The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: perdue
Why Agribusiness Has A Serious Chicken And The Egg Problem

Why Agribusiness Has A Serious Chicken And The Egg Problem

Those who say that we ordinary people can’t have any effect on today’s corporate behemoths should check out two breakthroughs last year by a group the establishment has long derided as somewhere between wacko and criminal: animal rights activists. Members of groups like the Humane Society get demonized, outlawed, sued, and jailed by agribusiness interests for persisting in trying to make life even slightly less awful for animals captured in America’s industrial food system. But 2016 was a good year for those groups … and for the animals.

Let’s look at Perdue Farms. Perdue is a $6 billion poultry giant (the fourth largest in the U.S., producing 676 million chickens in 2015). It has been a major pusher of the industry line that there’s nothing wrong or cruel about breeding birds with breasts so heavy that they can’t stand, or keeping them jammed so tightly in cages that they can’t spread their wings, or denying them access to the outdoors — or even sunlight. But Jim Perdue, grandson of the founder and now CEO, was having trouble reconciling his corporation’s rhetoric with hard reality. After listening to critics, he began discussing alternatives with the animal rights group Compassion in World Farming.

Then, on July 1 — bam — Perdue announced a wholesale shift in his company’s approach to handling the birds, including providing them with lots of sunlight; giving them space to run, flap wings, and play; breeding smaller, healthier birds; and using more humane slaughter methods. Also, Perdue will compensate growers not just to cut costs, but also for enhancing the birds’ quality of life. One of the industry rationales for cruelty is that kindness raises prices and cuts profits. But Perdue is finding that healthier birds actually reduce costs, and that more humane practices attract supermarkets, restaurants, and families to Perdue’s products. Success by Perdue could shift the whole miserable industry.

That is great news for chickens that are farmed for food, but what about laying hens that provide us eggs for our breakfast tables? Until recently, nearly all of the 77 billion eggs we Americans eat annually have come from hellish, windowless egg factories, each containing hundreds of thousands of laying hens. Tightly packed into wire “battery cages” containing five birds side by side, each hen “lives” (so to speak) in a tiny space with the footprint of an iPad.

For a decade, the Humane Society has led a grassroots campaign to liberate these hens through undercover exposes and by pressuring college food managers and retailers like Whole Foods to buy from smaller, more local producers of cage-free eggs. In 2008, the campaign got a huge boost when California voters passed a ballot initiative banning battery-cage confinement, with the most “yes” votes of any initiative in U.S. history. After that victory, the society’s organizers convinced Burger King to adopt a cage-free policy. Next came McDonald’s and IHOP, Kroger and Meijer, Costco and Trader Joe’s — and then, last April, the biggest prize in all of eggdom: Walmart. America’s biggest egg buyer announced a transition to a 100 percent cage-free egg supply by 2025.

But as we all know, President Donnie Trump has named some doozies to his cabinet, but one that stands out as threats to humane and healthy food is Scott Pruitt. He was confirmed as the head of the EPA, which oversees animal testing for pesticides and chemicals and regulating greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution from factory farms. As attorney general in Oklahoma Pruitt tried (unsuccessfully) to give special rights to corporate and foreign-owned factory farms and joined a suit aimed at killing the California law for more humane egg production.

For more information and to help stop President Trump and his appointees from rolling back the progress that has been made in humanely raising farm animals, visit www.ewg.org/planet-trump.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Georgia Seat — And U.S. Senate Control — Might Require Runoff

