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pork bak

3/19

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AN 10 26

I've got to hand it to Washington's Republican policymakers. They've come up with a truly remarkable way that, they promise, will vastly expand the number of small businesses in America. Great!

This is personal for me, for I grew up in a family that had a Main Street business in small-town Texas, so I know how hard it is for little guys to battle the raw monopoly power of corporate chains. Thus, I cheered the GOP ... until I learned that their small business proposal is just another big business scam.

Far from actually increasing the number of small enterprises, Trump bureaucrats are merely redefining "small" to include BIG. For example, the Small Business Administration has long categorized a business as small if it had less than $25 million in yearly sales. But they've now jacked that definition up by 1,000%! Indeed, even some billion-dollar giants can now -- HOCUS POCUS -- qualify as small.

This is much worse than a statistical ruse, for it means that very large outfits with Wall Street backing, Washington lobbyists and slick corporate lawyers will suddenly take the grants, contracts and other government benefits intended to advance genuine Main Street innovators and competitors. In short, the GOP's cynical scheme is using the small business label to overpower those very enterprises. It's a deliberate rigging of the rules by today's right-wing government officials to help big business grab public money -- increasing the power of corporate elites to eliminate competitors... and further monopolize our economy.

Remember this deceit when Republican congress critters run corporate-financed election ads this fall claiming to "looove" small business. Yeah ... love it to death.

TWO-LEGGED HOGS TRYING TO RULE AG POLICY

Warning: This is a sob story that might bring you to tears. Or make you upchuck in disgust.

It's about hogs -- both the four-legged species and the more piggish, two-legged breed of agribusiness executives. The latter have long profited from cruel abuse of millions of hogs caged in their monopolistic system and now the agbiz giants have launched a lobbying campaign called SOB -- "Save Our Bacon." It's not a plea to save the abused animals, but to save the abusers' profits!

It turns out that most consumers don't like animal abuse, so states are passing laws to prevent such corporate practices. This has led to a vibrant new market for humanely raised pork, already gaining more than a fourth of national pork sales.

"Ouch," squealed the factory farm giants, feeling the pinch of real competition. Rather than clean up their methods, though, the monopolists have raced to Washington, demanding that Congress "save their bacon" by artificially and autocratically rigging the market. Their Save Our Bacon act would usurp states' rights to set their own standards for animal welfare.

This is not an "academic free market issue." In recent state ballot initiatives, voters have overwhelmingly endorsed ethical standards for animal agriculture. Moreover, responsible family-farm producers have quickly responded to this growing new market, upgrading their facilities to meet the new state standards of humane production.

Yet, rather than embracing this success for animals, farmers and consumers -- here come tiny cliques of corporate profiteers like the National Pork Producers Council. They're wielding their Big Money lobbying muscle, trying to overrule the public interest ... and the political will of America's majority.

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https://theintercept.com/2022/10/10/supreme-court-pork-california-rights/

FOR DECADES,Supreme Court justices on the right have framed themselves as committed to “states’ rights.” True, they might appear to be, and even act like, extremist activists, driven to serve the Republican Party and forge a Christo-nationalist state. They are, however, in fact simply federalists to the bone — which we know for sure because of their insistence on it.

As such, in a significant case on this term’s docket, I’m sure we can expect these right-wing justices to duly rule in favor of the state of California and its right to pass animal welfare laws, allowing the state to regulate the pork sold within its sovereign state borders.

Well, maybe we can’t really expect the ruling for “states’ rights.” We must remember, after all, that this is a case about a progressive law, passed in a blue state, that challenges the unbridled power and private interests of a major industry.

Ruling in favor of industry would set yet another grim precedent, potentially curtailing the ability of states to enforce progressive industry regulations.

On Tuesday, oral arguments will begin in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, a case in which the pork industry is challenging the constitutionality of a California law regulating the worst cruelties of mass meat and egg production. The pork producers are arguing that California’s law ends up forcing them to change their procedures outside California’s borders at significant cost.

If the justices rule on the side of the pork producers, it will be only the latest case to expose the illusion of so-called states’ rights that conservative legal forces have spent 200 years pushing on the public.

There would also be widespread implications: Ruling in favor of industry would set yet another grim precedent, potentially curtailing the ability of states to enforce progressive industry regulations and protections. Everything from state laws on workers’ rights to environmental standards to further animal welfare issues could be challenged.

https://theintercept.com/2022/10/08/smithfield-animal-rights-piglets-trial/

https://theintercept.com/2022/10/08/smithfield-animal-rights-piglets-trial/

Related

Activists Acquitted in Trial for Taking Piglets From Smithfield Foods

Meanwhile, there could be another layer of irony: With the court’s proven selective federalism, we can be sure that any such precedent would be no barrier to conservative states enacting laws with economic consequences far beyond their state lines in future.

THE LAW IN question at the Supreme Court this week is California’s Prop 12, passed through a resounding 2018 ballot victory. The law bans the sale in California of meat and eggs from animals raised in extreme and brutal confinement, including in gestation crates where pregnant pigs are held, barely able to move, for most of their lives.

Such confinement has been condemned by all major animal welfare and veterinary organizations, and has been deemed a “profound danger to food and public health,” given the rife spread of disease, according to a brief written by the American Public Health Association and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, among others, for the case.

the pork producers contend that the law creates unconstitutional constraint on their business, as farmers in other states must change their practices to abide by Prop 12’s standards if they hope to sell pork in the nation’s most populous state.

