By Grace Hussain for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Judith Ruiz-Branch for Wisconsin News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration
Lisa Castagnozzi considers herself an engaged community resident. The longtime animal rights activist stays plugged in on local issues, yet even she was surprised to learn a new slaughterhouse was planned in Milwaukee, right up until approval for the development of the land was poised to pass the city council. Castagnozzi wasn’t alone. Most of the community had been left in the dark, it turned out. Once Castagnozzi and the group Slaughter Free Milwaukee found out, they jumped into action to spread word of the planned slaughterhouse — ultimately winning their fight to prevent the plant from being constructed.
Slaughterhouse Owners Try to Keep Zoning Applications Quiet
Though the slaughterhouse was planned for Milwaukee’s Century City Business Park — a district that city officials have struggled to get businesses to move into — numerous residential neighborhoods would be affected. Yet initially, only a few people were there to weigh in on the proposal at the public council committee meeting where the proposal was first addressed.
It was at that meeting that members of the council, including Alderman Robert Bauman, began questioning company representatives, and learned what the company was proposing was a slaughterhouse. The facility would slaughter roughly 500 cattle daily, including animals from Illinois, Montana, Wisconsin and the Dakotas, according to the company’s representative at the meeting.
At a zoning meeting held a week later, Alderman Robert Bauman called these suspiciously quiet efforts a “strange proceeding,” pointing to the lack of briefing by the Department of City Development and the absence of citizens weighing in during the public comment period.
“There was nobody there,” he said during another zoning meeting. “There were no citizens in support and no citizens in opposition.” The effort to keep the new facility proposal quiet was alarming to Castagnozzi, both as an animal rights advocate and a member of the community.
“We didn’t know anything about a slaughterhouse potentially coming into Milwaukee,” she says, calling it “kind of out of the blue.” The fact that the meat processing plant would be constructed in a “city-owned lot” meant the community should have a chance to weigh in, she says.
Alderman Bauman expressed similar concern in his public comments. “Slaughterhouses and…all types of businesses that produce noise and dirt and odor have historically had a stigma in central city communities,” he pointed out in his remarks to the full city council. “Why? Because for whatever reason, those types of negative land uses just seem to always end up in poor neighborhoods — primarily neighborhoods of color.”
Only Days to Inform Their Neighbors
Once Castagnozzi and her small cohort of animal rights activists did learn about the proposed measure, they had just a few days before the next meeting was scheduled to get the word out. With limited time and resources, the group took to online and physical spaces to reach community members, and began to make headway. “We as a group, made flyers, did social media, we physically spread out in the community and went to the coffee shops,” she says.
Some policymakers “don’t care what kind of jobs they are, how much they pay or what the working conditions are like — they’re jobs,” says Robert Grillo, head of Slaughter Free Network. According to government documents, the facility would have paid employees an average of $17 an hour — significantly above the city’s $7.25 minimum wage but well below the salary needed to live comfortably in Milwaukee.
Milwaukee’s residents do care, it turns out. In a matter of days, activists organized dozens of opposition letters and delivered them to council members. “Jobs are not just jobs. Slaughterhouse work is among the most exploitative, dangerous and relatively low paid work in the market,” reads the letter signed and sent by many of the opposing residents.
During a city council meeting, Alderman Khalif Rainey who at the time represented the neighborhood raised objections to campaign efforts. Rainey argued that the letters were not reflective of the community, and that he had received messages from people out of the state, but barely heard from his own constituents.
Though he voted to send the proposal back to committee for further discussion, Rainey argued that the jobs it would bring would improve the lives of the majority-Black community in which the slaughterhouse would be constructed. “That’s a good, well-paying job,” he said in the council meeting, “so again, it’s crazy how all roads lead back to this one question: do Black lives matter?”
Castagnozzi disagrees. “No one we spoke to was for it,” she says. At one community cafe near the proposed site, Castagnozzi says, none of the customers knew what was planned and, when they found out, they were appalled. “They just couldn’t believe it. Like, ‘what do you mean? Like, that’s the business they’re going to put in our neighborhood’.”
Getting communities to agree, collectively, to oppose a local initiative that offers jobs can be difficult. “People are afraid of retaliation. People are afraid of speaking out or they have certain relationships, and they’re worried about those relationships causing them problems with their work or in their personal life,” says Grillo.
