A very good analysis in China Dialogue on Shuanghui's purchase of Smithfield, the world's largest pork producer quotes executive director and Brighter Green guest blogger Wanqing Zhou, a Worldwatch Institute researcher and Beijing native.

The briefing paper on industrial livestock production and deforestation, published in English and Spanish by Brighter Green and the Global Forest Coalition (GFC), is being disseminated at the UN climate change conference now underway in Bonn, Germany. Thanks to GFC executive director Simone Lovera, who's participating in the talks and who spoke about this research during a side event (formal panel) at the conference.

Brighter Green's May 2013 Newsletter is here. See what we have been working on in our three program areas: Food Policy and Equity, Sustainability and Community, and Climate Change, Livelihoods and Rights, and some upcoming projects.

On the occasion of the International Day for Biodiversity and the start of UN talks on a possible sustainable development goal (SDG) on agriculture Brighter Green and the Global Forest Coalition have published a briefing paper to raise awareness of the negative impacts of rapidly expanding industrial livestock farming and large-scale cattle ranching on the world's forests and biodiversity. Industrial animal agriculture cuts across multiple sectors, affecting land use, water, food security, public health, and climate change. But too often these intersections are overlooked.

Brighter Green's Executive Director Mia MacDonald spoke about climate change and animal agriculture, and the ecological impacts of the global spread of factory farm operations, at the Seed Experience in New York City on May 18, 2013. She also screened Green's short documentary, "What's for Dinner?" Find out more about the film, including how to show it, here.

Executive Director Mia MacDonald's blog post on the U.S. National Climate Assessment and U.S. and global systems of food production was featured in the Huffington Post and was re-blogged on the American food system news website Civil Eats.

Brighter Green collaborated with Global Forest Coalition on an event and paper on the risks of industrial livestock production for the environment, communities (including indigenous communities), and animals at the World Social Forum in Tunisia.

Brighter Green guest blogger Wanqing Zhou's exploration of of the growing challenge of food waste in China ("Food Waste and Recycling in China: Too Easy, Too Hard"), including from animal agriculture, has been republished in English and Chinese on China Dialogue, an important, bilingual Web portal for global environmental news with a focus on China.

The winners of the two Katerva awards for innovation in sustainability have been announced. Mia MacDonald of Brighter Green served on the judging panel for the food security theme, and the project finalist she ranked highest, Backpack Farm, piloted in East Africa, came first in its category.

Brighter Green and Tribal Link hosted a successful fundraiser for the East African Girls' Leadership Initiative in December 2012. Over $3,000 were raised to help support two girls' education, living costs, rights training, mentoring, and leadership skill workshops for one year. Singer-songwriter Joy Askew performed at the event and Grace Koutimet, from SIMOO spoke about the role of Maasai women in the community and how educating Maasai women greatly assists the communities' progress.

Brighter Green's Mia MacDonald's blog post on COP 18 and the conference's failure to address the negative effects of industrial food systems, particularly industrial agriculture, on climate change appeared in the Huffington Post on December 6, 2012.

Brighter Green's Mia MacDonald participated in and moderated a side event to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP18) in Doha, Qatar in December 2012. The side event entitled "Climate Change & Ensuring Sustainable, Humane, Equitable Food Systems: Views from the North and South" focused on climate change and livestock farming. Xie Zheng, featured in Brighter Green's short documentary "What's for Dinner?" also spoke at the event. For more information on Brighter Green's research on climate change and the globalization of farming click here.

Executive Director Mia MacDonald attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 18) from November 26 to December 2, 2012. Mia shared Brighter Green's research on climate change and the globalization of intensive animal agriculture.

On the week of June 3rd, China provided another sad example of the impacts of industrial agriculture-showing that animals aren't the only victims. A poultry slaughterhouse in Northeast Jilin province caught fire leading to the death of at least 119 workers. The factory was overcrowded, exits narrow and unmarked, and no emergency plan was in place. And, many of the doors, in efforts to keep workers from departing during work hours, were locked from the outside, making exiting an impossible task.

Work place safety standards are commonly poor in China, with unenforced regulations often linked to corruption and prioritizing profit over human rights. But China is not alone, across the globe industrial animal agriculture fails in worker safety standards.

In Liberia, the FAO has been involved in a number of poultry projects for both broilers and laying hens. It has constructed three factory farm style operations in the interior of the country to train locals in "modern and intensive poultry production and management practices." It has also teamed up with the Ministries of Gender and Agriculture under the Joint Program on Food Security and Nutrition to construct ten other poultry houses throughout the country. None of these operations house much more than 1,000 birds, though they are set up like intensive factory farms and provide a model for future operations, which will surely increase in size and numbers as the country develops. So in short, the FAO — which outlined the heavy environmental impacts of the global livestock sector in the widely cited report Livestock's Long Shadow — is now encouraging the future development of factory farming in Liberia.

Like much of Sub-Saharan Africa, Liberia struggles with malnutrition and food insecurity. While finding solutions to these problems is a major developmental goal for the country, unfortunately, the government and its international partners' response has included a strong emphasis on livestock production. This is problematic given the negative impacts animal agriculture has in terms of sustainability, food security, climate change, and animal welfare.

Note: this post was originally published on the Huffington Post's Green section.

It's World Environment Day and this year's focus is on reducing food waste and getting people to shrink their "foodprints," particularly, of course, if they're large. Many are. In the U.S., between 30 and 40 percent of the food supply is simply wasted, according to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, announcing a national Food Waste Challenge.

Some of the bad habits around food we've developed in the U.S. have gone global. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that 1.3 billion metric tons of food is wasted throughout the world every year, the amount of food that's produced in all of sub-Saharan Africa's 48 countries. A study by Chinese researchers concluded that the food wasted in a year by 2,700 families in differently sized Chinese cities could have fed 200 million people, about one-sixth of China's population.