The plaintiffs argue that the law violates the “dormant commerce clause” in the Constitution, which bars states from placing an “undue burden” on interstate commerce. They are arguing that, though the federal government has not actively weighed in on these regulations, the rules remain an issue of interstate commerce, for which federal oversight is constitutionally enshrined

Since most of the pork consumed in California is indeed produced out of state, and that the state is a market too big for major producers to forego, there’s little doubt that the Californian regulations would indeed affect interstate practices. The industry plaintiffs are suggesting that it would be an “undue burden” to move away from torturing animals in factory farms.

THE PORK PRODUCERS in the case say that upholding Prop 12 would mean that California voters are able to assert their policy choices onto the entire country’s economic practices — which the commerce clause is intended to prevent.

Given the nature of contemporary U.S. supply chains, however, most every in-state regulation of an industry will affect interstate commerce. The burden on commerce must be shown to be “excessive” for the law to be considered unconstitutional.

According to the plaintiffs, abiding by Prop 12 will increase farmers’ production costs by over $13 per pig, a 9.2 percent cost increase, raising the price of pork products considerably. At present, the prices of meat and animal products are kept low only by virtue of mass, high-speed production that keeps animals in abhorrent conditions, while workers in dangerous slaughterhouse jobs are horrifically underpaid. This is not an industry whose status quo should be defended.

Many of the industry giants are not aggressively siding with the National Pork Producers Council.

And many of the industry giants are not aggressively siding with the National Pork Producers Council, an association of pork interests. Other major pork producers have stated that the material costs of abiding by Prop 12 would be nowhere near so high. In a statement, Hormel Foods wrote that it “faces no risk of material losses from compliance with Proposition 12,” beyond adding manageable “complexity” to their supply chain. Other industry giants like Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods, Seaboard, and Clemens Food Group have said they are able to comply with the law.

It’s not a foregone conclusion that a majority of justices will side with the National Pork Producers Council. Both conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have, from an originalist stance, previously criticized the dormant commerce clause. And, of course, all six of the court’s right-wing justices have ruled in favor of state laws that have significant economic effects on the lives of those outside those states — such is the nature of living in an entangled national body politic. Just ask the abortion clinics now overwhelmed by out-of-state travel. Yet we should never underestimate the conservative majority’s pro-business bent, and its unabashed desire to quash any and all liberation struggles — be they for human or nonhuman lives.

If the pork producers succeed in overthrowing Prop 12, many millions of animals will continue to live and die in the most appalling suffering. The message will be sent too that when big business wants to challenge democratically passed state laws, they have several right-wing Supreme Court justices — those storied defenders of states’ rights — on their side.

an the conv 10 22

no lnx vid?

Supreme Court to hear arguments challenging a California law requiring humane animal treatment

David Favre and The Conversation October 04, 2022

Should Californians be able to require higher welfare standards for farm animals that are raised in other states if products from those animals are to be sold in California? The U.S. Supreme Court will confront that question when it hears oral argument in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross on Oct. 11, 2022.

Pork producers are challenging a law that California voters adopted in 2018 via ballot initiative with over 63% approval. It set new conditions for raising hogs, veal calves and egg-laying chickens, whose meat or eggs are sold in California. The state represents about 15% of the U.S. pork market.

At most commercial hog farms, pregnant sows are kept in “gestation crates” that measure 2 feet by 7 feet – enough room for the animals to sit, stand and lie down, but not enough to turn around. California’s law requires that each sow must have at least 24 square feet of floor space – nearly double the amount that most now get. It does not require farmers to raise free-range pigs, just to provide more square feet when they keep hogs in buildings.

Pork farmers say gestation crates keep pregnant sows from fighting, but animal welfare advocates call the devices inhumane.

The National Pork Producers Council argues that this requirement imposes heavy compliance costs on farmers across the U.S., since large hog farms may house thousands of sows and that it restricts interstate commerce. The Constitution’s commerce clause delegates authority to regulate interstate commerce to the federal government. In a series of cases over the past 50 years, the Supreme Court has made clear that it will strike down any state law that seeks to control commerce in another state or give preference to in-state commerce.

Farmers and animal welfare advocates understand that if California wins, states with the most progressive animal welfare policies – primarily West Coast and Northeast states – will be able to effectively set national standards for the well-being of many agricultural animals, including chickens, dairy and cattle. Conceivably, California might also be able to require basic conditions for human labor, such as minimum wage standards, associated with products sold in California.

Nine other states have already adopted laws requiring pork producers to phase out gestation crates. Massachusetts’s law would also apply to retail sales of pork raised elsewhere, like California’s, but its enforcement is on hold pending the Supreme Court’s ruling in the California case.

States control farm animal welfare

The main federal law that regulates living conditions for animals is the Animal Welfare Act, which was signed into law in 1966. Among other things, it requires the Department of Agriculture to adopt humane regulations for the keeping of animals that are exhibited in zoos and circuses or sold as pets. However, farm animals are explicitly exempted from the definition of “animal.”

While the federal government is mute on farm animal welfare, each state clearly has the power to regulate this issue within its borders. For example, in recent years, nine states have outlawed housing egg-laying chickens in “battery cages” that have been the industry standard for decades. These wire enclosures are so small that the birds cannot spread their wings.

Since many states still permit battery cages, egg-laying chickens’ quality of life depends on the state in which they reside.

