NEWSFREE RANGE

The livestock industry is nothing if not wily when backed into a corner. Just look at what's happening in Washington state. Washingtonians for Humane Farms have started a signature drive to put an initiative on the state ballot requiring egg producers to provide each egg-laying hen with at least 1.5 square feet of space, enough to allow her to extend her wings fully and turn around freely.

The measure, called the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, has been assigned the number 1130. Even though no one has had the chance to vote on the measure yet, Washington poultry concerns have already responded by introducing their own, watered-down bit of legislation.

Live birds, turtles and frogs are all on the list of "products" you can purchase at some California farmers' markets, but if animal activists have their way, live animals sales will be taken off the menu.

There is only one market in San Francisco that allows live chickens and other birds to be purchased: the Heart of the City Farmers' Market at United Nations Plaza.

The chickens are shuttled back and forth to the market in small crates and sent home with customers in plastic bags to be killed and cooked. In California, poultry is exempt from animal cruelty laws and vendors see nothing wrong with the way they operate.

When 16-year-old Whitney Hillman snuck out of class with a chicken tucked under her arm, she knew she was saving Chicklett's life, but had no idea the impact it would have on her own life, or other people and chickens around the world.

In the five weeks in between naming Chicklett in her high school Animal Sciences class and the day she was supposed to slaughter him, they had bonded. She hadn't given much thought to how chickens are treated before she got to know one. "I hate to say this," Whitney admits," but before this, we were the ones going up to McDonald's and getting 5o-piece chicken nuggets. But we haven't touched meat since Chicklett." Now, she's "hyper aware," from keeping an eye out for stray chickens in her community to advocating against cruelty in animal agriculture.

It hasn't been an easy message for her peers to swallow. Students started teasing her and showing up in "Eat More Chicken" t-shirts. But losing a few friends along the way wasn't enough to deter her; the big picture of the horrible way chickens are treated was too important.

At Concordia High School, students are offered choice-in-dissection in science classes, but in Nate Hamilton's Animal Science and Food Production Class, there was no choice-in-slaughter. Students helped raise over 40 chickens, and about five weeks later, they had to "process" them. The chickens' legs were wired together and they were held over buckets while Mr. Hamilton passed out knives to students for the throat-slitting. Any student who didn't want to deal the death blow still had to participate by plucking the feathers or gutting the animals.

Permission slips are widely used by the school for everything from field trips to R-rated movies. But when it came to slaughtering chickens, parents were left uninformed. By the time the students were told about the project, it was too late to transfer classes, and there was no preparation for the teens or their families for the big event.

Whitney Hillman refused to be a part of it, and refused to let her chicken be killed in the classroom. So, as her mom later described, Whitney "chicken-napped him and ran away from the school leaving a letter behind."

Whitney's chicken is safely living at an undisclosed farm. She gladly accepted the two-day suspension for leaving school and will pay the district whatever they want for Chicklett. But she won't apologize, and doesn't regret saving his life.

As thousands of bloggers tackle the water crisis for Blog Action Day, you'll hear statistics like: Around the world, nearly 900 million people still rely on drinking water sources that are unsafe. Or: Every day, 22,000 children die from causes that could be prevented if they had access to safe drinking water.

But what does this have to do with animal welfare?

At the most basic level, animals need clean drinking water, too. While some animals are able to tolerate some water-borne pathogens better than humans, there's a long list of bacteria and parasites that are just as harmful or deadly in other species. Just a couple weeks ago, 32 blackbucks died from intestinal infections at New Delhi's National Zoological Park after sewage water contaminated their enclosures following heavy monsoon rains. Several communities across the U.S. noted a rise in leptospirosis among dogs this year, a bacterial disease which thrives in water and can be fatal.

But there's a lot more to the issue than the direct threat to animals of unsafe drinking water. Human and animal lives are intertwined on many levels, and when there are threats to humans, it often means trouble for the animals around them, too:

James Barton, a veterinarian with the American Association of Avian Pathologists, claims that raising chickens indoors is healthier for them (pdf): "Exposure to insects and earthworms can facilitate the transfer of internal and external parasites ... as well as bacterial and viral infections."

