Free Republic

Whichever came first, both the chicken and the egg will be subject to a forthcoming federal lawsuit. California voters in 2008 passed a ballot initiative that require larger enclosures for egg-laying hens. Farmers in California worried the new rules, which would increase their costs, would put them at a competitive disadvantage with egg farms in other states, so the state legislature passed a measure in 2010 to require out-of-state producers to comply with California rules. That, Koster says, is unfair to his state’s egg producers. “If California legislators are permitted to mandate the size of chicken coops on Missouri farms,...

Taking firm advantage of the term’s cloudy meaning, Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, announced on Face the Nation this weekend that he was vexed by a “very chilling story in the New York Times today about the impact of climate change on droughts in the West – California, which is now seeing some pretty serious developments as a result of climate change.” “So,” McDonough concluded, “we’ll be looking at that.”

This past fall I nearly made that clichéd mistake of getting in between a mother bear and her cubs. My husband, Eric and I have a farm and maple syrup operation situated on 1,000 acres of mostly wooded land in northern Vermont. I had walked a quarter mile through the forest to our house to retrieve our truck and upon my return, a medium-sized black bear ambled out of the woods and strode across the driveway right in front of me. I was stunned and enthralled since I had just five minutes previously passed by on foot. As I sat...

President and Moo Obama Announce New Crusade. Moo took the lead at the press conference in announcing their new crusade "Toking is not Smoking". His Arrogance and Moo will take their program to the schools during the month of February. Many children are erroneously reporting their parents as smoking under the "Comrades Reporting Addiction Program (CRAP)" under CORE when they are just toking a few joints after work. Several leaders of cancer charities, the Surgeon General, CDC and HHS have joined with His Arrogance and Moo to clarify that doing a few doobies is not the same as the filthy...

Metlife Stadium To Get Heat For The Superbowl. The Metlife Stadium was tragically built without a roof due to the poor investments by the project managers. Early on in the project adequate funds were available and plans were drawn to include a roof for the stadium but the investments with Bernie Madoff and Corzine investment firms tanked. Coming to the rescue are Mr. & Mrs. Slick Willy Clinton. They have graciously agreed to accept a reduced fee of $395,000 to read all five of His Arrogance's SOTU speeches prior to the game. Global Warming Experts Hansen, Jones and Mann estimate...

The trend for a meat-free day a week has a Swedish farmers association so annoyed it plans to hand out free hamburgers to school children in Nyköping in protest. The association, Lantbrukarnas riksförbund (LRF), plans to set up camp outside a school in Nyköoping, central Sweden, and hand out the free burgers to anyone fancying a bit of meat. "We think the municipality is doing this for the wrong reason," LRF Nyköping chairwoman Karin Andersson told regional newspaper Södermanlands Nyheter. The Meatfree Monday (Köttfri Måndag) movement has gained a certain degree of momentum in Sweden, with health and environmental advantages...

Processed food NOT fat is the real cause of heart disease, claims heart surgeon who says a diet of natural food can even reverse the illness Dr. Dwight Lundell admits prescribing cholesterol-lowering medications, and a low-fat, high-simple carbohydrate diet for two-and-a-half decades was misguided 'These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible,' he writes in an essay that has ignited the Internet He vlaims these foods actively destroy the walls of our blood vessels by causing chronic inflammation, which in turn causes heart disease The cardiac surgeon recommends only eating foods your grandmother, or great-grandmother, would recognise An Arizona...

We met at high noon, she was dressed completely in green from her pilates shoes to her forest green sweatband. She wore spandex leotards, an Audubon pin and a Sierra Club tee shirt with John Muir's face on it. The leotards and Muir's likeness were distorted by her 250 pounds of greenness. I wore jeans, boots and a free cap from an auction market. It was obvious that we were from different warring tribes. She sneered at me and drew first as both our hands reached for the door to the ice cream novelties in the frozen food aisle of...