Shelves lined with small wire cages, each holding multiple chickens.

Chickens in battery cages on an Iowa poultry farm.

It is also clear that the state of California has no power to adopt laws that are binding on the farmers of other states. This case falls between those two points – here’s how:

California’s market power

The California law says that if producers want to sell pork in California, they must raise pigs under conditions that comply with the state’s regulations. Farmers do not have to meet these standards unless they want to sell in California. The same requirement is applied to producers located in California and those based elsewhere, so the law does not directly discriminate between states in a way that would constitute a clear commerce clause violation.

Producers of eggs and veal who sell in California are on track to implement new space requirements for their animals under the law. In my view, however, much of the pork industry appears to be in denial. Instead of working out how to comply, the National Pork Producers Council wants the courts to set the California law aside.

Even as this case moves forward, however, major producers including Hormel and Tyson have said they will be able to comply with the California standard. Niman Ranch, a network of family farmers and ranchers who raise livestock humanely and sustainably, has filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court supporting California.

Admittedly, pork farmers have invested millions of dollars in their existing facilities, and the system efficiently produces huge quantities of cheap pork. But Californians have taken the position that this output comes at an ethically unacceptable cost to animals in the system.

Weighing ethics against compliance costs

In considering this case, the Supreme Court will confront two questions. First, does California’s requirement constitute a burden on interstate commerce? A U.S. District Court in California held that the answer was no, and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed this ruling.

There is no magical formula for what constitutes a burden on interstate commerce, so it is impossible to know in advance what the Supreme Court will say about this point of the case. The present court has not addressed this issue.

If the court should decide that the California law does restrict interstate commerce, it then must consider whether the measure meets the “Pike test,” which was set forth in the 1970 ruling Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc.. In this case, the court held that a state law that “regulates even-handedly” must be upheld unless the burden that the law imposes on interstate commerce “is clearly excessive in relation to the putative local benefits.” Put another way, is Californians’ social interest in better welfare for pigs substantially outweighed by the economic cost to producers?

In another 2010 ruling, United States v. Stevens, the court acknowledged that “the prohibition of animal cruelty itself has a long history in American law, starting with the early settlement of the Colonies.” However, the court concluded that depictions of animal cruelty – the plaintiff had been convicted for producing and distributing dogfighting videos – qualified as protected speech under the First Amendment and that this protection outweighed society’s interest in promoting animal welfare.

This video from the Rodale Institute, a nonprofit that conducts research, training and consumer education on organic agriculture, compares raising pigs on pasture to the large-scale confined model that dominates the pork industry.

Is a national standard in the cards?

Many animal welfare questions involve striking this kind of balance between ethical positions and economic consequences in a political context. It is like mixing oil and water, which makes predictions difficult.

The biggest unknown is what views the newest Supreme Court justices will bring to this case. Only four current justices – John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor – were members of the court when it ruled on the Stevens case in 2010. Will today’s court support California’s right to regulate products sold within its borders, or meat corporations’ economic arguments? How many justices will see farm animal welfare as an important public concern?

I expect that the court will uphold the California law – and that if this happens, within five years livestock producers will be proposing national legislation setting uniform welfare standards for farm animals. It is impossible to predict now whether a national law would improve animal welfare or adopt existing poor welfare practices.The Conversation

David Favre, Professor of Law at Michigan State University College of Law, Michigan State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

GG

https://theintercept.com/2020/10/10/new-documents-reveal-how-the-animal-agriculture-industry-surveils-and-punishes-critics/

ANIMAL AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY GROUPS defending factory farms engage incampaigns of surveillance, reputation destruction, and other forms of retaliation against industry critics and animal rights activists, documents obtained through aFOIA request from the U.S. Department of Agriculture reveal. That the USDA possesses these emails and other documents demonstrates the federal government’s knowledge of, if not participation in, these industry campaigns.

These documents detail ongoing monitoring of the social media of news outlets, including The Intercept,which report critically on factory farms. They reveal private surveillance activities aimed at animal rights groups and their members. They include discussions of how to create a climate of intimidation for activists who work against industry abuses, including by photographing the activists and publishing the photos online. And they describe a coordinated ostracization campaign that specifically targets veterinarians who criticize industry practices, out of concern that veterinarians are uniquely well-positioned to persuasively and powerfully denounce industry abuses.

One of the industry groups central to these activities is the Animal Agriculture Alliance, which represents factory farms and other animal agriculture companies — or, as they playfully put it, they work for corporations “involved in getting food from the farm to our forks!” The groupboasts that one of its prime functions is “Monitoring Activism,” by which they mean: “We identify emerging threats and provide insightful resources on animal rights and other activist groups by attending their events, monitoring traditional and social media and engaging our national network."

[ Agriculture Alliance website]

https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2020/10/aaa7.png?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90

  1. Indeed, the Alliance frequently monitors and infiltrates conferences of industry critics and activists, then provides reports to their corporate members on what was discussed. As The Intercept previously noted whenreporting on**felony charges**brought against animal rights activists with Direct Action Everywhere,or DxE, for peaceful filming and symbolic animal rescues inside one Utah farm that suppliesWhole Foods and another owned bySmithfield— an action that showed how wildly at odds with reality is the bucolic branding of those farms — the Animal Agriculture Allianceissued a statementdenouncing the activists for (ironically) harming their animals and urging law enforcement and “policymakers” to intervene on behalf of the industry against the activists.

