Vegan News 5.30.13

Illinois illegally seizes Bees Resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup; Kills remaining Queens. “The Illinois Ag Dept.  illegally seized privately owned bees from renowned naturalist, Terrence Ingram, without providing him with a search warrant and before the court hearing on the matter, reports Prairie Advocate News. Behind the obvious violations of his Constitutional rights is Monsanto. Ingram was researching Roundup’s effects on bees, which he’s raised for 58 years.  ‘They ruined 15 years of my research,’ he told Prairie Advocate, by stealing most of his stock.”

Is the US About to Become One Big Factory Farm for China? “The small number of companies that dominate global meat production is about to get smaller. The Chinese corporation Shuanghui International, already the majority shareholder of China’s largest meat producer, has just bought US giant Smthfield, the globe’s largest hog producer and pork packer, in a $7.1 billion cash deal. In an ironic twist, China appears to be taking advantage of lax environmental and labor standards in the US to supply its citizens with something it can’t get enough of. Industrial pork: the iPhone’s culinary mirror image.”

More on Shuanghui buying Smithfield… China’s Shuanghui to buy US pork producer for $4.7bn. “China’s Shuanghui International plans to buy US pork producer Smithfield Foods for $4.7bn (£3.1bn) to meet the country’s rising demand for meat. Shuanghui, which is China’s biggest pork producer, is offering to pay for the company in cash. The deal, if approved, will be the largest takeover of a US company by a Chinese rival.”

GM salmon can breed with wild fish and pass on genes. “Scientists from Canada have found that transgenic Atlantic salmon can cross-breed with a closely related species – the brown trout. The fish, which have been engineered with extra genes to make them grow more quickly, pass on this trait to the hybrid offspring. However, the biotech company AquaBounty, which created the salmon, said any risks were negligible as the fish they were producing were all female, sterile and would be kept in tanks on land. The transgenic salmon are currently being assessed by the US authorities, and could be the first GM animals to be approved for human consumption.”

Photo credit: nkfsnaps via Flickr