In this week’s Rising Anxieties, Mariann Sullivan dives into the theater of the absurd that is animal agriculture politics. From the Trump administration’s laughable attempt to blame California’s cage-free egg laws for nationwide price hikes (spoiler alert: it’s actually bird flu), to pork industry lobbyists desperately trying to justify their existence by fighting animal welfare laws nobody asked them to fight. Plus, a dairy farmer’s sob story about how incredibly difficult it is to exploit cows for a living (have you tried… not doing that?), and finally, some actually good news about a groundbreaking Animal Sentience Center at the London School of Economics.

This episode explores:

• How the Trump administration’s lawsuit against California’s Prop 12 is really a smokescreen for the pork industry’s agenda
• Why industry groups are fighting animal welfare laws that even many producers have already adapted to
• The hilarious self-pity of a dairy farmer complaining about the difficulty of the unnecessary job they chose
• How Helen and Scott Nearing demonstrated decades ago that plant-based farming offers more freedom than animal agriculture
• The promising development of the Jeremy Coller Center for Animal Sentience at the London School of Economics, bringing multidisciplinary science to animal advocacy

 

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