In These Times

It seems strange that the prison work-release workers were allowed to particpate in the union election. They aren't "real" employees, and would not be "real" union menbers. I'm thinking that most of the prisoners voted along with management. I hope that the outcome of the election did not hinge on the prisoner vote............ The union website reports on a strike by workers against Tyson Foods. There are listed several issues in dispute. This seems to be the first strike ever against Tyson, in this plant, which has apparently been unionized for quite some time. Link is here: http://www.ufcw.org/issues_and_actions/tyson_families_stand_up/index.cfm

Posted to Processing Pain at Smithfield Foods

Re Mark Winne's Meat Industrial Complex I thought that this was a pretty good article, but confusing in that he fails to recognize some basic differences in the chicken, dairy, hog, and beef cattle industries. I was also not clear in his definition of what constitutes a "factory farm". The factory farm term is generally so muddled that just throwing it out there without definition is pretty useless. I have my own idea of what it is, but I can tell that he uses the term somewhat differently. I would like to see him focus on the hog industry, which has …

Posted to Meat-Industrial Complex

I think that poor countries with starving children don't buy grain to feed them because either they don't have the money to buy grain, or else they are using the money that they do have for other things than buying grain. If they wished to buy grain, grain merchants would show up with the grain for them regardless of the US meat consumption charts. I would like for US hog production to revert to primarily small operator status. This would be better, I believe, for our environment, for rural communities, and for the pigs. There is enough solid data here to …

Posted to Meat-Industrial Complex

In the seventies, the local market for wheat was near $5.00 per bushel, and wheat could be bought at the port of Houston in the $5.50 to $6.00 range. After the wheat boycot was used as a weapon against the USSR in 1979 the price crashed by about 50%. For the next 15 years, wheat could be purchased for export at the port of Houston for about $3.00 to 3.50 a bushel. I'm not sure that the cheap wheat price (and corn and other grains generally follow wheat in pricing), made much of a difference in impoverished countries. Indeed, it may …

Posted to Meat-Industrial Complex

I was not blaming the poor in impoverished countries for being hungry, it was nyvegan who claimed that I was. I may have not been clear in my comments, and that would not be a first, but I simply meant that a simple drop in the world market for grain will not result in relief for the hungry of those countries. As I pointed out, there have been long intervals when world grain prices were ridiculously cheap, and it did not help to any marked extent. I was not at all suggesting that the poor of these countries were buying beer …

Posted to Meat-Industrial Complex

I see that we don't do links here in this forum...........that reference was to www.foodfirst.org...............JP

Posted to Meat-Industrial Complex

Tip of the hat to citizen........ I've enjoyed reading your posts on this issue. I found this article on Truthout.org, and followed their link here. I'm a wheat farmer and cattle rancher and lifelong liberal democrat, and am particularly interested in issues like factory farming. Our family has raised hogs also, in the past, and in my teens I took care of a very large hen house of ours, which produced fertile eggs that were taken to a hatchery in Paris, Texas. I would not be able to go into the hog or chicken business today, because of the cheap hogs …

Posted to Meat-Industrial Complex

Here is an interesting overview of meatpacker involvement in the vertically integrated factory farming of hogs. The report is a couple of years old, but the decribed dynamics continue, and the percentage of US hog production controlled by packers has progressed. http://www.oligopolywatch.com/2003/12/28.html Senator Tom Harkin has introduced a bill, The Competitive and Fair Agricultural Markets Act of 2006, which attempts to correct at least some of the problems caused by factory farming of livestock, as well as grains and vegetables. Note that a wide assortment of groups are supporting this bill. http://www.agribusinesscenter.org/headlines.cfm?id=952 ..........JP

Posted to Meat-Industrial Complex

Yes, Frog, dining on locally made bread and cheese, perhaps washed down with a fresh local wine...........I think that making one's point doesn't get much better than that.........Is Cherbourg in your neighborhood? I always wanted to go there and get me one of those umbrellas.........JP

Posted to Meat-Industrial Complex

This will be a little off track from what nyvegan has been discussing, but I have gotten somewhat of a burr under my saddle, and want to see if this makes any sense at all to the rest of you. First of all, I don't care for McDonalds. I consider it a third rate cafe that I only grab a burger there if I'm on the interstate and there is not much of any other choice. That said, I have sat idly by while a long line of bullies has beaten up McDonalds for transgressions real or imagined or maybe just …

Posted to Meat-Industrial Complex

Posted to Meat-Industrial Complex

It may be naive to maintain that an outmoded concept like fairness has some relevance in today's world........but of course I'm naive........I never said that I wasn't. After 9/11, when Bush invaded Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with it, I was telling folks that this was, among other things like crazy, unfair. Even some liberals, like Thomas Friedman, were maintaining that even though it seemed unfair, that it was important to get the message over to the Muslim world that If They Fuck With The Bull, They Get The Horn.........This was going to be effective, so they thought, …

Posted to Meat-Industrial Complex

Frog, of course I don't think what a person thinks is ever unfair or unjust. If you think that animal-testing centers should be closed, that's just an opinion, as good as anyone else's, not terrorism in any way...... My point in using this example is to say that targeting a medical researcher's babysitter's mother's coworker's aunt for abuse is unfair and unjust, even if it results in the researcher being unable to get a sitter on the night of a big event. I realize that this example is off topic, and really does not have any thing to do with factory …

Posted to Meat-Industrial Complex

Frog......... Fair enough............JP

Posted to Meat-Industrial Complex

Posted to Meat-Industrial Complex