Mercy for Animals Exposes Cruelty at Iowa Select Farms

Safeway and Kroger have announced they're halting all purchases of the farm's pork. Mercy for Animals is trying to convince Costco to do the same.

News story is from the end of June. D'oh! Almost let that one slip by!

Pork Industry Tries to Deal with Public Image

Every time I get depressed about animal issues (every other day it seems like), I see an article like this. Now, it may see like it would add to more depression, but it actually makes me feel a little better.

It's an article about the pork industry having to address the increasingly positive media image of pigs as intelligent creatures that could be someone's pet. The fact that this discussion warrants an article in the Des Moines Register means that there is some movement on this front and and it causes the pork industry concern.

On Wednesday, I almost lost my temper with some people in our customer service unit who wondered why anyone would want a turkey to have a good life before death...."it's just a turkey." And, of course, this view of farm animals is the norm. But small cracks like those hinted at in this article give me tiny room for an almost imperceptible pause.

US Government Continues Subsidizing Meat Industry

Hard to wean people off animals when the US government is propping up the industries, and especially when so much of it ends up on school lunch trays (laying the foundation for this nation's obesity problem in my opinion.)

I also have problems with subsidies to big agribusiness. It's just another bailout, but nothing new. We've been propping these guys up for decades. Too bad it continues under Vilsack and Obama.

The federal government continued its effort to boost agricultural commodity prices today by announcing it will purchase an additional $25 million worth of pork.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture also said it will buy $60 million of turkey, $2 million of lamb and $29.7 million of walnuts.

Last week, the USDA bought approximately 200 million pounds of nonfat dry milk to help the dairy industry.

The purchases are in addition to the ones the USDA makes annually for federal food programs.

The food will go to federal food nutrition assistance programs, such as school lunches.

Pork farmers have been losing an average of $20 on each hog marketed since October 2007, according to the U.S. Pork Producers. And economists have said dairy producers are losing an average of $3 per cow per day.

Pork Industry Moving into Defensive Mode

It's in response to the HBO film "Death on a Factory Farm."

The Pork Board has planned delegate meetings at the {annual Pork Industry} forum to discuss quality assurance rules including animal handling, and how much money to allocate to promote animal welfare.

"Our Pork Quality Assurance Plus and Transport Quality Assurance Programs are designed to demonstrate the care we are giving to our animals everyday on our farms," Cunningham said.

"It's not as much about what the animal rights activists are saying about how we are raising pigs as opposed to us demonstrating that we do care and we are giving the best possible care" she said.

Uh huh. I have a hard time with the logic of that statement. The pork industry does not make money from happy pigs, but from dead carcasses. There is no economic motivation to treat them well or to care about their wellbeing. The only real concern comes from the spread of illness to humans from eating diseased meat, but they only need to provide minimal care to avoid that.