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Can You Be on the Pork Industry Payroll and Stay Unbiased?

by: Jill Richardson

Wed Jun 09, 2010 at 08:12:03 AM PDT


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Apparently not. Shauna Ahern of the famous Gluten-Free Girl blog is paid to write a blog for the National Pork Board. She just wrote a piece about a factory hog farm she visited and how wonderful it was. Here's an excerpt:

The entire place felt warm. Even though there were something like 2500 pigs there, taken from birth to the market (farrow to finish, in pork production terms), the whole place felt calm and well-kept. It felt like a home.

I've been to a factory hog farm too and it was also a "family farm." But that didn't change the fact that there were 4000 pigs crammed into one building eating unhealthy diets and unable to engage in natural hog behaviors (like rooting). If it felt like a home, it was a home sitting on top of half a year's worth of hog manure. Truly, it was no more of a home than a crowded subway car at rush hour would be a home for humans if it were sitting on top of a cesspool of excrement instead of train tracks. That's more than just disgusting - in some cases it's deadly: just last week two men died from suspected methane gas poisoning at a factory hog farm in Nebraska.

If you'd like another perspective on factory hog farms, check out the film Pig Business (and check out how the pork industry tried to keep people from seeing it).

Jill Richardson :: Can You Be on the Pork Industry Payroll and Stay Unbiased?
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Good ol' "Social Media Strategy" in action (4.00 / 2)
Kudos to the National Pork Board for buying a blogger. I wonder how much she cost. On serious note, a great book about hog CAFOs is "Righteous Porkchop" by Nicolette Hahn Niman, which I highly recommend.  

That's incredible (4.00 / 2)
And then another post on there is her going to some small farm with a bunch of different gardens at it.  That's some of the more shameless greenwashing I've ever seen.

Vote for yourself at www.ni4d.us!

Lessons in objectivity... (4.00 / 2)


no you can't be unbiased (4.00 / 1)
I have a really good friend that had the same conversation with Marion Nestle at a food conference.My friend is a food "slasher". She does a variety of things that includes writing about food. Apparently Marion was ragging on another writer who was just "endorsed" by Pepsi. My friend who is really talented but underemployed pointed out to Marion that she's tenured and that affords her the luxury of a secure income.

I'm not arguing for being a company shill. Just another way of looking at this.


And it's always... (0.00 / 0)
...the very same companies who destroyed the working class in America that benefit from our desperation.

Coming soon to a Philadelphia near you!

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