FREE HENNY PENNY! by: Baxter Black As America continues to become tangled in the web of domesticated animal welfare, we continue to exacerbate the inhumane results of our efforts. The closing of horse slaughter plants has backfired. Our emphasis on spay and neuter clinics has made just a small dent in the number of feral cats and dogs. Millions of canines and felines are euthanized each year. Feral hogs have become as welcome as coyotes, rats, prairie dogs, wolves and white tail deer in many states. The biggest factor in each case can be traced back to decisions made by...

<p>BERLIN (AP) — A herd of dairy cows nearly lifted the roof off their barn in central Germany when methane released by the animals caused an explosion.</p> <p>Police in Hesse state said in a statement that a static electric charge apparently triggered the detonation, and a spurt of flame, on Monday at a farm in Rasdorf. The roof was slightly damaged and one cow suffered light burns. No people were hurt.</p>

BERLIN (Reuters) - Methane gas from 90 flatulent cows exploded in a German farm shed on Monday, damaging the roof and injuring one of the animals, police said. High levels of the gas .. the central German town of Rasdorf, .. "a static electric charge caused the gas to explode with flashes of flames,".. ...

Around the world, obesity levels are rising. More people are now overweight than undernourished. Two thirds of British adults are overweight and one in four of us is classified as obese. In the first of this three-part series, Jacques Peretti traces those responsible for revolutionising our eating habits, to find out how decisions made in America 40 years ago influence the way we eat now. Peretti travels to America to investigate the story of high-fructose corn syrup. The sweetener was championed in the US in the 1970s by Richard Nixon's agriculture secretary Earl Butz to make use of the excess...

Greater food system efficiency and curbs to the expansion of cropland are necessary to prevent the collapse of global ecosystems, says a report presented today (24 January) by the UN at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The report, by the UN Environment Program’s science think tank the International Resource Panel (IRP), says that policymakers must break the link between greater resource consumption and human well-being. The authors say that rising demand for food could lead to a 320 to 850 million hectare expansion of global cropland, putting greater strain of the environment’s capacity for regeneration. …

In the first installment of this two part series, we examine the factors that are influencing how individuals, major corporations, and other countries, are rethinking the most basic, yet vital resource of all, water. In part two, we take a detailed look at an increasingly popular alternative to the municipal water system, Rainwater Harvesting...

Just as a more permissive attitude to cannabis gains momentum in the United States, so does a more restrictive attitude to tobacco. It is as if there were a law of the conservation of prohibition: if one substance is permitted after having been prohibited, another will be prohibited after having been permitted. While Colorado permits the use of marijuana by those over 21 for any purpose, New York City prepares to prevent sales of tobacco to anyone under the age of 21. An article in a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine comes out strongly in favor...

Today, McDonald’s announces that it will begin purchasing verified sustainable beef in 2016, the first step on a quest to purchase sustainable beef for all of its burgers worldwide.

“Carrying such large amounts of cash is a terrible risk that freaks me out a bit because there is the fear in my mind that the next car pulling up beside me could be the crew that hijacks us,” he said. “So, we have to play this never-ending shell game of different cars, different routes, different dates and different times.”

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Calif. (KGO) -- A rare pest was recently discovered at SFO in a shipment of fresh basil from Mexico. The pest is often referred to as a type of stink bug and poses a major agricultural threat. .. After authorities identified the pest, the entire shipment was refused entry and ordered to be exported from the United States. ...

SNIP We now know the source of the mysterious crop circle that turned up in the small town of Chualar, about two hours south of San Francisco. And it turns out a lot of the speculation about what the viral photo might be was correct. NBC Bay Area was originally tipped off by an anonymous source, who said Silicon Valley chipmaker Nvidia was behind the crop circle that was first spotted toward the end of 2013 by a photographer named Julie Belanger. We now have confirmation from the inside. The company plowed through the farm to (eventually) get publicity for...

Soil covers only 10% of the earth’s surface, but within this small area, all of the world’s crops are produced. It provides the anchor that allows plants to grow upright and is the primary source of water and nutrients for plants. Scientists have identified over 70,000 varieties of soil in the United States alone...