It’s a risk that paid off for the Wisconsin group that have now organized themselves as an official chapter of the larger national organization. Strauss canceled their plans to build a new facility in Milwaukee. Ted Beneski, head of Insight Equity Holdings, LLC, which owns a majority share in Strauss Meats, sent an email from his iPhone to Grillo. The company’s “strategy has changed,” it read, and Strauss is “not planning to build a slaughterhouse [in or near Milwaukee] or anywhere else for that matter.” Earlier that summer, the remaining Strauss Meats slaughterhouse in the Milwaukee area was also shuttered. According to a press release the decision was the result of their recent divestment from the lamb and veal businesses, combined with the relocation of their beef operations to Illinois.
To persuade community residents to speak out, advocates and organizers have to “create a tension,” says Grillo. “It’s a moral crisis,” he adds. “You have to create that to get people to take sides.”
Grace Hussain wrote this article for Sentient.
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An animal activist is speaking out ahead of her trial in May - accused of trespassing, theft and conspiracy after a protest at a poultry slaughterhouse in Northern California.
Zoe Rosenberg, 22, is charged with one felony and four misdemeanors for removing four birds from Perdue's Petaluma Poultry in June 2023, and part of a group of protesters with the Berkeley-based animal rights organization Direct Action Everywhere.
"I believe that the necessity doctrine applies to non-human animals when they are in situations where they're facing life-threatening abuse or neglect, as these chickens were," Rosenberg contended. "And so, I believe that my actions were legal and necessary."
Perdue did not respond to a request for comment. The Sonoma County District Attorney's office says no city or county agencies have referred a case requesting criminal charges against the poultry operation.
Direct Action Everywhere's investigation reported multiple alleged abuses, including chickens found starving, unable to walk to the feeding station.
Rosenberg said she's disappointed that she's facing charges - but not Perdue.
"Rampant routine criminal animal cruelty was documented, including chickens suffering from disease and neglect, being left to slowly die, and evidence at the slaughterhouse was found that birds were being boiled alive," she continued. "Evidence of this misconduct was repeatedly reported to Sonoma County law enforcement and other law enforcement officials in California, and no action was taken."
Rosenberg was ordered to wear a GPS ankle monitor while awaiting trial. She faces up to 5.5 years in prison if convicted on all charges. Charges were dropped against one other activist.
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By Jessica Scott-Reid for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Alex Gonzalez for Nevada News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration
American grocery shoppers say they care about animal welfare at the supermarket, and the food industry is paying attention. Branding meat, dairy and eggs with the “humanely raised” label has become increasingly common, and according to the meat industry’s research, these types of labels are enough to satisfy buyers. A 2024 study found 55 percent of Americans “feel good about animal welfare practices” in the United States — up from 43 percent in 2020. Why the uptick in such labels? Not only do they seem to be working, these labels are shockingly easy to obtain — and largely unregulated.
Who’s in Charge of Labeling Claims?
The claims you encounter on meat labels are overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspections Service (FSIS). The agency reviews company claims made on food labels, about how livestock animals are raised.…such as “humanely raised,” “ethically raised,” and the like. But what does a brand have to do in order to get its label approved?
First, the company must fill out a form, and add required documentation, including a sketch, also known as a printer’s proof, of the label, along with written substantiation for any claims. “Processors need to submit documentation explaining what practices were used,” John Bovay, associate professor in food and agricultural policy at Virginia Tech, tells Sentient. The documentation should show “how farms ensured that the practices were used throughout the animal’s life.” The agency reviews the documentation, Bovay says, “and the label is approved or disapproved based on the documentation provided by processors.”
Yet no one actually goes onto farms to inspect that the claims are accurate, Bovay says. “USDA does not send inspectors to farms to verify any label claims, but relies on written substantiation or documentation from processors.”
How is Humane Defined?
Consumers might be surprised to learn there is no legal definition for this marketing claim. “USDA does not define ‘humanely raised’ or other labeling terms related to animal welfare,” Bovay explains, “so processors can create their own definitions.”
