40 McNuggets for $13.99 sounds like an unbelievable deal. So, maybe it is.
Groups like the Sustainable Food Trust are on a mission to demonstrate how, in the current commodity food system, big corporations can offer shockingly low prices and still rake in profits because they cut corners at every step along the supply chain, offloading long-term costs onto the public while duping them into thinking their dinner was a bargain.
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For example, companies pay wages too low to support families, shifting a portion of their labor costs onto taxpayers (in the form of nutrition benefits and housing subsidies). They concentrate hundreds of thousands of chickens in one place, and when waste pollutes waterways, taxpayers pay to clean them up. Ammonia from the concentration of animals in confinement leads to high rates of asthma in surrounding communities, raising healthcare costs for neighbors.
Biden's Cabinet may be “the most diverse in history,” but his pick for agriculture secretary reignited criticism over the USDA’s treatment of Black farmers.
The administration says the USDA will be a linchpin of its climate strategy, and farmers are waiting to see what support they will get to help meet new goals.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Just before our live broadcast today, the World Food Programme received the Nobel Peace Prize in an online ceremony, due to COVID-19 restrictions, for what the Nobel Committee described as “its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict,” unquote.
The World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization dealing with hunger and food security. It’s now warning the combination of conflict, climate crisis and COVID-19 could push 270 million people to the brink of starvation.