Narrated by former Brighter Green intern Whitney Hoot, this video is part of Brighter Green's Food Policy and Equity Program, outlining the social, environmental, and animal welfare consequences of intensifying meat production and rising domestic and export consumption on Ethiopia, home of Africa's largest livestock herd.

Brighter Green's program on Food Policy and Equity continues to grow, with a video on the expansion of Brazil's livestock sector now available. The video, narrated by Simone de Lima, professor of psychology at the University of Brasilia and founder of Brazilian animal rights organization Pro-Anima, explores the profound environmental consequences of Brazil's booming livestock and soy industries.

As part of Brighter Green's Food Policy and Equity Program, a short video detailing China's rising consumption of animal products is now available. The video is narrated by Brighter Green Associate Stella Zhou, who is blogging from China this summer. More to come soon as we explore further the impacts of the globalization of industrial animal agriculture in China, India, Brazil, and Ethiopia.

Last month, Mia MacDonald posted a blog on the Huffington Post, covering Goldman Sach's involvement with factory farming in China. Her piece, "Investment Bankers with Wings: Making a Killing," earned several notable mentions online, from sources such as the PETA Files, Discovery's Planet Green, and Current TV.

Mia MacDonald posted a blog on Goldman Sachs's investment in factory farming in China on the Huffington Post. Read it here. Feel free to add your comments or share with others or link to it.

Brighter Green Executive Director Mia MacDonald recently discussed the environmental impacts of factory farming at a Pace Law School Panel, organized by the Student Animal Legal Defense Fund and the Environmental Law Society. Click here for the PDF of this presentation.

Brighter Green colleague Anna Lappé's new book is out. Diet for a Hot Planet addresses the climate impact of our food choices, and what we can do to make a difference. Thanks, Anna, for mentioning Brighter Green's work in helping to shape a more just and sustainable food system for New York City!

The March issue of Resurgence Magazine, themed "The Future of Food," has published an article by Brighter Green Executive Director Mia MacDonald. Click here for a PDF version of the article, "Eat Like it Matters."

Karin Chien, founder of dGenerate Films and Co-Executive Producer with Brighter Green of "What's for Dinner?", has won the Piaget Producers Prize at the Independent Spirit Awards. Karin won the award for her work on The Exploding Girl, and Santa Mesa.

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Unlike the highly industrialized U.S. livestock sector, which consists mainly of a small number of large-scale farms, the livestock sector in China is still fairly fragmented, taking mainly three forms. The first is small-scale, household backyard production, which has been the tradition here for thousands of years. Each household raises several head of pigs and some poultry. The second is specialized household and commercial production—whether one specialized farmer or several households keeping hundreds of pigs in one production district. The third is large-scale intensive and standardized production. Large-scale usually means having more than 500 pigs or over 5,000 chickens in one farm.

Although household backyard production still makes up most of the livestock sector, specialized and large-scale production is quickly taking over. In China, large-scale production is favored, and is linked to standardization because it’s considered easier—when compared with scattered household backyard production—to control inputs and outputs, enforce environmental regulations, and control disease outbreaks. This kind of production is not equivalent to the U.S. large-scale, factory-style farming, since the U.S. model of large capital investment and intensive use of land make it impractical for the Chinese.

Brighter Green's Multimedia Analysis: Globalization of Factory Farming documents the spread of western methods of intensive animal agriculture, as well as the social, environmental and animal welfare consequences.

This six minute video highlights the effects of large-scale cultivation of soybeans for farmed animal feed and cattle and other livestock production on some of Latin America's most important biomes.

Brighter Green's Multimedia Analysis: Globalization of Factory Farming documents the spread of western methods of intensive animal agriculture, as well as the social, environmental and animal welfare consequences.

This short video focuses on Ethiopia, and that country's multi-faceted and challenging relationship with livestock in the context of food security, climate change, development deficits, and ecological stress.

In China’s poorer provinces, "garbage pigs" can be seen roaming through dump sites, feeding on leftovers from households and restaurants. This practice has existed in certain parts of China for over 20 years now, usually stemming from small households that are most vulnerable to rises in feed prices.

