Animal News You Can Use: History in the making

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History was made this week outside the Massachusetts Statehouse, with a press conference

announcing
a new ballot measure to end the cruelest confinement of factory farm animals, and the sales
of products emanating from those systems. Want to volunteer for the effort?
Sign up now!

Speaking of factory farms, should the egg industry
and USDA be baking chickens alive? Yes, that’s a real proposal from
USDA—on which I offer some thoughts in

today
’s Cedar Rapids Gazette.

Big Pork suffered a Big Loss recently, when a court
allowed an HSUS lawsuit over misuse of federal pork check-off dollars
to proceed. Check out this good description of the case by

Farm and Food File
, concluding: “Little wonder, then, why Big
Meat hates the Humane Society. It is shining lights into corners that
most in U.S. agriculture, often even USDA, want kept dark.”

Finally, as a Point of Inquiry listener, I was honored to discuss factory farming as

this week’s guest
.

P.S.
Video of the week
: If your bucket list includes seeing an elephant playing with a ribbon, today you can cross it off.