World Environment Day's "Think.Eat.Save." theme probably wasn't on the minds of those shepherding last week's $4.7 billion deal to sell Smithfield, the world's biggest pork producer, to Shuanghui, a Chinese conglomerate with global investors that include Goldman Sachs (Morgan Stanley is providing some of the financing). And yet there is an important link.

Ross Miranti is a guest blogger for Brighter Green.

Meat consumption correlates with income; poorer individuals and countries tend to consume less than their wealthier counterparts. This applies to Liberia, one of the poorest nations in the world, which has an annual per capita income of about 374 dollars and an annual per capita meat consumption of about 10.4 kilograms/kg (22.9 pounds/lbs).

Three decades ago Liberia was one of the more prosperous nations in Sub-Saharan Africa, but the violent, fourteen year civil war (1989 to 2003) devastated the country in countless ways; it claimed 250,000 lives, displaced over 600,000 people, demolished infrastructure, and ravaged the economy.

Given the planned purchase of U.S.-based Smithfield, the world's largest producer of pork, by China-based agribusiness Shuanghui, an exploration of the ecological impacts of China's fast-expanding meat production and consumption is in order.

More Than Just Cars and Factories

It has long been known that China suffers from serious environmental challenges. The relationship between livestock agriculture and environmental pollution is nothing new, either. But a report released on April 10th, 2013, by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Rural Development Institute, the China Rural Economic Situation Analysis and Forecast (2013) stated that in 2012, the pressure of agricultural environmental pollution continued to increase and large-scale livestock and poultry pollution had become the biggest agricultural source of pollution in China.

On May 2nd, the Supreme People's Court (SPC) and the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) of China issued Interpretations on food safety criminal cases. The next day, a spokesman of the SPC further elaborated on the Interpretations during a press conference. The judicial progress is certainly encouraging, but more efforts beyond the legal system are required to effectively combat food safety lapses.

April has been a busy and productive month for the Kenyan students in the East African Girls' Leadership Initiative.

The Kenyan students spent six weeks completing a basic computer course at Lewisa College of Professional Studies in Ngong. They had a great time learning how to type, use Microsoft Office, email, and the internet (both the Kenyan and Tanzanian girls are from rural areas and have no formal interaction with computers). Joyce emailed us expressing her excitement, "...computer courses are so interesting and we are computer literate now!".

Last week, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization held its first International Conference on Forests for Food Security and Nutrition in attempts to raise awareness of the contribution of forests to food security, economic development, and ecosystem services; an issue mostly overlooked by policymakers.

With edible plants, fruits, mushrooms, insects, and wild animals, forests are a substantial food source for more than a billion people. Ensuring forest conservation is vital in helping meet United Nation Millennium goals of reducing world hunger by 50 percent by 2015.

In addition to nutrition, forests play other significant roles in rural societies.

The United States Department of Agriculture reports that food prices will continue to rise in 2013. Factors that led to this price increase are multifaceted and complex, with the 2012 United States drought and mass cattle culling, other weather events, biofuels, and a global increase in meat demand being major contributors. Sources are localized as well, for instance, in China rising prices are also due to the loss of farmland and farm labor to urbanization, and land degradation-caused grazing restrictions.

China's latest avian flu outbreak, H7N9, has led to at least 126 infections and 24 deaths, with one confirmed case crossing national borders to Taiwan. The World Health Organization has stated this flu strain is a "serious threat" and among the "most lethal so far." Some are questioning if we have the ability to develop an adequate vaccine before widespread person to person transmission occurs. Scientists are still determining the source of the original mutant strain, but assert intensive poultry factory farm operations are likely to blame.

It has been a month since the first case of the human-infected influenza A (H7N9) was reported. By May 1st, the virus had been diagnosed in 128 people and has killed 27 people since March. Recently, a booklet called Don't be Scared of Birds was published in China to inform the public about influenza A (H7N9) and how to protect themselves from it, although many details of the virus remain unknown.

[Note: this blog was published originally on the Huffington Post.]

It's Earth Week, a good time to celebrate the natural environment and also examine some of the ways we use -- and abuse -- Earth's resources and climate. Food systems are an important area for scrutiny. New agricultural ideas and actions are essential amid rising climate stress, a growing human population, widespread degradation of ecosystems, and rampant food insecurity; nearly one billion people regularly don't get enough to eat.

Pastoralists in Kenya, rice farmers in India, and industrial feedlot operators in the U.S. are contending with increased frequency of drought and erratic weather. But agriculture isn't just affected by climate change. It's also a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. agricultural sector was responsible in 2011 for 7.2 percent of U.S. GHGs. This doesn't include emissions from indirect agricultural activities, like clearing grasslands or forests to create farmland, or the fossil fuels burned when transporting agricultural products.

As American high school seniors around the United States are currently deciding where they are going to college, the Kenyan East African Girls’ Leadership Initiative students have been finding out about their end of year examinations. All five Kenyan girls, Ann, Hellen, Joyce, Sabina, and Elizabeth, sat for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) national exam, required for admission into university. Two girls, Elizabeth and Hellen received scores that qualify them to start university in the summer. Joyce, Sabina, and Ann will attend a one-year bridging certificate course before entering university the following year. Three of the Tanzanian girls finished their end of year exams and have been promoted to form four, their final year of secondary education. One girl, Rehema, finished her final year of studies and is waiting to enroll in an intermediary college. 

Adopting a meat-free diet has positive implications on the environment. We’ve seen how the increased consumption of meat around the world increases greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and is a major factor in climate change. But is adopting a vegan, vegetarian, or “sometimes” vegetarian diet a consumer trend to just “be healthy”? And can this trend be a gateway for more sustainable food habits?