In 2006, China passed the Animal Husbandry Law of the PRC that prohibits the use of swill and dump waste as animal feed, arising mainly out of public health concerns. Swill and dump waste are typically loaded with health-threatening microorganisms and other pollutants, that can cause serious diseases in pigs, resulting in pandemics. When humans consume this pork, (which they do often, as "garbage pigs" are prone to grow more fat, catering to local tastes) they can also fall ill.

Behind closed doors, world leaders are currently debating a draft resolution that recognizes the right to water and sanitation as a basic universal right. For the two billion people living in water-stressed regions, and the three billion with no running water within a kilometer of their homes, access to clean water seems an obvious component of the rights to an adequate standard of living, which the United Nations does recognize. However, the resolution, put forward by Bolivia, has irked heads of a number of wealthy countries around the world, including the US, UK, Australia, and perhaps most notably, water-rich Canada.

It comes as little surprise that Bolivia is the driving force behind this critical issue. Cochabamba, a Bolivian city to the southwest of La Paz, was the center of a water war ten years ago, as farmers, factory workers, and cocoa growers descended on the Andean city to protest the privatization of Cochamaba's water system. The multinational corporation Bechtel, had won the rights to Cochabamba's water in 1999, after the World Bank and then President Hugo Banzer placed Cochabamba's public water system on the market. Less than a year after this deal was brokered, Bechtel increased the cost of Cochabamban water by as much as 60 percent, pricing out a majority of the city's population. Three months of protest later, the people of Cochabamba emerged as victors, having pushed Bechtel out of their city and regaining control over their municipal water system.

After the good news from South Africa's hosting of the World Cup (unless, of course, your favorite team lost early and badly), comes the opposite. The last female rhino in Kruger National Park has been killed by poachers. Rhino poaching is on the rise. The animals' horns, sawn off, with the rest of the body left, are sold on the black market primarily to Asia. "Last year, 129 rhinos were killed for their horns in South Africa," Kruger's chief ranger said. "This year, we have already had 136 deaths." Many poachers operate like syndicates now. They have high-tech equipment, manpower, money, and global networks. South Africa is committed to protecting its rhinos, but rangers are often out-flanked. This particular rhino's calf was with her. The baby has been moved to a sanctuary. Two other orphaned rhinos are there already.

Photo courtesy of Arno & Louise

I was recently able to attend an event related to climate change that was held at the Temporary North Lawn Building of the UN. The event was moderated by Shetal Shah of Nord-Sud XXI, and the panel consisted of the Ambassador of Bolivia to the United Nations, Pablo Solon, as well as co-director of the International Action Center and author, Sara Flounders.

The panel was held in a moderately sized conference room filled, pretty much, to capacity. Not knowing exactly what was going to be talked about, I was pleasantly surprised to find that attendees were provided with a copy of a table comparing the People’s Agreement with the Copenhagen Accord, which was to be one of the focal points of the discussion.

"We can eat these towel gourds from the garden tonight," says my dad, holding the vegetables in his hand. Three years ago, he frowned at my shift to a vegetarian diet and labeled me as 'primitive'. But now, rooftop vegetable gardens like his are becoming increasingly popular in his city Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province in the southeast of China near the coast. From his rooftop you can see twenty or so similar gardens dotted throughout his residential neighborhood.

My dad started his rooftop garden two years ago. He got two crates from a nearby fruit store; soil from the agricultural university nearby; and seeds (he originally just planted hot peppers and towel gourds) from a nearby market. According to my dad, the cost is almost zero: "I only had to buy the seeds once, and I’ll be able to save the seeds from this year’s crop. What I contribute most is labor." He collects rainwater also on the rooftop to water the plants. If it hasn’t rained in a while, he’ll water from the taps instead. "I don’t use chemicals or fertilizers at all," he tells me, collecting instead the leftovers of soymilk (which we make at home from soybeans for breakfast), watermelon peels, bean peels, and pigeon waste from our neighbor, to use as fertilizer.

Yesterday was the two-month anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. On April 20th, an explosion on a BP-operated oil drilling rig 40-miles off the Gulf Coast left 11 workers dead and an unknown quantity of crude oil gushing into surrounding waters. In the last few weeks, estimates of the severity of the spill have continued to rise: Initially, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that there were approximately 5,000 barrels of oil gushing from the underwater well each day; now the estimate is 40,000 to 60,000 barrels per day. After several unsuccessful attempts to staunch the flow of oil, BP installed a new containment device on June 3rd that is collecting approximately 15,000 barrels per day; a second device was installed on June 16th. (Unfortunately, some reports show that this tactic may have actually increased the quantity of oil gushing from the underwater well.)

