FOOD & FARMS

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon receives Avaaz food crisis petition from Sam Sesay, Sierra Leone's agriculture minister, and Avaaz's Ricken Patel
Global food crisis - With food prices soaring, Sierra Leonean foreign minister Zainab Bangura recorded a video appeal to Avaaz members asking for help in pressing their governments to action. More than 360,000 members responded, signing an online petition that was delivered to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon at an emergency food summit in Rome. Bowing to global pressure, donor governments pledged billions in emergency food aid and joined a process to reconsider agricultural policy. More than 60,000 Avaaz members also sent messages to their governments urging sustainability standards for biofuels that would end the practices of burning food as fuel and of displacing food crops to make room for fuel crops. This July, the G8 pledged to "ensure the compatibility of policies for the sustainable production and use of biofuels with food security" -- but more pressure is needed to make this pledge a reality.

Swine flu and factory farms - Avaaz brought a herd of 225 cardboard pigs to the World Health Organization, representing the 225,000 signatures on a petition for research into the possible role of factory farming in breeding the H1N1 flu virus. A WHO scientist told Avaaz that the research was needed -- but that the industrial meat lobby would continue blocking it unless citizen groups like Avaaz kept up the pressure. click here to see photos and read the story.