Georgia Seat — And U.S. Senate Control — Might Require Runoff

By Jim Gaines, McClatchy Washington Bureau

MACON, Ga. — They are scions of two of Georgia’s most prominent and popular political families, one the daughter of iconic Democratic former Sen. Sam Nunn, the other the cousin of Sonny Perdue, the first Republican to win the governor’s office since Reconstruction.
Yet neither Michelle Nunn nor David Perdue has been able to lock up the race for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat. And with a Libertarian candidate drawing a small but steady sliver of the vote, the contest for closely divided Georgia — and perhaps control of the entire Senate — may not be decided until a runoff in January.
“It may not be over in November. It may last until the next Congress is actually sworn in,” said Charles Bullock, a political scientist at the University of Georgia.
It’s a potentially crucial race as they seek to replace Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Republican, who isn’t running for re-election.
Republicans are expected to win several seats from Democrats nationwide, perhaps gaining control of the Senate. But Georgia is one of the few states where the Republicans are at risk of losing a seat, which could complicate their march to power in Washington.
Perdue has the edge. “I still think it’s probably Republicans’ to lose,” said Bullock. Republicans have been gaining in Georgia for the last decade: Since Sonny Perdue won the governor’s office, they’ve taken the Legislature and both U.S. Senate seats.
But the state isn’t a slam dunk. Perdue doesn’t have majority support in the polls — necessary on Election Day to win outright and avoid a runoff. Chambliss himself had to win re-election in 2008 in a runoff. And while President Barack Obama isn’t popular in the state, his numbers aren’t as bad here as they are in much of the rest of the South, instead reflecting the national average.
The two major-party candidates are running as outsiders, despite their pedigrees.
Nunn, who’s 47, moved to Washington with her family after her father was elected in 1972 — she was 6 when he won — but stresses that she moved back to the state in 1989. “As soon as I graduated from college I moved back to Georgia, and I’ve been here ever since,” she said. Her father held the seat until 1997.
Back in Atlanta, she co-founded the nonprofit Hands On Network volunteer group, which in 2007 merged with the Points of Light Foundation, founded by former President George H.W. Bush. Nunn became the president of the combined organization.
Perdue, who’s 64, is also a Georgia native who moved out of the state, then came home.
He worked at companies in Atlanta and eventually as the CEO of Dollar General, Reebok, and Pillowtex. He’s a founder of Perdue Partners LLC, an international trading company, and he’s the CEO of the investment firm Aquila Group LLC. Those jobs took him “from Singapore, Hong Kong, and Paris to Dallas, Boston, and Nashville,” according to his website.
“We were gone from — let’s see — from probably somewhere around 1990 to the mid-2000s, 2005 or 2006,” Perdue said.
If the candidates’ paths brought both of them home to Georgia, their approaches to issues differ greatly.
Perdue paints Nunn as a rubber stamp for Obama. Nunn says she’d work across the aisle to break partisan gridlock in Washington.
Among the flash points: health care, immigration, and taxes.
Perdue calls for repealing the Affordable Care Act and says his own health insurance was canceled because of the changes it required. His campaign provided a June 2013 letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia that said his wife’s plan would close, due in part to the act’s requirements for comprehensive benefits. Perdue said his new insurance included features he didn’t want at twice the premium cost.
He urges an alternative that would give tax credits and deductions for insurance purchases. It includes neither a mandate for coverage nor a requirement for insurers to cover pre-existing conditions.
Nunn said the Affordable Care Act needed to be accepted and improved. She also urges reducing the backlog of claims in the Veterans Health Administration. She calls for integrating health records to speed the process, making it easier to get services and giving employers incentives to hire veterans.
On immigration, Perdue raises fears of Middle Eastern terrorists sneaking across the U.S.-Mexico border.
“I think we ought to absolutely separate it from the immigration issue and deal with it as a security issue,” Perdue said. He calls for intensive surveillance and more patrols.
Nunn’s campaign mentions border security but also calls for “an accountable pathway to citizenship that requires those currently living here (to) go to the back of the line, pass a background check, learn English, and pay back taxes.” If that happens, she said, penalties should exist for anyone who doesn’t follow the new rules. She said she expected most to leap at the chance to become legal residents.
On taxes, they clash over the proposed Fair Tax, which would replace corporate, payroll, income, and estate taxes with a national sales tax. Proponents say a 23 percent rate would bring in the same amount as the taxes it replaced, but the nonpartisan analysis group FactCheck.org says a bipartisan panel indicates it would take a 34 percent tax rate to be revenue neutral.
“My preference is the Fair Tax,” Perdue said.
Nunn said the Fair Tax would cost most people about $4,000 a year more than they were paying now while giving the wealthiest 1 percent an average cut of $200,000.
“That is not a ‘Fair Tax’ reform for the majority of Georgians,” she said.

Photo: Be The Change, Inc via Flickr

Want more political news and analysis? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!

Report Finds Contamination In Most Chicken Sold In U.S.

Report Finds Contamination In Most Chicken Sold In U.S.

New York (AFP) – Almost all of the raw chicken sold in the U.S. contains potentially harmful bacteria such as salmonella and E.coli, according to an analysis by Consumer Reports published Thursday.

The magazine tested 316 raw chicken breasts in 26 states and “found potentially harmful bacteria lurking in almost all of the chicken, including organic brands,” it said.

The analysis found that chicken from the four largest brands (Perdue, Pilgrim’s, Sanderson Farms, Tyson) “contained worrisome amounts of bacteria” and that more than half the chicken breasts were tainted with fecal contaminants that can cause blood and urinary-tract infections.

The research analyzed chicken from major brands, including Wal-Mart Stores, Whole Foods, Kroger and Trader Joe’s.

The magazine’s study was already underway this fall when there was an outbreak of salmonella that government investigators linked to chicken sold by three Foster Farm plants. In that case, some 389 people were infected, the magazine said.

“What’s going on with the nation’s most popular meat?” queried the well-known consumer publication, pointing out that Americans buy an estimated 83 pounds of chicken a person each year.

The magazine said more than 48 million people fall sick each year due to food tainted with salmonella, campylobacter, E. coli, and other contaminants, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that “more deaths were attributed to poultry than to any other commodity.”

The CDC has studied outbreaks from 1998 to 2008.

Bacteria from contaminated chicken is also problematic because it can spread easily through “cross-contamination” in the kitchen if consumers touch other surfaces, the magazine said.

Recommendations for averting contamination include washing one’s hands immediately after touching raw chicken and cooking the chicken to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit.

A statement by the National Chicken Council said the Consumer Reports analysis looked at a sample size of only .0004 percent of chicken sold on any given day.

“Americans eat about 160 million servings of chicken every single day, and 99.99 percent of those servings are consumed safely,” the council said. “Unfortunately, this particular statistic was left out of the ‘in depth’ piece recently published by Consumer Reports.”

While bacteria cannot be entirely eliminated, smart handling can ensure food safety, the council said. “All bacteria, antibiotic resistant or not, is killed by proper cooking,” the council added.

Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Photo: Stan Honda via AFP