In the emails obtained by the FOIA request, the Alliance and its allies frequently encourage their members to alert the FBI and Department of Homeland Security regarding actions by activists. In response to a project by DxE to create a map tracking factory farms, Lyle Orwig — chair of the agricultural company Charleston/Orwig, Inc. and a member of the Alliance board — proposed the retaliatory step of “taking photos of every DXE [sic] member” and posting them to the internet while accusing them of being “opposed to feeding the hungry.”...

[pigs suffocate covid surplus,she objected]

What alarmed Dr. Heath most was the emergence online of anonymous flyers which contained a “BEWARE” warning at the top, along with her photo and a string of accusations, some of which were false, that claimedshe harbors “an agenda that doesn’t include anything positive for our profession” and “expresses fondness” for “domestic terrorist organizations.” It warned that even allowing her access to the social media pages of veterinarians could be dangerous, and thus urged that she be blocked from all online forums, personal profiles, and social media groups....

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new ew 220

Trump's Plan to Privatize Pork Inspections Called 'a Recipe for Disaster' as Consumer Safety Groups Sue USDA

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new

Chart: How Renewable Energy Costs Are Falling

"We are embarking on coal's new era, but we have to face reality," said J.P. Richardson, chairman of the Virginia Coal and Energy Alliance, a mining industry group.

Part of that reality is that four of the energy board's states and territories—Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and Puerto Rico—are led by governors who are members of the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of 24 governors who have committed to work toward achieving the goals of the Paris climate agreement, despite Trump's moves to pull the U.S. out of that international accord.

"We are seeing more and more cities, states and utilities, in particular, that are moving toward clean energy," said Julie Cerqueira, the executive director of the alliance, who was not at the meeting. "Economically, it just makes sense. Coal is increasingly expensive" and "the clean energy sector produces a lot of jobs."

Dominion's View of the Future Is Low-Carbon

One of those utilities is Virginia-based Dominion Energy, which operates in 18 states and was one of the conference sponsors.

Instead of dwelling on coal, one of Dominion's top lobbyists, James Beamer, said the utility plans to cut its carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050.

He highlighted plans for new offshore wind power, for converting factory-scale farm hog waste to methane, and for new solar power. He also said the company is developing a new hydroelectric pump storage facility that will work like a large battery and be powered in part by renewable energy.

James Beamer, one of Dominion Energy’s top lobbyists, told the conference about the utility's goal to cut its carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050 with plans including more offshore wind power, solar power and pumped hydropower storage. Credit: James Bruggers

Other speakers touted what they considered time-tested attributes of coal as an energy source—its reliability and price, though analysts have found new wind and solar power, bolstered by battery storage,  is cheaper than coal in much of the U.S. now.

Wind and solar? It's too intermittent, the coal supporters say, omitting any mention of the growing use of energy storage. Sometimes the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, they said. 

Natural gas? It's a national security threat because natural gas plants rely on just-in-time delivery of fuel that could be disrupted by terrorists and doesn't perform as well in the extreme cold, they argued.

A speaker from the grid operator PJM, which serves 13 eastern and Midwestern states, acknowledged fuel security is important but said a stress test had found no threats to its grid reliability through at least 2023 as it shifts to more renewable energy and gas and less coal.

Kenneth Nemeth, executive director of the energy board, argued that coal-related jobs, security and reliability aren't being factored into decision electric utilities and regulators are making when they allow coal plants to close or approve new power sources. That needs to change, he said.

The Trump administration has tried to use those same arguments to bail out coal by suggesting that grid operators be required to buy power from uneconomical coal power plants in the name of national security. So far, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has rejected that idea.

Mini Coal Plants and Carbon Capture?

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see ranching and poultry

 primary on hurricane pollution NC

10/14 this is a category for industry

From kitchen tables worldwide, you can hear a chorus of parents chastising their children with the same refrain: “Stop playing with your food.”

Children aside, this rebuke needs to be loudly directed at the food fabricators of industrial agriculture. Corporate interests keep toying with the very nature of food — not to benefit consumers, family farmers, workers or the environment, but to fatten the profits of Silicon Valley tech giants, food monopolists and Wall Street financiers.

Meet Recombinetics, a high-tech gene manipulation corporation with bioengineers in its labs remaking farm animals — pigs, for example. Recombinetics wants to mess with the very DNA of Mother Nature’s oinkers to make them produce bigger litters to supply the pork factories of brand-name marketers. It is also genetically altering milk cows to withstand hotter weather so that climate change won’t reduce the output of huge dairy corporations.

This re-engineering of nature to build industrial Frankenanimals is being supported by such land-grant colleges as the University of California, Davis — your tax dollars at work! Of course, this corporate-government collusion faces a high hurdle in the marketplace, for consumers have demonstrated again and again that they don’t want the food they put on their tables tampered with by profiteering geneticists. The tamperers, though, have a solution to that problem: secrecy. The industry is lobbying lawmakers and regulators to outlaw any requirement that milk and meat produced by genetically altered animals be labeled as such. Better to keep consumers in the dark because… well, if given a free choice, people might reject Recombinetics in favor of natural food.

Rather than remake animals and remake the marketplace to benefit corporations that play with our food, let’s remake the corporate system that is trying to industrialize dinner. Corporate manipulators are not out to make food better or more affordable for us, but strictly to make it more profitable for them.

