FERN’s Friday Feed: Cancer cells. It’s what’s for dinner.
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Lab-grown meat has a PR problem
FERN and Bloomberg Businessweek
“To get the cell cultures to grow at rates big enough to power a business, several [cultured meat] companies, including the Big Three, are quietly using what are called immortalized cells, something most people have never eaten intentionally. Immortalized cells are a staple of medical research, but they are, technically speaking, pre-cancerous and can be, in some cases, fully cancerous,” writes Joe Fassler. “As one executive in the field told me, with a dose of comic understatement, there’s a chance the whole thing really ‘might bother some people.’”
Fear and loathing among the union busters
The Lever
“[R]estaurant executives are on edge. Union campaigns are suddenly penetrating their industry, which employs about 10 percent of the American workforce and has one of the lowest unionization rates of any sector,” writes Julia Rock. So at the Restaurant Legal Summit, “held by the legal arm of the notorious National Restaurant Association … executives linked to Aramark, Red Lobster, McDonald’s, Auntie Anne’s, Cinnabon, Arby’s, and Dunkin’ Donuts had gathered with management-side employment lawyers to plot ways to beat back … a restive workforce demanding higher pay, better working conditions, and, increasingly, union representation.”
China’s high-rise hog farms
The New York Times
“The first sows arrived in late September at the hulking, 26-story high-rise towering above a rural village in central China,” write Daisuke Wakabayashi and Claire Fu. “The female pigs were whisked away dozens at a time in industrial elevators to the higher floors where the hogs would reside from insemination to maturity. This is pig farming in China, where agricultural land is scarce, food production is lagging and pork supply is a strategic imperative.”
Supply chain disruption threatens Chiapas flower industry
Global Press Journal
“In this municipality in the Chiapas highlands in southern Mexico, growers cultivate nearly 40% of the land with flowers. There are about 1,200 floriculturists in Zinacantán, most of them Mayan Tsotsil small-scale growers,” writes Adriana Alcázar González. “Commercial floriculture, initially developed through government support in 1973, is now a mainstay of the local economy and culture: Flowers adorn pantheons and churches during weddings, baptisms and birthdays, while the mountains are dotted with an estimated 5,000 greenhouses. Most of this, however, relies on increasingly precarious imported inputs.”
The climate crises demands public investment in agricultural innovation
Noema Magazine
“Despite its reputation for excess, [Las Vegas] has been factoring climate change into its water plans for years, declaring war on thirsty lawns, patrolling the streets for water wasters and preparing for worst-case scenarios on the Colorado River, which supplies 90% of the area’s water,” write Molly Hennessey-Fiske and Ian James. “Las Vegas has emerged as a leader in water conservation, and some of its initiatives have spread to other cities and states that rely on the shrinking river. Its drive to get rid of grass in particular could reshape the look of landscapes in public and private spaces throughout the Southwest.”