I've been working on this story for a loong time, on the veterinary profession's complicity in factory farm cruelty & the vets who are fighting to change it. It taught me a lot about power & how people who wield it come to look away from extreme suffering
Next week, I'm covering a historic trial in Utah that could send a pair of anti-factory farm activists to prison for a decade. The court has gone to extreme lengths to exhaust journalists and repress coverage. A thread 🧵
My story in
@theintercept
on how two activists took on the biggest pork company in the world & won!
“If it can happen in southern Utah, it can happen anywhere” -
@waynehhsiung
.
thank you
@maiahibbett
for being an absolutely HEROIC editor!!!
So pregnant pigs spend their lives in cages where they can barely move, getting fed poop and guts smoothies👍
It's pretty weird that simply opting out of this system gets you branded an extremist!
Responding to criticism of research involving sewing monkeys' eyelids shut, a Harvard researcher said the work was critical to our understanding of "empathy." Can't make this up, etc
🧵~scoop~ I wrote for
@theintercept
about gruesome experiments at a public university that helped lay the foundation for a method right now being used to mass exterminate birds by heating them to death.
Thanks to the superb
@maiahibbett
&
@lavrentia
! 1/
Wrote about why it's such a big deal that activists facing prison for rescuing farmed animals are winning over juries
BTW, everyone promoting the reprehensible idea of expanding the chicken industry should read this & watch the slaughterhouse footage☺️👀
This is a fascinating story of what happened when a child in an ag community questioned compulsory animal slaughter. One child's compassion is such an ideological threat that the full force of the law comes down to abduct & kill a single beloved baby goat
Why is it activists, not the meat industry, who are criminally charged & have to explain themselves to a jury? My boss let me write 3500+ words on the incarceration of
@waynehhsiung
and What It Means
BTW I got promoted - new title is deputy editor🤗
hello! I will be live-tweeting Supreme Court oral arguments over California's Prop 12 tomorrow around 10am eastern (assuming I can get the stream working). Here's a story I had about the case last week, which may have gotten buried amid other big news!!
Everyone teared up at the end of
@waynehhsiung
’s closing statement last night. Prosecutors can be seen behind him strategizing about how to rebut — will post a portion of the rebuttal next
This investigation is huge — suggesting that a method used to stun pigs before slaughter, CO2 gassing, which is widely considered humane by animal welfare scientists, isn't humane at all. 10 vets argue these findings violate the Humane Slaughter Act
A portion of
@waynehhsiung
’s remarkable opening statement to the jury yesterday. Watch how much he’s able to communicate despite prosecutor’s objections that he can’t talk about factory farm cruelty:
Here’s FBI special agent Chris Andersen acknowledging yesterday that he can’t think of another case of theft of < $100 of property that had multiple FBI agents working on it. Court will be resuming soon this morning
So many great minds are wasted devising methods to mass exterminate and throw away animals, for a system we simply don’t need!
That illustration is directly from the study btw:
Besties, I don't have an ounce of energy left this year to care about haters so I went after everyone in this piece: the wool industry, the garment industry, the innumerate influencers, the "regenerative wool" scammers, and Martha Nussbaum💅
Breaking: SCOTUS has upheld the 9th Circuit Court's decision dismissing the pork industry's lawsuit against California's Prop 12, a ban on gestation crates that confine pregnant pigs in cages so small they can't turn around
A teenage girl was banned from handing out lit critical of dairy if she didn't also hand out pro-dairy propaganda
Animal ag wants us to believe vegans are forcing plant-based food on everyone, while the USDA literally bars anti-dairy speech at schools🤡🤡
Been thinking about how difficult it is to communicate effectively abt animal agriculture as a journalist in a society that depends on being so fully in denial about it that telling the truth makes you an extremist, all while maintaining a level of professionalism & credibility!
Still in disbelief, but I won a National Press Club award for a series on bird flu & ventilation shutdown (mass killing by heatstroke)
this story was the centerpiece! Grateful to
@PressClubDC
and
@maiahibbett
for being a gem of an editor
#journalismawards
Some of the most interesting and dynamic images of factory farming have been produced by drones, I used a bunch of them (all taken in Iowa) in a talk this week!!