How’re you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen … Angus?

Not Angus the breed of cattle, and not the time-honored given name of many farm boys, but Angus the 1,000-pound “farmer of the future.” He’s actually not a he, but an it: a robot, toiling away on a hydroponic “farm” that is indoors, soilless and, yes, soulless. Angus is owned and programmed by a multimillion-dollar Silicon Valley startup named Iron Ox, and its homestead is hardly bucolic. It’s in an 8,000-square-foot concrete warehouse in a suburb south of San Francisco.

This farm bot is more of a heavy lifter than a heavy thinker. Basically, Angus wheels around the warehouse to lift, move and hand off large pallets of basil, bok choy and other produce to another robot that, so far, hasn’t earned a name. The human overseers of this robotic animal farm don’t wear John Deere “gimme caps,” but clean-room hairnets, apparently to prevent anything organic from contaminating the edibles or the robot.

Started by a Google engineer, Iron Ox hopes to install duplicates of its faux farm in metropolitan areas across the country. The obvious question is, Why? Well, for the greater good, claims the Googlite owner. “If we can feed people using robots, what could be more impactful than that?” Well, reconnecting our food system to nature, a democratic economy and human beings. The roboticists brag that local warehouses can provide fresher lettuce than what megafarms ship from thousands of miles away. But wait! Local farmers markets do that, do it even fresher and keep the consumer dollars in the community rather than siphoned off to Iron Ox and the Wall Street financiers of Angus robots.

In fact, the robotic indoor farm hucksters quietly concede that their real business plan depends on “sidestepping” the cost of human labor and local farm owners. Instead of spreading wealth to people and communities, their scheme concentrates food profits in a handful of absentee syndicators, rich investors and technology giants.

Deep in his digital brain, even Angus must know this is stupid.

Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes “The Hightower Lowdown,” a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America’s ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org.

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we grow subsidized GMO corn to feed to pigs that china does not want? --? 12/18.

https://www.alternet.org/environment/trumps-funding-restrictions-are-preventing-scientists-figuring-out-whats-fouling

Our nation’s first national river, theBuffalo Riverin Arkansas, wasbefouledlast summer by algae that sickened people, but the U.S. Geological Survey under Trump can’t decide if a nearby pig farm andmore than 3 million gallons of pig wasteeach year are to blame.

“If there’s more money, we’d love it,” Justus said.Biologist Billy Justus said the agency doesn’t have the funding to do the research to figure out whose pollution caused the algae to grow.

Cousins Jason Henson, Philip Campbell and Richard Campbell own C&H Hog Farms which was awarded an operating permit by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality in 2012. The state recently denied the business a new permit, but the farm is continuing to operate while it fights that decision.

The hog farm supplies the U.S. operations of JBS SA, the world’s largest meat processor. In Brazil, police recently arrested a controlling shareholder of the firm in connection with an investigation into illegal campaign contributions.

Former President Richard Nixon signed legislation in 1972 putting the Buffalo River in the stewardship of the National Park Service. The river runs for 153 miles from its start in the Boston Mountains through limestone bluffs and forests before joining the White River. People were baptized in the Buffalo River. Tourists hike along the Buffalo or kayak on it.

Former NASA astronaut Jim Reilly was confirmed by the Senate in April to lead the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Trump administration’s lack of interest in determining whether pig shit is contaminating our nation’s first national river is just one more example of Trump and his administration coddling up to polluters. Trump shrunk Bears Ears National Monument in Utah which could be explored for oil drilling and wants to lease 2.85 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve.

“People swim, fish, and paddle in the Buffalo River, and may be subject to contact with untreated swine waste,” said Dane Schumacher of theBuffalo River Watershed Alliance.

The hog farm is on Big Creek near Mount Judea in Newton County, 6.6 miles upstream of the Buffalo River. The liquefied manure is temporarily stored in holding ponds before workers spray it on fields.

The Buffalo River area is riddled with caves and sinkholes in land that water flows easily through. Many Newton County residents get their drinking water from wells.

Scientists injected dye into wells near the hog farm and found the ground was so porous that the colored water flowed into sinkholes and then beneath the Buffalo River and also migrated upstream.

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kpfa waterkeeper corp farms the contracter owns only the poo, kept poor so lagoon/spray only option (spray before hurricane t lower levels)

also coal ash

Will Hurricane Florence Flood North Carolina Factory Farms and Manure Pits?

When Hurricane Matthew hit North Carolina in 2016, it flooded more than 140 feces-strewn industrial-scale swine and poultry barns, more than a dozen open pits brimming with liquid hog waste and thousands of acres of manure-saturated fields. As Hurricane Florence—far bigger than Matthew—bears down on the state, Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Waterkeeper Alliance are prepared to again assess the impact on North Carolina's concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs.

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crony capitalism?

https://www.alternet.org/fake-news-and-other-white-meat-how-pork-became-poultry-and-why-it-matters

Back in the '90s, I spent an inordinate amount of time on two wildly unproductive pursuits: exploring the brave new world of the Internet, and arguing with people about the nature of pig meat. The more time that passes, the more I see how closely those two obsessions were related. Because whenever I hear someone parroting the phrase "fake news," a little part of me always hears "other white meat."

