Andrew Zhang is a third year law student at Harvard Law School and a guest contributor to this blog. Americans are drinking a lot less milk. Despite production reaching an all-time high of 26.4 billion gallons in 2023, per capita milk consumption in the U.S. is down 47% from 1975. And, while consumption of dairy milk dropped by 4% between…
Katie Kraska is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. Despite the potential that cultivated meat products hold for revolutionizing how food is produced, mention of this technology is nowhere to be found in House or Senate Farm Bill drafts or outlines. Given some recent state-level developments, that may be…
Grace Huddleston is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. Agroforestry has the power to reinforce climate resilient landscaping, improve water quality, and provide economic stimulation for farmers. Agroforestry initiatives may also soon receive a significant expansion thanks to H.R. 8467 §8301, the current House draft of the 2024 Farm…
Denae Romero is a law student at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and is a guest contributor to this blog. She was an intern in the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic during the summer of 2024. Passed over 100 years ago, the Packers and Stockyards Act (codified at 7 U.S.C. §§ 181-229) aims…
Orly Levy is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. Background The shift towards large-scale industrial animal farming has transformed the landscape of American farming over the past few decades. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) have out-competed smaller, family-owned farms, decreasing the number of livestock farmers in the US by…
Hudson Bennett is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. What’s going on? The United States agriculture industry is wasting water at a crippling rate. Irrigation efficiency sits at around 60-70%, and domestic aquifers are being depleted at a rate significantly faster than they can recover. In other words, the…
Naomi Jennings is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. According to USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), “[u]p to 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases in humans are zoonotic, impacting the health of both humans and animals.” Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) placed antimicrobial resistance on…
Oscar Heanue is a recent law graduate and student in the Harvard Law School Food Law & Policy Clinic. He is a guest contributor to this blog. For most, the term “farm” likely conjures images of rolling fields of grain or livestock grazing in a pasture. For some, the term may bring to mind grimmer images of factory farms overstuffed…
Todd Carney is a law student at Harvard Law School and guest contributor on this blog. Many recall the popular ad campaign, “got milk?” but few know the source of these ads. The ads came from “checkoff programs.” Checkoff programs gather money from farmers in a shared industry; and conduct research and advertising to promote that industry. The United States…
Brianna Johnson-King is a law student enrolled in the Harvard Law School Food Law & Policy Clinic and guest contributor on this blog. COVID-19 has disrupted food supply chains, impacting farmers looking for butchers, meat processing facilities shutting down, and consumers concerned with availability and prices of meat at the grocery store. This disruption has led to potentially questionable conduct…