Here’s Friday’s links roundup, a bit belated due to some editorial confusion. Some really interesting articles on government actions to support local agriculture and small farmers. 

• Canada approves the first genetically modified pig, bred with mouse genes to reduce the phosphorus in its feces, and thereby reduce the environmental contamination connected with industrial pig farming.
• McDonald’s lives up to the U.K. sustainable restaurant guidelines.
• The World Society for the Protection of Animals launches a restaurant and grocery store database that helps consumers locate food that benefits animal welfare, human health and the environment.
• The Farm to School Improvements Act 2010 (HR 4710) could make $10 million available annually to fund projects that link farmers with school lunch programs.
• Ethan Genauer proposes a program to get “A Garden At Every School,” you can vote for this project to become a grassroots national social campaign at change.org.  Vote by March 12th.
• 200,000 people across the U.S. submit public comments to the USDA against genetically modified alfalfa in order to keep organic cattle and organic milk truly organic.
• Haitian peasant organizations advocate and plan mobilizations to push for rebuilding Haiti through a reorientation of Haiti’s economy to favor family agriculture and food sovereignty.
• Colors, a New York restaurant cooperative, began as a way to provide job opportunities and advocacy for minority and immigrant restaurant workers left unemployed due to discriminatory hiring practices after 9/11.
• Landscapes of Quarantine, a soon-to-open exhibit at New York City’s Storefront for Art and Architecture, explores plant quarantine as a form of landscape preservation in connection with the tremendous risks to our food system posed by monoculture farming.
• Leonard Lopate interviews investigative reporter David Kirby, discussing industrial farming, the broken American food system, and spread of diseases such as manure flu and MRSA, which are emerging out of factory farms and killing more Americans annually than AIDS.