Archive for the ‘Agricultural Law’ Category
Death on a Factory Farm
posted by Darian Ibrahim
I caught a few minutes of HBO’s new documentary Death on a Factory Farm the other night. It focuses on an undercover investigation of a hog farm in Ohio, the graphic footage of abuse it revealed, and the legal case that followed. It was so disturbing that I actually had to turn it off, but then again I’m a vegetarian – it’s those who are not that need to watch.
March 20, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Posted in: Agricultural Law, Current Events, Food, Movies & Television
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Is Anyone for the Farm Bill?
posted by Frank Pasquale
I just got the following action alert from OxFam:
The Senate bill being considered, like the House version that passed, favors a relatively small number of producers at the expense of most farmers and rural communities, and it falls short of meeting its obligations to families that depend on food stamps and to conservation programs that protect rivers and streams. To make things worse, the Farm Bill would actually hurt poor farmers in developing countries. . . . [Meanwhile,] millionaire farmers . . . receive unfair subsidies.
My question is: is it mainly interest group politics and campaign finance transactions that permit bills like this to pass over and over? Or do they naturally flow from a Senate that may overrepresent big agribusiness? Tom Geoghegan notes that “the 50 Senators from the 25 [least populated] states represent 16 percent of the population.”
October 31, 2007 at 4:24 pm
Posted in: Agricultural Law
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Agriculture and the Pharmaceutical Industry
posted by Steph Tai
In this policy brief, the Oakland Institute argues that “The enormous public resources invested in agriculture have benefited [pharmaceutical] companies by promoting the sale of [genetically engineered] seeds over and above their actual value and by allowing them to multiply their research efforts at minimal cost through collaborations with public institutions.” It’s an argument that I’ve seen before, although this is perhaps the most reader-friendly version that I’ve seen.
What I find interesting is the framing of subsidies as occuring through the (semi-)public works of “public-private partnerships and the patenting of university generated knowledge,” because it seems analogous to earlier public-works agricultural subsidies: that is, big water projects. What I also find interesting (and maybe it’s because of my relative newness to this field, and my focus more on the agricultural/environmental side of things) is its emphasis on the companies as part of the pharmaceutical industry, rather than on companies as part of Big Agriculture (which is more of what I see in the agricultural literature). I think this further highlights the importance of promoting dialogue between agricultural reform advocates (who often focus more on direct subsidies) and biotech patent reform advocates, as well as a reassessment of earlier public works projects and their unintended detrimental effects.
April 4, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Posted in: Agricultural Law, Intellectual Property
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