Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Gestation crates, also known as farrowing crates or sow stalls, are metal enclosures measuring 7 feet long and 2 feet wide. Although pork producers continue to use such crates in Iowa, they have been banned in several other states as inhumane.
A New York-based livestock advocacy group is using news of a blaze at a central Iowa hog confinement to speak out against industrialized agriculture.
Fire officials continue to investigate the April 1 fire at Tamco Pork, located in central Iowa between Marshalltown and Grinnell. Eight fire departments spent more than four hours fighting flames in high winds. Although the incident did not result in a loss of human life, 600 hogs died in the blaze.
“The tragic deaths of so many pigs in the fire that swept through the Marshall County hog confinement facility is a testament to the folly of factory farming. Had these animals been given access to the outdoors, they would likely still be alive,” said Gene Baur, president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, the group behind efforts to publicize the story.
“Modern factory farms pack as many animals as possible into as small a space as possible. Often wallowing in their own waste, these animals are barely able to move. Breeding sows spend most of their lives squeezed inside crates that are barely larger than their own bodies. These two-foot wide metal enclosures, known as ‘gestation crates,’ keep the sows virtually immobilized for their entire lives. The animals cannot walk, turn around or engage in basic natural behaviors, and they suffer both physical and phychological disorders.”
Baur added that although the deaths by fire must have been horrible, “these animals suffered long before this fire at the hands of an industry that views and treats them as mere production units.”
Key to Baur’s complaint is the use of gestation crates in Iowa, the largest pork producing state in the nation. While it is still legal to use this type of confinement in the Hawkeye State, it has been banned throughout most of Europe as well as in California, Florida, Arizona, Colorado and Oregon. Legislators in Illinois are also currently debating if gestation crate confinement is appropriate.
Baur and the Farm Sanctuary organization, although located in New York, are quite familiar with Iowa agriculture. In June of last year the group was invited by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and a coalition of animal rescue groups to help 68 pigs stranded on a levee in southeast Iowa due to flooding. The floods destroyed a number of hog confinements that had been built on the Mississippi River flood plains. Several of the rescued hogs continue to live at the organization’s national headquarters in Watkins Glen, N.Y.
Baur will return to eastern Iowa on April 28, April 29 and May 1 as a part of a book tour.
Follow Lynda Waddington on Twitter
Do you know where to vote on Election Day? Do you know what to bring with you? Get comprehensive voter information for your state here.
Sign up for our email newsletter