🧵Please read my
@guardian
story about the criminalization of anti-factory farm activists like Matt Johnson & the legal strategy behind breaking unjust laws in order to change them!
thanks
@PoppyNoor
for the smart edits, & also the Britishisms! 1/
I'm back on my bird flu beat: Wrote about how animal ag & its regulators are quietly normalizing heating animals to death. Pennsylvania BOUGHT INDUSTRIAL HEATERS to carry out this method, even tho they're definitely NOT supposed to plan to use it routinely
✨My life would be a million times easier if an editor offered me a column on factory farming! This beat is important & extremely under-covered, but it gets a ton of readers when given the space it deserves. Plz RT this—I know another journalist who got a column by tweeting :)!
congratulations to
@waynehhsiung
on this epic op-ed!
"Our rescue in March 2017 revealed the tension between slaughtering animals for food and having compassion for them. The jury made the right choice. Our society eventually will, too."
Omg watch this vid. I have researched a lot on the dangers of big cars and I didn’t know it was this bad. These vehicles are a menace killing people & our planet and our transport leaders have shown no interest at all in limiting their rapid proliferation
🧵I have a story in
@guardian
about cruel U.S. farm animal cull methods.
A Danish bioethicist I spoke to, who's def not an animal activist, said: “I’m a bit shocked by what I’m hearing from the US” & called using ventilation shutdown “a big failure” 1/
It is🌏 Day, & one of the best things you can do for the planet & our fellow creatures is go plant-based. I wrote this bc I constantly encounter the idea that veganism just subtracts things from our lives. I hope it inspires someone to see it differently🌱
Even when a species is 100% native, like these beautiful javelinas that have lived in the US Southwest since long before Western colonizers, they'll be described as "invaders" (like in this story) when their presence is inconvenient to humans
We wrote about the Texas dairy farm fire that killed 18,000 cows, a wakeup call about the proliferation of mega-factory farms that force the public to subsidize an industry that fuels climate change, torments animals & puts the food system at risk
Not going to pretend that this move will save the planet, but it really is heartening to see a massive consumer brand push against the widespread, wildly inaccurate myth that leather is eco-friendly
A first-of-its-kind survey of climate experts finds strong consensus that we need to rapidly slash meat & dairy emissions *right now.* Most agree we need to do that by shrinking livestock production. But climate policy is very, very far behind the science
Now, a few days before trial, I have been told that, because so many other outlets want this recording, my permission to record has been *revoked.* Due to the high volume of media requests in this trial, media access is canceled! 6/
The wood milk ad is actually an excellent case study of dairy industry projection
1. "Have you ever looked at a tree and thought, 'Can I drink this?'" - exactly the q I have for ppl who look at nursing baby animals & think "how can I exploit & sell this?" (1/2)
A message from our co-founder of Wood Milk
@evilhag
. We’re about to disrupt the milk industry like never before. 🪵
#drinkwoodmilk
*Wood Milk is obviously fake and has 0% nutritional value*
So we're gonna artificially impregnate 1000+ lb mammals, abduct their calves & put them in a little cage & take the milk meant for them, turn it into fuel for some reason and call it "low-carbon." Very very logical
An interesting quote from a convo I had with a poultry veterinarian about ventilation shutdown (mass culling animals via heatstroke):
"I really don't want to get involved in a fruitless discussion on ethics and morality."
THIS is how ever-worsening factory farm methods get normalized: State ag departments have asked the USDA to classify ventilation shutdown—cooking animals to death—as a "preferred" cull method. Currently it's considered a last resort bc it's so cruel. 1/
The rancher who chairs Iowa's House ag committee calls to ban meat alternatives because free market competition is a form of cancel culture. It's beautiful
During the Iowa House subcommittee on the Iowa Senate's bill to ban mislabeling of meat products, Rep. Mike Sexton said if it were up to him he would ban the sale of fake meat in Iowa and prevent it from being brought across state lines.
More than 2 months ago, the court told me media would only be allowed to report on the trial remotely via WebEx. I received permission to record it and was told that I'd be -required- to share the footage with any other outlet that wants it. 2/
I wrote for
@guardian
about the SCOTUS Prop 12 case, which could upend not just restrictions on extreme confinement on factory farms, but also hundreds if not thousands of state laws on public health, climate, &c. Oral arguments take place next week. 1/
I'm writing a piece on how not to feel doomy about the future of the animal movement/progress for nonhuman animals, which is a very hard mandate given, well, everything. So: when was the most hopeful you've felt on this, and why? Mine was the Smithfield trial
I've barely begun to gather my thoughts, but this is *HUGE*. On many levels. And it shows a hell of a lot about how out-of-touch red-state prosecutors & politicians are from the people they represent. And remember that SCOTUS is hearing arguments over gestation crates, which..
breaking: The Supreme Court will hear the pork industry's lawsuit challenging California's Prop 12 law banning gestation crates and other cruel factory farm practices.
