Make sure to pick up a copy of The Pitch this week for the feature story on meat consultant Charlie Arnot. In Peter Rugg's article, Arnot comes off as a Karl Rove for carnivores for his work in, among other places, Arizona:
Paul Shapiro, senior director of the Humane Society of the United States, says Arnot was hired as a consultant by the "No on 204" campaign. "It was all the big agribusiness companies putting money into the group called the Campaign for Arizona Farmers and Ranchers. They ended up spending $1.5 million, and just about every penny went to smearing our campaign."
Shapiro says the Campaign for Arizona Farmers and Ranchers repeatedly put out information saying that Proposition 204 was a PETA initiative...But, he says, "There's a huge difference between our two groups." PETA had not been involved in the campaign planning nor had it contributed financially...while the opposition ads took pains to make it seem as if small family farms would be financially ruined by the measure, only one farm in the state would likely be affected: an industrial hog farm, one of the country's biggest, that sold a quarter of a million pigs a year.
Smithfield operates massivehog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where
the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield
subsidiary called Granjas Carroll, raise 950,000 hogs per year,
according to the company Web site...Residents [of Perote] believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from
pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms,
operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water
bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak.
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