If we were to put pork on trial, I know that my case against its status as white meat would not be airtight. More than 30 years ago, the New York Times noted that the dictionary itself "lumps pork right in the white meat category along with chicken and turkey" (albeit secondarily). And as a casual meat eater myself, my primary focus when approaching food is usually just whether it's an animal or not. But the well-strategized evolution of pork, over an iconic 18 year-long campaign, was one of my first lessons in how profoundly public perception could be shifted profoundly, through the simple act of repetition.

Back in olden tymes, pork was uncontroversially considered a red meat, like beef or lamb. The reasons for the classifications are not singular: it was a means of distinguishing a certain type livestock from others like poultry, and also identifying foods with a higher myoglobin content, which gives them a redder pigment. But regardless of the reasoning, there wasn't much semantic debate over it, because meat ruled as the thing most likely to be found in the middle of your dinner plate.

Then the health conscious '70s and '80s came along, and a new supermarket favorite went bok bok bok all the way home. Facing rising more demand for low-fat consumer goods and rising poultry consumption, in 1987, food trend experts estimated that chicken was poised to "push pork out of second place in consumer hearts" behind beef. That year,:{the National Pork Producers Council rolled out an efficient new motto: "Pork. The other white meat.:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:" As the Times reported back then, an extravagant television and print campaign recast pork as a healthy, modern dish, one lower in fat and calories than its reputation would have you believe. "If you serve chicken because it's light and nutritious, you should serve the other white meat, pork, for the same reasons," boasted one early magazine ad. Pork was porky no more.

The strategy was a hit — over the next five years, pork sales would increase by 20 percent. (Five years later, the beef industry, taking a different approach, would patriotically declare of its product that"It's what's for dinner.":(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:/maxresdefault.jpg)) A 2000 study ranked "the other white meat" as the "the fifth most memorable promotional tagline in the history of contemporary advertising."

Not everyone, however, was swallowing the tetrazzini, and some nutritionists argued the campaign was "misleading."  Jayne Hurley, a nutritionist for the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, told the Los Angeles Times in 1991 that the industry had "not proved" that pork was truly "the other white meat."

The pork biz wasn't just talking the white meat talk, though. It was changing the nature of the product itself. In less than a decade, pork had become roughly 31 percent leaner, thanks to "breeding and a lower-fat diet." And that leanness also made for a lighter colored product.

Yet the distinctions around cuts and preparations have not always been clearcut in consumer minds. I still remember arguing with a friend in Boston that a plate of ribs was never going to be "white meat," and that this was the hill I'd gladly die on. I remember rolling my eyes when a dieting family member justified ordering a pulled pork sandwich because, "You know, it's white meat." "According to whom?" I'd replied, in the same combative mode I usually reserve for debating the artistic merit of "Love, Actually."

I'm not entirely sure why the pork thing still makes me want to fight so vehemently about it. After all, I've accepted that the dinosaur brontosaurus and planet Pluto that I grew up with have undergone some dramatic rebranding over the years. Maybe it's because I feel bad for the pigs. Others with more expertise than I certainly have their own thoughts. The D'Artagnan brand offers a history lesson on pigs and pork on its site, and advises that "The bland, pale meat of the factory-farmed pig is really not worth eating." Iowa State's Pork Industry Center says that "Pork that is very pale in various studies results in diminished eating quality." AnimalSmart suggests your pork "should be a nice reddish pink color to a purplish red. People think you want to pick lighter colored pork, but it is the opposite. The darker the pork is, the better it will taste if cooked properly." And Vice has explained why stressed out animals make paler, less flavorful meat. In other words, ask yourself why you'd really want the creature who gives you bacon and ham to be "white meat" in the first place. (If need be, feel free to also interrogate why you think "gluten free" means "nutritionally superior.")

But I think the deeper reason I get so uppity is that over time, pork has become my metaphor for something seemingly becoming real because it's said often enough. You know why Michael Jackson is the King of Pop? Because he decided he was and then got people to repeat it a lot. In the early '90s, hedubbed himself  with that title and insisted that MTV refer to him by it. Now, even in death, the legitimacy of his crown remains undisputed.

More recently, Florida House candidate Melissa Howard was caught falsifying information about her college education and then turned around to accuse the media reporting it of "fake news." It wasn't hard to tell where she learned that doublethink can be incredibly effective. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Truth is fake. Lies are alternative facts. An unedited tape is "fudged." Pork is poultry, and not-meat is meat, maybe?

In the abstract, any brand — whether it's an industry or an individual — can choose its own descriptors. So what if what was once red is now deemed white? How different is that from a mint proclaiming itself a "freshmaker"? Or a beer anointing itself "the champagne" or "king" of beers? It's all just adjectives anyway. But the pork thing has always stuck with me, and always made me deeply uneasy. I can Mandela effect as well as the next guy and I only earlier this month learned that perspiration does not detoxify. I bring my own bias and half baked bag of baggage to the table every time. Yet I also watched, for two decades of my own life, how people could go from believing one thing to another, based not so much on evidence but just hearing it confidently and frequently told to them. And if we can be that swayed about a grocery store product, well, just imagine the havoc that somebody with real life and death power, dominating a 24/7 news cycle, could wreak by using the same two-word soundbite, again and again, for every challenge to his authority.

==

https://www.ecowatch.com/factory-farming-air-pollution-lawsuits-2583239804.html

Rural Americans Breathe Life Into the Fight Against Factory Farm Polluters

By Sacoby Wilson

As U.S. livestock farming becomes more industrial, it is changing rural life. Many people now live nearConcentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs)—large facilities that can house thousands of animals in close quarters. Neighbors have to contend with noxious odors, toxic emissions and swarms of insects, and have had little success in obtaining relief—but this could be changing.

