Eggs, Ballots, and Manure Pits: Animal Agriculture’s Worst Week (Again) | Rising Anxieties

In this episode of Rising Anxieties, Mariann Sullivan tears through the week’s most revealing industry news — from egg producers finally grasping that animal advocates want them gone, to Oregon’s audacious PEACE Act inching toward the ballot, to the toxic gas hazards quietly killing dairy workers. She also covers the Cargill lockout rocking Colorado’s beef industry, the federal government’s creative reinterpretation of H-2A visa law to hand dairy farms a captive labor force, and a truly stunning Memorial Day message from the National Beef Association that somehow forgot what Memorial Day is actually for.

• PETA vs. Vital Farms: PETA bought stock and asked a pointed question at the shareholder meeting — Vital Farms declined to answer, proving the point better than any answer could have
• Oregon’s PEACE Act: The ballot measure to criminalize ranching, hunting, and fishing has enough signatures; even its own organizers aren’t betting on a win — they just want people talking
• Manure gas is killing workers: Cornell published a safety guide for toxic gases on dairy farms, because hydrogen sulfide and ammonia exposure is apparently still treated as a scheduling problem
• Cargill lockout in Colorado: 1,700+ workers locked out for weeks, with new allegations of antitrust collusion on labor rates — welcome to Big Meat
• H-2A visas for dairy: The Department of Homeland Security quietly opened the door for dairy farms to use guest worker visas, creating exactly the captive, rightless workforce the industry has always wanted

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