Jonathan Safran Foer on Meat

In Jonathan Safran Foer's latest book "The Eating of Animals" the lauded novelist dives deep into the complex morality of eating meat. An avowed vegetarian, Foer stops short of preaching the vegan way of life, but presents some pretty damning testimony about factory farms and the lives of animals raised on them. The Atlantic correspondant Jeffrey Goldberg had a discussion with Foer......read more

The Incredible Shrinking Slaughterhouse

Eating food that was raised locally is all well and good, but if the meat in your organic, grass-fed burger was processed in some massive slaughterhouse across state lines, it kind of defeats the purpose. And in all likelihood, it probably wasn't processed anywhere nearby. That's because the meat industry, like much else in U.S. agriculture, is a highly consolidated beast. According to......read more

Sustainable Meat Is Good for the Environment -- and the Economy

A new documentary about the U.S. food system hit its first round of theatres this month. American Meat, directed by Graham Merriwether, documents the lives of dozens of American farmers producing both industrially and sustainably raised meat. The film's main subject is Joel Salatin, a pasture-based pork rancher featured in Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma". Salatin has started producing......read more

Chicago Meatpacking Plant Transformed Into Vertical Farm

In 2010, entrepreneur John Edel bought a four-story, 94,000 square foot factory in a bankruptcy sale. The sprawling red brick warehouse, built in the 1920s next to Chicago’s Union Stockyards, used to process bacon and ham. Today it is home to The Plant Chicago, a vertical farm housing 11 small-scale food businesses, from bakers and kombucha brewers to aquaponic farms growing......read more

Wild Idea Buffalo Meat

Founded over ten years ago by the husband-and-wife team of Dan and Jill O'Brien, Wild Idea Buffalo Co. raises free-range, grass-fed bison near the South Dakota Badlands. Dan, a wildlife biologist and environmental activist, turned to buffalo ranching as a means for restoring the depleting grasslands he has always called home. Today, with more and more people eating with their health and the......read more

The Meat Question

What you eat matters. Not only for your health, but for the health of the environment too. As more people begin to realize the seriousness of the climate change issue they are looking for ways they can make a difference. What we eat has a huge effect on the climate. So let's take a fork and knife to the omnivore/vegetarian/vegan debate and and see what it's all about.The conventional system of......read more

A Sleekly Sustainable Prefab in the Californian Desert

The design practice of Los Angeles architects Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner, founders of Marmol Radziner and Associates, extends well beyond buildings and into jewelry and furniture. Whatever the project, green ideas reign supreme. The duo's prefab design and manufacturing business is but another example. The prefab operation launched with this vacation home prototype -- owned by Marmol and his......read more

Street Meat

I am sure the title alone is enough to make people cringe. I can remember listening to my cousin tell stories of eating roadkill in Colorado simply because he didn't have a lot of money for food at the time, and there was plenty of good meat laying around the road. Despite his logic, I was disgusted. Looking back, however, I can see that my cousin was engaging in a very sustainable......read more