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Thursday, January 02, 2014

Animal-welfare groups find traction in N.C. despite state's farm traditions and recent political changes

"The gulf between [a] nostalgic view of rural North Carolina and a growing animal-welfare movement in a state increasingly removed from its agricultural past seems to be widening," Craig Jarvis reports for the News & Observer in Raleigh. "Traditional agricultural interests say they are trying to be responsible farmers in how they treat livestock and poultry, as well as how they treat the environment. Still, they see the Humane Society[of the United States] as public enemy No. 1, and have been girding for a fight for years."

"How would you like to spend the rest of your life in a space as small as a bus seat?" asks this Humane Society bus ad. (News & Observer photo by Ethan Hyman)
The Humane Society has bought "graphic ads on the outsides of Raleigh city buses attacking 'Big Pork' for its use of gestation crates, in which sows are restrained nearly motionless during breeding," Jarvis reports. In the last legislative session, the group "argued for a puppy-mill bill and against a farm industry-backed bill that would have made undercover investigations of farming practices illegal, except for law enforcement officers. . . . Agriculture has also organized to counter what it sees as an emotional campaign by the other side that is not based on facts."

Roberta Wall of Greensboro, who in 2010 won passage of a bill that increased penalties for animal abuse, told Jarvis, “It’s the first time in the history of North Carolina that animals have had a voice.” The legislature and the governorship went Republican in 2012, but the governor's wife gpot the House to pass the puppy-mill bill. “Animal welfare issues are not Republican or Democrat[ic],” Wall said. “They are not party issues. That’s not what this is about. We’re just mainstream people. I’m not radical.” (Read more)
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/12/27/3488382/agriculture-animal-welfare-groups.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/12/27/3488382/agriculture-animal-welfare-groups.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/12/27/3488382/agriculture-animal-welfare-groups.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/12/27/3488382/agriculture-animal-welfare-groups.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/12/27/3488382/agriculture-animal-welfare-groups.html#storylink=cpy

1 comment:

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