Today, Tuesday July 31, the New York Times includes an editorial headed, "A Factory Farm Near You." (pg A18.) It opens with:
"Once upon a time, only a decade or so, it wasn’t hard to know where factory hog farms were because they were nearly all in North Carolina. But since those days, the practice of crowding together huge concentrations of animals — hogs, poultry, dairy cows, beef cattle — in the interests of supposed efficiency has spread around the country."
It discusses the spread of factory farming, and the Food and Water Watch group's interactive map tracking that pervasive growth: www.factoryfarmmap.org
And it ends with: "It raises two of the fundamental questions facing American agriculture. Do we pursue the logic of industrialism to its limits in a biological landscape? And how badly will doing so harm the landscape, the people who live in it and the democracy with which they govern themselves?"
You can read the whole piece on line at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/opinion/31tue4.html
With its focus on environmental damage and loss of local political control, the editorial neglects to mention the plight of the animals on factory farms. Its appearance on the editorial page, however, gives us an opportunity to raise that issue there. Most New York Times readers know nothing of sow gestation crates and little about battery hen cages or indoor dairy farms. Please help spread the shocking news.
If you know little about those issues, there is a wealth of information for you, and disturbing photos, at www.factoryfarming.com
The New York Times takes letters at letters@nytimes.com
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Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)
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Date: Tue Jul 31 10:21:28 2007
