, 2024

For the better part of the last 12 months, farmers in Europe have been mounting serious and heavily attended protests against the destructive and financially ruinous progressive and climate change regulations their governments have been forcing on the farming and food production industries.

This is a story that the U.S. establishment media has been desperate to ignore because some of these protests have paralyzed Europe and have shown that the everyday European citizens are done with meekly sitting back as their governments destroy their livelihoods with obscene over regulation aimed at pushing the global warming religion and their environmental, social, and governance plans, commonly known as ESG.

These protests have been occurring all across Europe and even recently in India. And they have also begun to have serious, even tragic, consequences.

Read the full story  Western Journal