“The only thing that the guidelines require is that the company include how it chooses to define humanely raised, either on the package itself or links to where a consumer can find that definition on the company’s website,” Zack Strong, senior attorney and acting director with Animal Welfare Institute’s Farmed Animal program, tells Sentient. In some cases, he says, “humanely raised” might mean not being caged or being fed a vegetarian diet. But it could also refer to what are already standard industry conditions on factory farms.
Bovay concurs. “It appears that ‘humane’ can be used to describe standard farming practices or even concepts unrelated to animal welfare. The current FSIS guidelines on substantiating animal-raising labeling claims provide an example of a product with a ‘humanely raised’ label, where the term ‘humanely raised’ is defined as ‘fed all vegetarian diet with no animal by-products.’” He says “this diet doesn’t strike me as assuring that the animal was humanely raised.”
A 2023 review by the Animal Welfare Institute, which advocates for better labeling oversight, found that for 48 of the 97 the label claims it investigated, “the USDA was unable to provide any application submitted by the producer,” in response to a records request made by the group. In 34 of the claims, the corporate applicant provided either no substantiation at all or insufficient substantiation. In total, AWI found 85 percent of the applications lacked sufficient substantiation.
In the report, AWI researchers provide examples of inefficient substantiation, including documentation showing only minimum industry animal care standards were followed or claims where only one aspect of care, such as diet, was included. The AWI is not aware of any corrective action taken, or penalties imposed by FSIS in response to the findings in the group’s report, Strong says.
In August 2024, the USDA updated its guidelines. It now includes that the FSIS “strongly recommends” substantiating claims by obtaining third-party certification, which is aimed at a range of claims, including antibiotic use and animal welfare. But the new guidelines are a recommendation only, and may not go any further once President-elect Trump heads back to the White House.
The same lack of oversight holds for other marketing materials too, says Strong. “Pamphlets, brochures, website information that might also accompany a product in the store or online — none of that information needs [government] approval,” he says. “The only thing that needs approval is the label itself that’s on the product,” and, as we’ve seen, that approval doesn’t take much to obtain.
The Bottom Line
There are other labeling schemes worth mentioning. Some third party certification programs, such as Animal Welfare Approved, Global Animal Partnership and Certified Humane, do have specific standards around what humane means.
On its website Certified Humane states “Our goal is to ensure that farm animals are raised in humane conditions, free from abnormal distress, and allowed to express their natural behaviors.” Consumers should be aware, however, that unlike Organic, these labels are not defined or regulated by law.
As the market for “humane” food labels continues to grow, a lack of regulation and of clear definitions for humane meat claims leaves consumers vulnerable. The terms “humane” and “humanely raised” can vary widely in meaning, or mean nothing at all. Without more stringent oversight, clearer definitions and on-site verifications, the risk of humane-washing persists, victimizing both consumers and animals.
Jessica Scott-Reid wrote this article for Sentient.
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A dead elk found east of Pinedale tested positive for Chronic Wasting Disease earlier this month, marking the first such death inside a Wyoming feedground.
After a multiyear study of feedgrounds, one wildlife manager said the incident "hits home." Elk feedgrounds were started more than a century ago to provide extra food during tough winters but with increased spread of Chronic Wasting Disease, a fatal neurological condition, the practice has become riskier.
John Lund, regional wildlife supervisor for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, said the department released an Elk Feedgrounds Management Plan last year to help navigate the evolving situation.
"The primary goal of that plan was to evaluate our feedgrounds," Lund explained. "And look for ways that we can reduce reliance on elk and ultimately figure out how to reduce the potential for disease spread in those feedgrounds."
Today, feedgrounds are used to address modern challenges for elk including habitats fragmented by highways and human development. Lund pointed out they also help ranchers who want to avoid elk eating their cattle feed and disease spread to their herds.
According to the plan, the Scab Creek feedground, where the Chronic Wasting Disease-positive carcass was found, had an average population of 800 elk during winters between 2020 and 2023. That's about 300 more than the state's quota.
"We're taking disease sampling whenever we can on those feed grounds, removing dead carcasses that show any kind of disease symptoms or anything like that, trying to remove them from the landscape," Lund noted.
A 2024 U.S. Geological Survey report modeled population predictions of the state's Jackson Elk Herd 20 years from now, under five different feeding practices. The "continue feeding" option was predicted to have the most severe consequences: a herd at less than half its current size and the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease to 35% of its remaining elk.
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