Posts Categorized: Factory Farms

Chicken better than beef? Not so fast

chicken on rooftop wind vane You care about God’s Creation and you’ve heard how much beef production adds to climate change. So you’re looking for alternatives, like chicken. I often make that choice too, but while the climate impact may be less, there is more to know about the environmental affects of slaughtering 9.3 billion chickens annually in the U.S…. Read more »

Veil lifted on factory farms!

touch guy piglet with straw in mouth First Nationwide Study Reveals Widespread Opposition The PC(USA) General Assembly in 2016 passed the On Advocacy Against Factory Farming resolution. The opposition to factory farms (CAFOs), where hundreds, sometimes thousands of animals are raised, seems to be growing in the United States. [See bottom for explanation of CAFO] The first nationwide survey on the topic,… Read more »

National Ag Week: Focus on Climate

We’re winding down National Ag Week with this post on Agriculture and Climate. IATP provides a brief summary and some great resources below.  And speaking of resources, you can download our Food and the Climate Crisis poster/placemat right here. Stay tuned for the launch of PHP’s Climate Challenge this summer! From the Institute for Agriculture… Read more »

Happy National Ag Week: March 10-16

Yes, this week is National Ag Week, a recognition and celebration of agriculture in the United States. Throughout the week, our strategic partner in Minnesota, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) is sharing their excellent investigative work, analysis and campaigns to move toward a fairer and sustainable agricultural system in the U.S. and… Read more »

Pigs and the First Amendment

Environmental issues, and in particular environmental justice, were prominent topics at our General Assembly last month. The update below on the smelly issue of hog waste in North Carolina is brought to you by Politico, which has a great daily e-newsletter called Morning Agriculture. If you wish to subscribe, you enter your email here.  Also… Read more »

Stink over hog farms

pigs eating grain Presbyterians have expressed concern for those who work in the livestock industry, the treatment of animals, and the environmental impacts of meat produced in factory farm operations. This morning’s news talks about one notable state, where the meat industry has exploded over the past 15 years. North Carolina is now home to thousands of livestock… Read more »

The Rise of Big Meat

chicken The PC(USA) passed a resolution in 2016 on Factory Farms (see webpage here) with three major concerns: Humane treatment of animals; Environmental concerns about animal agriculture, including the concerns of ‘fence line’ communities located near factory farms); Support for farmworkers and processing plant workers, people of color farmers, and family farmers and ranchers . The following webinar… Read more »

Banning documentation of farm animals abuse would make farmworkers more vulnerable

Posted by Harvesting Justice – the blog of Farmworker Justice | 19 Apr 2011 08:42 AM PDT Written by Jessica Felix-Romero The New York Times published an article on April 13th titled States Look to Ban Efforts to Reveal Farm Abuse in which reporter A.G. Sulzberger writes about pending legislation to criminalize taking or distributing photos or videos taken at agricultural facilities without the express permission of the facility management. The proposed law has a primary focus on stopping animal rights activists from exposing illegal or inhuman treatment of animals. However, this type of legislation has significant repercussions for farmworkers. Farmworker Justice invited attorney Melody Fowler-Green to blog on the potential impacts restricting video collection would have on farmworkers who are often working in isolated settings with limited ability to document violations of law or abuse that they experience.

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swine flu 1999

There have been many warnings from our past about the looming threat of pandemic influenza emerging from large-scale hog operations. It now appears that six of the eight genetic components in the currently circulating virus are direct descendants of a swine flu virus that first emerged in North Carolina a decade ago. That bug was discovered in August 1998, at a 2,400-head breeding facility in Newton Grove, NC, where all the sows suddenly came down with a phlegmatic cough. Pregnant animals spontaneously aborted their litters.

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Hillary Clinton and Big Meat

Hillary and big meat? We’ll get to that in a minute. John Edwards, for his part, has opposed factory farming in North Carolina, the state with the highest number of hog factory farms in the country. In Iowa last week,…

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