In addition to protecting chickens from the Great Outdoors, Dr. Barton also advocates for beak trimming, and says that packing more chickens into barns is good for the birds and the environment, since their body heat will keep them comfortable in cold weather and save on heating bills. Nevermind sanitation and freedom to move around.

These are some of the concerns that he raised to the Livestock Committee of the National Organic Standards Board last year, in a letter which he concluded by saying that the animal welfare standards proposed for organic agriculture leave "too much potential for abuse and mistreatment of animals." Because animals won't be abused if they're safely tucked away in their battery cages, right?

The housing of chickens, particularly the debate over giving them access to the outdoors, is one of the controversial issues on the table at the October 25th meeting of the National Organic Standards Board.

In a recent interview with USA Today, Whole Foods' vegan CEO John Mackey said the organic and natural foods grocery chain will be rolling out a new animal welfare rating program. As of January 1, every store will have signs that "tell customers exactly how animals were raised." Whole Foods has also partnered with the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Blue Ocean Institute to label all of the seafood they sell with sustainability ratings.

It's an interesting concept — will knowing where food comes from change people's purchasing decisions? The market has shown that people (particularly Whole Foods customers) are willing to pay more for organic foods, as well as products from animals who were humanely raised. Assuming anyone bothers to read them, these animal-focused signs might also strip away one of the veils that keeps people from associating the meat on their plates with animal flesh. 

Would you consider chowing down on your favorite dish to be "work?" I'm eyeing a big bowl of fresh picante sauce and a bag of chips, and my vote is "no" — and I think the goats who've been put to work munching weeds on a North Dakota golf course would heartily agree. Previously slated for slaughter, Lucifer and his four companions were rescued by the golf course superintendent and put to work munching up to 3 percent of their body weight in weeds every day.

Practical minds have been putting ruminants to work clearing weeds and foliage from areas as diverse as graveyards, golf courses and freeway right-of-ways. Goats are cheap. They're efficient. Even folks who have interests in mind other than the welfare of the goats see the advantages of putting them to work. "It's better for the country to use goats than to use all that poison that runs off into the water," said Bill Laning, president of the American Meat Goat Association in Kerrville, Texas, in an article in the Bismarck Tribune. "We're going to see more and more goats used as time goes on because it's 'green.'"

Some folks question whether animals should be put to work in this way â€

Prince Charles and staff did an environmental assessment of his Home Farm in Gloucestershire and decided the best way to cut his carbon footprint was to cut down the size of his dairy herd. Cows emit a lot of methane, which contributes to global warming, and the royal bovines were bringing down Charles' environmentalist rating. One aide explained, "It was a wrench for the prince, but a lot of the herd had to go for slaughter or his carbon levels would have been through the roof."

And that would just make him look bad.

Prince Charles has a history of being single-minded and short-sighted in his environmental crusades. Earlier this year, he launched a campaign to save the wool industry. While promoting it as a "renewable resource," he ignored the cruelty endured by the sheep and the impact of flocks on wildlife and the environment. Just last month, he got behind a plan to brutally cull grey squirrels in order to reintroduce red squirrels, which activists say is ineffective as well as barbaric.

It's all too easy for animal advocates to be down on farmers and farming these days. A quick dip into social media uncovers all sorts of (justifiable) outrage: YouTube videos showing graphic details of the recent Ohio dairy farm cruelty, Facebook updates on appalling conditions at egg producers, Twitter alerts mobilizing advocates on setting legislative standards for agricultural animal welfare. It all paints a rather harsh online picture of farmers and the farming industry — and the notoriously unplugged farmers are fighting back by marshaling their own social media forces.

As tech-savvy farmers are observing, social media use among animal advocates and environmentalists, plus the segregation of farms from the rest of society, have combined to create an overall negative image of farming. People's ideas of what farming is like today are coming from sensational cases circulating on the internet and in social media, two forums from which farmers tend to remain completely removed. "We weren't part of the conversation," California dairy farmer Ray Prock Jr. told the Associated Press. "And if we aren't telling our story, other people will, and they'll tell it the way they want to."