I had a feeling this would happen :|
Sadly, my thesis that progressives are becoming more accepting of chicken factory farming seems truer by the day. The piece is def more complex than the headline/dek suggest, but IMO the whole framing is off. When there are first-order ethical issues at stake, we should not 1/
A while back someone tweeted (wish I could find this now) that "hundreds" of chickens are killed for food every day in the US. When you think about this for a living it's easy to forget that for most people, the actual numbers are astonishing and a revelation
I am simply begging reporters to stop writing that animals on factory farms affected by bird flu are "euthanized" 😭😭 Even if you don't know this beat, there's enough existing reporting out there for you to cite
I'll still be allowed to watch the trial remotely but not record it or publish any footage. I'm also not allowed to watch jury selection. The judge has also made the jury anonymous, a rare move. 7/7
He is also making the jury anonymous, which is an unusual (but on the rise) provision usually reserved for high-risk defendants like the mafia. It's prejudicial and makes jurors think they're dealing with dangerous/scary people.
3/
Stories like this make me feel like an alien profoundly estranged from humankind. Don't publish articles about primate experimentation that don't contain the word "ethics" or mention tht primate testing is implicated in endangered species trafficking!
Imagine explaining to an alien that we mass produce another mammal to drink their breastmilk and now they have an alarming strain of bird flu and the only public communication gov't agencies can muster is "don't worry, the bovine milk supply is entirely safe"
This isn't good, folks.
I'm not worried about H5N1 transmission to humans (yet) but the
@USDA
pathetic lack of transparency, how long it took for the genomes to be released, lack of testing asymptomatic cattle......
All detracts from "confidence"
I find it very funny that the Animal Agriculture Alliance's scary-looking animal rights group web includes orgs like the ASPCA, the Good Food Institute, & some veterinary groups. They are afraid of the mildest suggestion that animals are alive and capable of suffering.
I wrote many words for
@curaffairs
about meat industry brutality & direct action as a remedy for the epistemic violence baked into our knowledge of farm animals. If you only read 1 thing I write, let it be this!
Thanks
@lefty_md
, a sharp & kind editor❣️
Beef & dairy vets tried to pretend cows dont have bird flu to keep us calm & buying cheeseburgers, which is, to put it mildly, one of the wildest things Ive seen on this beat. Wrote a newsletter on that & the infectious disease time bomb of factory farming
"So I no longer eat meat, for I remember too many sheep, goats, pigs and geese who were family friends. It’s the same reason I don’t eat beagles." -
@NickKristof
Thank you to everyone who's been so supportive on this. I've talked to an attorney who thinks there's a solid First Amendment case; looking into options to challenge this in time for trial
The social function of these events is to continually reinforce indoctrination into animal suffering as something to be discounted, mocked and inflicted without remorse. The cruelty is the point, etc
Excited to publish this by neuroscientist
@GLahvis
on the limits of the primate testing paradigm. Lab monkeys are so mentally damaged & driven insane from confinement in tiny cages that it's absurd to think they can be healthy controls or model human minds
One of the defense’s star witnesses, a turkey farmer who had one of his animals taken by activists, explains to the prosecutor why he supports what they do. He does an impressive job repelling her questions.
#SmithfieldTrial
I put an immense amount of time into understanding the court's rules & figuring out how to record the whole trial & disseminate it. I'm a print person, not a video person, but obviously wanted as many reporters as possible to have the footage. 4/
The court has also restricted physical access to the courtroom to just 5 supporters of the plaintiff and 5 supporters of the defendants,
@DxEverywhere
. 3/
Remember this billionaire-owned egg factory farm that roasted to death 5.3 million hens and then fired the workers forced to do the dirty work? They got $17.3 million in public bailouts for the ordeal (coulda given every worker nearly $70k with that)
We just received documents obtained from APHIS showing the payments given to producers whose animals were killed during the 2022-2023 highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak, as well as other diseases.
Billionaire Glen Taylor's facility, Rembrandt Enterprises in Iowa,…
FDA’s new draft guidance on labeling almond milk, oat milk etc recommends a voluntary disclosure that conveys how the product compares to cows milk (ie contains less protein).
The document includes some examples of what that would look like
Cars kill MASSIVE numbers of animals—they may be 2nd only to factory farming. Yet they're so naturalized tht they hardly register as a concern for animal welfare orgs
@ben_a_goldfarb
's new book deserves to make the reading lists of policymakers everywhere
new
@MercyForAnimals
investigation is utterly horrifying. We really do not need to mass produce and torture animals (and fuel climate change) just to consume their breast milk, the world would be far better off if we simply stopped!!
