Screwworms, Spy Drones, and a Ballot Initiative That Could Break the Meat Industry | Rising Anxieties

The meat industry is having a week — and not the good kind. Screwworm has officially crossed the U.S. border into Texas, turning what was once a theoretical threat into a two-case-and-counting reality, while your tax dollars are already being mobilized to save an industry that created the conditions for this mess. Meanwhile, Oregon is inching toward a ballot initiative that could criminalize the industry’s most cherished “management practices,” the TSA is cheerleading for rotisserie chicken carry-ons (yes, really), and animal ag’s drone panic is revealing exactly how worried the industry is about people simply looking at their facilities.

• Screwworm arrives in the U.S. — Two confirmed cases in Texas, a government response already in overdrive, and the industry insisting there’s “no food safety risk” (translation: please keep buying beef)
• Oregon’s PEAC ballot initiative could criminalize dehorning, castration, artificial insemination, and — oh yes — slaughter, sending shockwaves through an industry that somehow thought Prop 12 was the worst thing that could happen
• The TSA declared war on your senses by encouraging passengers to bring rotisserie chickens aboard flights, prompting the National Chicken Council to formally thank them “for their service”
• UK poultry industry vs. planning regulations — factory farm operators are furious over strict permitting laws that are slowing their expansion, threatening to import even-worse-welfare chicken if they don’t get their way
• Drones are the new undercover investigators, and Big Ag is losing sleep over “misleading narratives” — also known as footage of their facilities

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