In a recent Ted Talk, Robyn O’Brien (author of “The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It.”) recently shared her insight as to why moving to America will increase your cancer risk by 400%.
The free-range girls with their coop and nest box. Photo by Jo Barlow.
When our little chicken, Audrey, was entombed in her battery cage she was subjected to 18 hours artificial daylight to encourage her to lay an egg every day. This unnatural level of production made her financially viable for the farmer – he wanted his money’s worth out of her. However, laying this amount of eggs puts a great strain on her little body and depletes it of essential calcium.
Photo of Agatha. By Jo Barlow.
There comes a time, even in an ex-battery hen’s life, when her wings may need to be clipped. Wing clipping is a quick and painless process of literally clipping the primary flight feathers of one wing rendering the chicken unbalanced — and consequently not able to fly. There are two schools of thought on whether or not wing clipping is a good thing. One argues that with one wing clipped, the hen is confined to the security of her garden and it is therefore essential for her safety. The other is that in case of an attack, from a fox, badger etc, the unclipped hen will be able to fly to safety. A hen with one clipped wing would not.
From EatDrinkBetter: Organic Farm Group Sues Monsanto, Seeking Protection From GMO Contamination
From Monsanto’s home newspaper: Farmers, seed companies sue Monsanto
From The Cornacopia Institute: Farmers and Seed Producers Launch Preemptive Strike against Monsanto
From Sourcewatch: Monsanto and the Roundup Ready Controversy
Aubrey helping in the garden. Photo by Jo Barlow.
Offering a home to ex-battery chickens brings us benefits on many levels: to the global environment by highlighting the impact of intensive farming, to our own immediate environment and of course to the health and welfare of the chickens.
First whiff of freedom. Photo by Jo Barlow.
One amazing and heart warming characteristic of ex-battery chickens is that, from the day you rescue them, they produce eggs. These little girls have been bred to be egg machines and no matter how desperate their appearance, how featherless and scrawny they seem to be, eggs they will produce.
Ashlee Tomas and Erin Mcintosh of Mountain Rose Herbs. Photo via Mountain Rose Herbs.
Eugene, Ore.-based Mountain Rose Herbs showed off its wide variety of herbs, teas, essential oils, spices and salts in an eye-catching and eco-friendly booth Nov. 6 and 7 at the Green Festival, held in San Francisco.
As the one and only time of year that you can put on just about anything you want and act completely out of character, Halloween is the paramount time for sending eco-inspired messages about the perils of the planet without saying a word. Think about it: You are free to create any festive persona or character your mind desires; why not make it something eco-themed or create a costume from used, recycled, or found materials and get your party-going friends talking — and thinking?
The biggest chocolate buying holiday is just weeks away, but before you go out and purchase bags of conventional chocolate, there are few things you should know about what you are endorsing when you buy this candy. While children in the U.S. are increasingly looking forward to the mounds of sweets they will collect this Halloween on their trick-or-treating excursions, children in other parts of the country are being sold as slaves by their own families and forced to work in abusive conditions for the cocoa crops that supply most of the conventional chocolate sold in stores.
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Cress: A Rare Vegetable that Grows in the Dead of Winter
For Christmas, W and I amassed quite a haul of stuff to make our balcony more exciting. From a wormery to a bird feeder, to a beautiful box of seeds and tips from Allotinabox. I even got a can with a sunflower seed in it. Eating locally just got a whole lot more local.
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