Although defense has been blocked from questioning Smithfield about it, here's an extraordinary fact that came out of trial today: Smithfield has a permit to throw away 18 million pounds of pigs in its landfill every year
Here's a clip from yesterday of Wayne Hsiung questioning Smithfield manager Richard Topham: "You testified that piglets have value at Smithfield...does this include piglets that end up in the dumpster outside?" Watch judge's reaction:
filmed by
@STGnews
This account showing animals doing cutesy stuff is always in my feed - I recommend muting or blocking them. When you see animals in situations like this, the chances are very high it involves abuse or exploitation
There's a lot of plant milk discourse today so I will add my gripe: I'm v bothered that soy milk has become marginalized in favor of oat. Soy can actually be hard to find now! This runs counter to the American obsession with protein/demonization of carbs. Why?
USDA says some dairy farms won’t “allow” them to gather information about bird flu outbreaks in their herds, in case there was any doubt about who’s calling the shots here!
hi, I wrote about the confused discourse about egg prices. If we assume eggs must be abundant & cheap, that greatly limits our options for addressing factory farming-linked crises like bird flu, which is increasingly regarded as a danger to humans
"Golf courses are destroying their habitat, not the other way around...For decades humans have been replacing wild habitats like grasslands, deserts, and woodlands in Arizona with housing developments, malls, and of course, hundreds of golf courses." -
@BenjiSJones
💅
(3/4)
I’m taking a hard pass on artificial meat, whether it’s grown from animal cells that have attributes of tumors, or manufactured from plants (eg veggie burgers).
Both require an industrialized production system in which food will be made in giant factories, not on farms.
"Cutting the amount of pork, beef, chicken and milk that humanity eats in half would halt net deforestation and other loss of natural lands almost entirely and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from land use by nearly a third"
What is a quick, compelling way of explaining why commodifying animals inevitably results in violence? Progressives understand why giving someone absolute power over another person is unjust & abusive, but somehow that all goes out the window when it comes to nonhuman animals.
Here’s FBI special agent Chris Andersen acknowledging yesterday that he can’t think of another case of theft of < $100 of property that had multiple FBI agents working on it. Court will be resuming soon this morning
Here's a clip from yesterday of Wayne Hsiung questioning Smithfield manager Richard Topham: "You testified that piglets have value at Smithfield...does this include piglets that end up in the dumpster outside?" Watch judge's reaction:
filmed by
@STGnews
Incredible stuff: Utah lawmakers are so triggered by a jury of their constituents acquitting activists for rescuing dying piglets that they're pushing a bill to ban nonhuman personhood. A pro move would be to challenge corporate personhood under this
bill:
We live in a crazy world because the FBI would rather investigate the people resisting this than the people responsible for it (photo credit
@WeAnimals
)
Here's a clip from yesterday of Wayne Hsiung questioning Smithfield manager Richard Topham: "You testified that piglets have value at Smithfield...does this include piglets that end up in the dumpster outside?" Watch judge's reaction:
filmed by
@STGnews
From this story, in which a pork company donates a trailer containing a nursing mother pig locked in a cage about the size of her body to train Iowa high school students in factory farming:
One of those "have I entered the twilight zone?" moments
Someone wake me up in 20 years when this image from
@FarmJournal
in my inbox is sure to be in the Smithsonian as an example of the absolute insanity that was our society.....a school received a "donation" of a living mother in a cage??? What are they doing to her poor baby?
Animal ag "is involved in multiple multi-million-dollar efforts with universities to obstruct unfavorable policies as well as influence climate change policy & discourse," these ties "have helped maintain the livestock industry’s social license to operate"
"You're telling me Tyson received $61 million in taxpayer money to create climate-friendly beef? & we don’t know what climate-friendly beef means? & the entity thats supposed to label it climate-friendly won't tell us how they're going to figure that out?"
Extraordinary
@AnnieLowrey
piece on the abject misery behind America's biggest regenerative dairy, "esteemed by chefs, politicians, & advocates for humane agriculture," told through the story of one terrified cow. More reporting on animal ag like this plz
Since the SCOTUS ruling, the pork industry remains intransigent on complying with Prop 12 & says it "looks forward to working with Congress to find a permanent solution to this problem." This is a completely lawless industry & should be dealt with as such