China’s hog production practices have shifted greatly over time as the country has transitioned into a market economy. “It was really easy to get a loan in the 1980s,” recalls Mr. Liu, owner of Fu Hang farm, a medium-sized pig farm located in the Northeast part of Zhejiang Province. “I signed a contract with food companies which not only promised to purchase my pigs but also subsidize their feed.”

In 1988, the Chinese government launched the Vegetable Basket Project in an effort to ensure the supply of non-staple foods such as vegetables, dairy, pork and poultry products. “At that time, there was a very small number of pig farmers,” explains Mr. Liu, adding “when government officials had a meeting with us in the 80s, they encouraged us to raise pigs and provide food for the huge population. But now,” he continues, “if we have a meeting, we’re told not to do this or that, to get our animals vaccinated or get fined! They don’t want us to raise pigs any more—it’s not worth it. It’s very land and water intensive and the government has to worry about the environment too. In Hong Kong, the government gives you money if you quit. If you add up all the costs, it’s a lot cheaper to import meat.”

“You stand to lose if you’re in the business,” says Mr. Liu, owner of Fu Hang farm, a medium-sized pig farm located in the Northeast part of Zhejiang Province.

The farm has twenty sheds with a total of 158 rooms, each of which holds eight to nine pigs, making a total of around 1,300 pigs. “It used to be common practice to discharge waste into waterways. But now, nobody dares to do so! The local environmental protection authorities are fairly strict. You will get huge fines!” says Mr Liu, throwing his hands in the air. Instead of disposing of the waste, the family collects the pig manure to use as fertilizer on the fields, and the urine for biogas to cook.

This week, India's Supreme Court convicted eight former executives of Union Carbide India Limited--a subsidiary of the American company Union Carbide, now owned by Dow Chemical Company--of negligence in the Bhopal gas leak, which exposed at least 500,000 Indians to 40 tons of toxic methyl isocyanate gas. The leak, which is considered "the world's worst industrial disaster" killed at least 3,000 people instantly and thousands more after being exposed to contaminated air and water; government agencies estimate a total death toll of 15,000 lives. The eight executives (one of whom passed away before the conviction) were sentenced to two years in prison and fined Rs. 100,000 (about $2,100). What is perhaps even more shocking than these seemingly lenient convictions is the timeframe--the court's decision arrives more than a quarter century after the Bhopal gas leak, which occurred in December 1984.

At the Beijing zoo, you can admire the plumage of brazen peacocks, watch hippos play in the water, and observe scaly crocodiles basking in the sun. Then, when you get hungry, you can dine at the zoo's restaurant and eat the same species that you paid to come see! The Bin Feng Tang restaurant's menu includes exotic dishes such as shark fin soup, kangaroo tail, hippopotamus toes, and--for the boldest customers--deer penis. Ge Rui, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, says, "One of the zoo's missions is to foster love of animals and a desire to protect them. But by selling the meat of caged beasts, this zoo stimulates consumption and increases pressure on animals in the wild. It is socially irresponsible."

Brighter Green's Multimedia Analysis: Globalization of Factory Farming documents the spread of Western methods of intensive animal agriculture, as well as the social, environmental and animal welfare consequences of these actions.

This video sheds light upon the nation's livestock boom, as well as some of the reactions it has provoked.

Eight million animals, mostly goats, have died in recent months in Mongolia, as a particularly frigid winter followed last summer's severe drought. This natural disaster, referred to as a zud, has devastated Mongolia's pastoralist population, whose numbers total 800,000—nearly a third of the population.

The combination of a changing climate—increasingly colder winters and drier summers, with the persistent expansion of goat herds, has left Mongolia's environment degraded, and its herders defeated. The growing global demand for cashmere has spurred on Mongolia's steady acquisition of goats, who nibble on roots and destroy ground cover with their sharp hooves, hastening the soil erosion that is already a problem on the dry and windy terrain.