On last night's ABC World News , Friday August 20, the lead story was the huge egg recall now in process. Close to half a billion eggs are being recalled due to a salmonella outbreak. What was notable about ABC's coverage was the focus on the living conditions of hens on factory farms. Nathan Runkle from Mercy for Animals (www.MercyForAnimals.org) was featured in the segment. We saw video taken by his group at a farm in Maine that is connected to one of the brands being recalled. The video showed the abysmal conditions while the ABC voiceover told us,
"Critics say it's likely not the case there are just a few rotten eggs in the poultry business. Conditions like these are fairly common."
You can watch the segment on line at:
http://tinyurl.com/22oc7vo
Please send ABC a huge thank you for making the animal welfare message part of the story. Positive feedback for animal friendly coverage encourages more of it.
ABC World News takes comments at
http://tinyurl.com/yzxe6wn
I send thanks to activist Teresa D'amico for making sure we saw the segment.
On CNN's Headline News Network, Jane Velez Mitchell's coverage was also superb and focused on the animals. She aired video from the Humane Society of the United States showing cages of hens stacked high on top of each other. She interviewed HSUS's Dr Michael Greger who spoke about the contaminated airborne fecal dust in the sheds, and the flies and rodents breeding in the huge manure pits beneath the cages. He explained that extreme confinement of hens in cages leads to increased salmonella contamination and that
"Caging hens is not just cruel but it is a public health menace for consumers."
Jane Velez Mitchell made sure viewers learned that 98% of the eggs sold in the USA come from hens kept in battery cages.
You can view the segment on line at: http://tinyurl.com/2czdqs3
We have come to expect frequent and strong coverage of animal issues from Jane Velez Mitchell, but we must not take her for granted. While she personally has a passion for animal advocacy issues, positive feedback from viewers makes it easier for her to get her producers on board animal stories. So please send her your thanks at http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form5.html?106
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 only if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line.)
Please go to http://tinyurl.com/254ulkx to check out Karen Dawn's book, "Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals," which was chosen last year by the Washington Post as one of the "Best Books of The Year!"
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Date: Sat Aug 21 19:29:01 2010