On April 26, Murphy Brown LLC, a division of Smithfield Foods, was required to pay $75,000 in compensatory damages and $50 million in punitive damages in a nuisance lawsuit filed by ten residents of Bladen County, North Carolina over impacts from a nearby hog farm. On June 29, another North Carolina jury awarded $25 million to a couple in Duplin County in a similar lawsuit against Smithfield Foods. Other cases are pending in North Carolina and Iowa.

Smithfield Foodsis the largest hog processor and producer in the world, so these verdicts are major victories for people organizing against industrialized animal agriculture. Based on my experience studying environmental health at the community level, I see them as breakthroughs after decades of government failure to protect rural communities from negative impacts of CAFOs.

Threats to Health and the Environment

Iowa and North Carolina are the largest pork-producing states in the nation. Hog farms generated $6.8 billion in sales in Iowa in 2012 and $2.9 billion in North Carolina.

They also produce massive quantities of waste. Unlike human biosolids, which must meet regulatory standards for pathogen levels, vector attraction reduction and metal content, no such standards are required for CAFO waste. Studies have linked exposure to hog farm emissions, such as ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, to symptoms including increased stress, anxiety, fatigue, mucous membrane irritation, respiratory conditions, reduced lung function and elevated blood pressure.

Hog waste can contaminate ground and surface water reserves through runoff, leaching and rupturing of storage facilities. High quantities of nitrates and phosphates, from both animal waste and fertilizers used to grow feed, can also contaminate rivers and streams.

Bacteria and residual antibiotics present in hog waste have the potential to cause acute illness and infection, as well as antibiotic resistance. Rural communities are especially vulnerable to water contamination because many rely on private well water, which is not regulated by government agencies.

 Agriculture and Agronomy portal| - v - t - e |

The Smithfield Packing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, was the site of a long dispute between the company and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), which had tried since the early 1990s to organize the plant's roughly 5,000 hourly workers.[52] Workers voted against the union in 1994 and 1997, but the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleged that unfair election conduct had occurred and ordered a new election. During the 1997 election the company is alleged to have fired workers who supported the union, stationed police at the plant gates, and threatened plant closures. In 2000, according to Human Rights Watch, Smithfield set up its own security force with "special police agency" status under North Carolina law, and in 2003 arrested workers who supported the union.[50]

Smithfield appealed the NLRB's ruling that the 1997 election was invalid, and, in 2006, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found in favor of the NLRB.[53] Smithfield and the workers at Tar Heel called on the UFCW to hold a new election, and the company agreed to pay half the cost of an independent observer, but the union argued that Smithfield would not allow a fair election and should have recognized card-check organizing.[54] After a year-long series of public demonstrations, several lockouts, and a shareholder meeting that was disrupted by shareholders supporting the union, the UFCW called for a boycott of Smithfield products. In October 2007, Smithfield countered by filing a federal RICO Act lawsuit against UFCW.[52] In October 2008, the UFCW and Smithfield reached an agreement, under which the union agreed to suspend its boycott campaign in return for the company dropping its RICO lawsuit and allowing another election. In December 2008, workers voted 2,041 to 1,879 in favor of joining the UFCW, bringing the 15-year fight to an end.[55]

Justice Department penalty

In January 2009, Smithfield was assessed a $900,000 penalty by the U.S. Justice Department to settle charges that the company engaged in illegal merger activity during its takeover of Premium Standard Farms LLC in 2006.[56]

Philanthropy

The Smithfield-Luter Foundation, established in 2002, is a non-profit organization that acts as the philanthropic wing of Smithfield Foods, dedicated primarily to providing scholarship opportunities to the children and grandchildren of Smithfield employees. It has given $5 million to Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, to establish the Luter School of Business, and $5 million to the University of Virginia Cancer Center in Charlottesville, Virginia.[57] The Foundation also provides support for its "learners to leaders" programs, begun in 2006, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Denison, Iowa; and Norfolk, Virginia.[58]

Opposition to Prop 37

Throughout 2012, Smithfield contributed $683,900 to a $46 million campaign known as "The Coalition Against The Costly Food Labeling Proposition," sponsored by some Farmers and Food Producers.[59] The organization was set up to oppose an unsuccessful California citizen's initiative, known as Proposition 37, that would have required mandatory labeling of foods containing genetically modified ingredients.[60]

Sports Sponsorships

In 2012, Smithfield announced a 15 race sponsorship with Richard Petty Motorsports and driver Aric Almiroladriving the #43 Ford in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. The sponsorship was then increased to 25 races beginning in 2013. Smithfield rotates its brands on the car, featuring Smithfield, Eckrich, Gwaltney, and Farmland. It is also the official food of Richmond International Raceway in Henrico County, Virginia about an hour northwest of Smithfield HQ.

Governance

See also

Notes

===2006

Smithfield, Tar Heel, N.C., Workers Continue Walk-Out at World's Largest Pork Plant for Second Day ; Company Continues to Refuse to Meet With Workers, Law Says Smithfield Not Required to Fire Employees for Social Security No Matches

TAR HEEL, N.C., Nov. 17 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Hundreds of predominantly Latino and African-American workers walked out of and shut down the world's largest pork processing plant yesterday in Tar Heel, N.C., in a spontaneous protest over a recent wave of firings at the plant. The walk-out continued this morning. Hundreds of workers arrived at the plant this morning at 5 a.m.

