Editor’s note: This column is published here with the permission of the author, Leah Garcés.
Over the past few months, news reports of China’s African swine fever problem, which is decimating the country’s pig population, has dominated agriculture and trade headlines. The disease outbreak has affected markets across
Continue Reading African swine fever’s lesson: Big animal ag is fragile and biohazard suits are not unusual
New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof wrote a powerful piece on the chicken industry in December 2014. It detailed a whistleblower chicken farmer named Craig Watts who risked everything to call attention to the inherent inhumane practices within his own industry. Kristof concluded: “Torture a single chicken and you risk
Continue Reading McDonald’s has a big chicken problem
Death threats. Paying off journalists. Threatening letters. Are these tactics used by Don Corleone in “The Godfather”? Or is it our own government’s efforts, perhaps with agribusiness lobby interests pushing them along, confronting what they seem to think is a major threat: a food company called Hampton Creek. Let’s review
Continue Reading Is there a government conspiracy against Hampton Creek?
This week, the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association, the National Chicken Council, and the National Turkey Federation, will host a U.S. Poultry Industry Sustainability Workshop on May 24-25 in Atlanta. Invited attendees included key poultry integrators, retailers, food service companies and restaurants. They have shut the doors, however, to any
You might not have caught it, but at the end of Stephanie Strom’s article this past weekend in The New York Times, Perdue made a big reveal.
Back in December 2014, Compassion in World Farming released a video showing chickens raised in tightly packed warehouses, laying on feces-ridden litter and
Continue Reading Perdue’s Big Reveal: ‘We Need Happier Birds’
The World Expo, being held in Milan, Italy, from May 1-Oct. 1, 2015, and themed, “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life,” is bringing together 140 countries to unravel one of the world’s greatest challenges. Alongside the Expo, the U.S. brings its pavilion titled, “American Food 2.0: United to Feed
Continue Reading Factory Farming: The Ignored Elephant in the Room
Last month, something unprecedented happened that rocked the chicken industry’s world. Perdue contract farmer Craig Watts decided he’d had enough. Together with my organization, Compassion in World Farming, he released a video that gave the public a unique view into the secretive world of the chicken industry. 
He revealed what
Continue Reading Chicken Industry Acts More Like Ostriches
Earlier this year, Cassandra White of Clarkston, GA, gathered more than 165,000 signatures for a Change.org petition asking Kroger to stop misleading customers. Kroger’s Simple Truth Natural Chicken bore the words “raised in a humane environment.” White said, “When I go to the grocery store, I read the labels carefully
Continue Reading Consumer Marketing Win: Ending ‘Humanewashing’
“Eat like your ancestors.” The phrase brings about feelings of nostalgia for all that is good, simple and natural about food. Perdue’s Harvestland campaign slogan conjures up an image of farming ways of the past. Its website points consumers to chicken recipes from the turn of the century. At that
Continue Reading Is Perdue’s ‘Eat Like Your Ancestors’ Campaign Calling for Chicken Industry Reform?
Peering through a sunlit barn in rural Kansas, fourth-generation poultry farmer Frank Reese rattles off names of chicken breeds that were once common – Barred Rock, Dark Brahma, Ancona, Rhode Island Red, Dark Cornish. He points to an elegant-looking bird perching on some nest boxes. The bird, a Rose Comb
Continue Reading Dead-End Genetics: Why the Chicken Industry Needs a New Roadmap
