Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Reports of wicked treatment of animals at a hog farm outside of Bayard are making international news in the wake of an Associated Press story that relies on undercover video showing workers hitting sows with metal rods, slamming pigs on floors and jamming objects into their bodies.
One veteran chronicler of Iowa life, Chuck Offenburger, lives in Greene County, in the tiny town of Cooper, and he published a blog post at Offenburger.com with detailed background on the hog farm, which supplies to Hormel Foods of Austin, Minn.
There’s no way to put this nicely. We apparently have had a moral failure in a major hog production facility in Greene County, and the stories about what happened are right now spreading across the nation and around the world.
We who live in Greene County – especially those involved in pork production here – will be a long time recovering from this.
The organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) – considered a pariah and almost a joke by many people in agriculture – has suddenly gained big credibility publicly with a detailed revelation of shocking animal abuse here. News reports have stopped the hog industry and farm organizations in their tracks, and most farm leaders are calling for the same intense level of investigation and prosecution that PETA officials are.
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