Food Chain Weekly News Topic
AG GAG LAWS
Food Chain Radio Show #919
April 11, 2013 • Sat 9AM Pacific
Michael Olson hosts: Emily Meredith, Animal Agriculture Alliance
& Paul Shapiro, The Humane Society
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Should consumers be allowed to know how farmers grow food?
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Looking back, its easy to see the farm was a place of living and dying, and that all the living– people, animals, birds, and plants– knew what was coming.
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We the living tried to be kind to those dying, but try as we might, the process was never really pretty. Picture, for just one of many possible examples, a barnyard of chickens hopping about without their heads, hearts pumping blood into the air until there was nothing left to pump. Not pretty, unless you were hungry.
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We, the living, have since moved to town, and now rely on industrial production systems for our food. (And hey, to hell with chopping off all those chickens’ heads!) But our newly found distance from the food we eat allows us to forget about the somewhat messy business of living and dying on the farm.
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Living in the city allows us to think we can live without cruelty! And so the farms of industrial agriculture have become targets of those who want to eliminate cruelty. But whether we can take lives, as we must takes lives, without being cruel, or unseemly, is now the question of the day. And so we ask…
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Should consumers be allowed to know how farmers grow food?
