Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Animal-welfare activists take on industrial fish farms
FERN and NPR’s The Salt
Mercy for Animals, a U.S.-based animal-welfare group, is launching a campaign to bring awareness to the plight of fish in industrial fish farming, much as activists have raised concerns over the treatment of pigs and other livestock. The group says there are “too many fish routinely crammed into pens and tanks, fish being raised in dirty water, high disease and mortality rates,” writes Clare Leschin-Hoar in FERN’s latest story, published with The Salt. But whether fish feel “pain” is an open debate. Some scientists say no, pointing to the fact that fish lack a developed neocortex, the part of the brain where higher vertebrates experience pain. And how to improve animal welfare at industrial fish farms is complex, since lowering the density of fish in pens is good for some species, but provokes aggression in others, likes arctic char.
Hurricane Irma didn’t just wipe out farms. It devastated the lives of farmworkers.
InsideClimate News
“If you listen to the news coverage about [Hurricane] Irma, you’ll hear about damage to the farms. You don’t ever hear about impact to farmworkers,” said Jeannie Economos, the pesticide safety and environmental health project coordinator with the Farmworker Association of Florida. But many of the state’s 300,000 farmworkers — about half of whom are undocumented — saw not only the destruction of their homes, but of the farms where they worked. Job loss, especially in the citrus industry, is compounded by the fact that many of the workers are afraid to ask for help. “For people already living on the margins, missing even a week or two of work can mean being unable to pay rent, buy groceries or fill up a car with gas,” writes Georgina Gustin, a FERN contributor.
Diabolical mussels come to Montana
High Country News
“A prehistoric remnant of Glacial Lake Missoula, Flathead [Lake] is ringed by forests of fir and larch and hemmed in by the Swan and Mission mountain ranges … Loons and geese bob on the water, eagles troll for coots, and osprey dive for suckers …. Flathead feels like the tranquil heart of a wild and rugged landscape,” writes Beau Baker. But the invasion of zebra and quagga mussels could mean mass extinction for the lake’s marine species and the tourist business that relies on them. Over the last 25 years, the mussels have infested the Great Lakes, Mississippi River Basin, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, and now, as they reach Flathead, a quagmire of different state and federal agencies and tribal interests can’t decide how best to oppose them. The clock is ticking.
The FBI is on a pig hunt
The Intercept
In August, “a six-car armada of FBI agents in bulletproof vests, armed with search warrants, descended upon two small shelters for abandoned farm animals: Ching Farm Rescue in Riverton, Utah, and Luvin Arms in Erie, Colorado,” writes Glenn Greenwald. The agents were searching for two piglets —Lucy and Ethel — who had been taken from a Smithfield Farm’s animal factory in Utah by the animal-rights group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE). As more activists use social media to record the often horrific conditions in these facilities — pigs “biting through iron bars until their gums gush blood” and piles of decomposing piglets — the meat industry is trying to hamstring both animal-welfare groups and investigative journalism. Sixteen states have introduced “ag-gag” laws, which make publishing videos of farm operations a felony. But beyond such legislation, companies like Smithfield can apparently take up the time of the nation’s top crime-fighting agency to recover their pigs.
When a vegan meatball came to Philly
Philadelphia
When “South Philly chef Jennifer ‘Fear’ Zavala … of illegal tamale truck fame,” showed up to the city’s 4th Annual Meatballs & Gravy contest with a vat of vegan meatballs, all culinary hell broke loose, writes Victor Fiorillo. Zavala had crafted the meatballs out of chickpeas — a Sicilian technique — but many of her fellow contestants and quite a few of the guests were outraged, going so far as to send the chef death threats on Facebook. “That should not have even been allowed. That will be the first and last time I attend that contest there. The yuppies are taking over South Philly,” said one disturbed poster.
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