Two reporters and a photographer from the Chicago Tribune won the top writing award from the North American Agricultural Journalists for “The Price of Pork,” a series of stories on large-scale hog production in Illinois. Written by Gary Marx and David Jackson, the stories “told the story of an exploding number and size of large hog confinements across rural Illinois, where state officials promoted an industry that poisoned streams, trampled the rights of farm families and brushed aside worker reports of animal abuse,” said NAAJ.
Commissioners in one county in western Illinois passed a resolution at the end of 2016 urging the state to halt any new confinement farms until there was meaningful reform to the state law governing the farms. The legislature was considering such reforms.
Photographer Stacey Wescott shared the award with Marx and Jackson.
To read the Tribune package of stories, photos and videos, and related coverage, click here.