Smithfield Packing in Tar Heel has a long history of firing workers organizing for their rights. The U.S. Court of Appeals recently upheld the National Labor Relations Board findings that Smithfield threatened, harassed, fired and threatened with firing workers engaged in trying to secure the protection of a union contract. In another case, Smithfield was found to have used its private company police force to assault and threaten workers with arrest by federal immigration authorities.

"This is nothing new," says Gene Bruskin, director of the Smithfield Justice Campaign, "Smithfield consistently violates the law and uses threats, fear and intimidation to keep workers toiling in horrendous conditions."

The company claims that it fired workers who were unable to match social security numbers to their names which is in direct violation of the regulations of the Social Security Administration. Later, the company said it was complying with requests from the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Neither agency requires that workers be fired if there are discrepancies.

"Smithfield fired these workers following a spate of activities in which workers began to stand up and demand their rights. The timing reeks of Smithfield's continued pattern of intimidation and fear," continued Bruskin.

In Smithfield operations where workers are represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), contract language provides for a systematic and constructive process for workers and the employer to resolve issues such as immigration and work status. "Smithfield is clearly using the 'no match' issue as a means to terrorize immigrant workers regardless of their legal status with the express purpose of suppressing the worker-led organizing that is reaching across racial lines in unprecedented numbers," said Bruskin.

Smithfield Tar Heel has been the subject of two Human Rights Watch reports documenting widespread dangerous conditions. A recent report by Research Associates of America, uses data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to document skyrocketing injuries at the plant. This year alone serious injuries rose at the rate of 80 percent.

The Smithfield Justice campaign -- http://www.smithfieldjustice.com -- a coalition of immigrant rights, civil rights, faith, labor and student groups has launched a holiday campaign to ask consumers not to use products from the Smithfield plant in Tar Heel at their holiday parties.

Contact: Leila McDowell of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, 202-728-1829, LMcDowell@ufcw.org or Web: http://www.smithfieldjustice.org

grist

The outbreak of a new flu strain — a nasty mash-up of swine, avian, and human viruses — has infected 1,000 people in Mexico and the U.S., killing 68. The World Health Organization warned Saturday that the outbreak could reach global pandemic levels.

Is Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork packer and hog producer, linked to the outbreak? Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carroll, raise 950,000 hogs per year, according to the company Web site.

On Friday, the U.S. disease-tracking blog Biosurveillance published a timeline of the outbreak containing this nugget, dated April 6 (major tip of the hat to Paula Hay, who alerted me to the Smithfield link on the Comfood listserv and has written about iton her blog, Peak Oil Entrepreneur):

Residents [of Perote] believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak. According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to “flu.” However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms. It was unclear whether health officials had identified a suspected pathogen responsible for this outbreak.

From what I can tell, the possible link to Smithfield has not been reported in the U.S. press. Searches of Google News and the websites of the New York Times, Washington Post, andWall Street Journal all came up empty. The link is being made in the Mexican media, however. “Granjas Carroll, causa de epidemia en La Gloria,” declared a headline in the Vera Cruz-based paper La Marcha. No need to translate that, except to point out that La Gloria is the village where the outbreak seems to have started. Judging from the article, Mexican authorities treat hog CAFOs with just as much if not more indulgence than their peers north of the border, to the detriment of surrounding communities and the general public health. Get this:

De acuerdo con uno de los habitantes de la comunidad, Eli Ferrer Cortés, los desechos fecales y orgánicos que produce Granjas Carroll no son tratados adecuadamente, lo que genera contaminación del agua y del viento en la region.

My rough translation: According to one community resident, the organic and fecal waste produced by Granjas Carrol isn’t adequately treated, creating water and air pollution in the region. I witnessed — and smelled — the same thing in Hardin County, Iowa, a couple of years ago, another area marked by intensive industrial hog production. The article goes on to say that area residents have long complained of “fetid odors” in the air and water, and swarms of flies hovering around waste lagoons. Like their counterparts who live in CAFO-heavy U.S. areas, they also complain of respiratory ailments. Now, with 30 percent of the area’s residents now infected with the virulent flu bug, people are demanding that state and federal authorities inspect hog operations there. So far, reports La Marcha, the response has been: nada.

The Mexico City daily La Jornada has also made the link. According to the newspaper, the Mexican health agency IMSS has acknowledged that the orginal carrier for the flu could be the “clouds of flies” that multiply in the Smithfield subsidiary’s manure lagoons.

I’ll be in touch with contacts in Mexico as this story develops  — and I’ll be curious to see whether the U.S. media explores the link with Smithfield’s Mexico operation.

Note: In the original version of this post, I had called production at Granjas Carroll “nearly equal to Smithfield’s total U.S. production.” I had been confusing total production at Granjas Carroll — 950,000 hogs produced in fiscal 2008 — with the number of sows, or breeding pigs, kept by Smithfield in the United States. According to my source — “Concentration of Ag Markets, 2007″ (PDF) by Hendrickson and Heffernan — Smithfield keeps 1.2 million sows. Actual hog production is much larger — thus Smithfield’s total U.S. hog production is much larger than Granjas Carroll’s. I regret the error.

Tom Philpott was previously Grist's food writer. He now writes for Mother Jones.