August, 17 2022, 12:59pm EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Jessica Gable, jgable@fwwatch.org
Ubaldo Hernández, ubaldo@columbiariverkeeper.
Advocates File Petition Demanding the State of Oregon Address Mega-Dairy Air Pollution
Petition calls for immediate action on unregulated CAFO emissions.
Salem, OR
Today, 22 organizations filed a petition for rulemaking with the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission, demanding it take immediate action to address the dangerous air pollution emitted by mega-dairies across the state. Led by members of the Stand Up to Factory Farms coalition, petitioners represent a diverse array of environmental, public health, sustainable agriculture, animal welfare and community-based organizations. Read the petition here.
Large industrial dairy operations that crowd thousands of cows in confined conditions emit vast quantities of air pollution that not only hurt the environment and exacerbate climate change, but also jeopardize the health and well-being of dairy workers, farmed animals, and nearby communities. The State has long been aware of these harmful impacts--in fact, a state-convened task force recommended Oregon take immediate steps to curb dairy air pollution as far back as 2008. Nevertheless, the State has failed to act on those recommendations and mega-dairy emissions remain virtually unregulated. The petition urges the EQC to adopt rules that Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) can implement to finally start holding this polluting industry accountable under state and federal air quality laws by creating a permit program that will rein in mega-dairy air emissions.
The proposed regulatory program would target the staggering amount of climate-altering methane emitted by these facilities, as well as several air pollutants that pose a serious threat to human and environmental health. Recent research from advocacy organization and co-petitioner Food & Water Watch reveals that Oregon's mega-dairies collectively release over 17 million kilograms of methane every year, equivalent to the emissions of 318,000 cars. They also emit ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and particulate matter, all of which can cause chronic respiratory disease and even death. Nationwide, emissions from industrial livestock operations cause 12,400 deaths every year, killing more people than pollution from coal-fired power plants. These emissions also disproportionately impact vulnerable communities. Over one third of Oregon's dairy cows live in Morrow and Umatilla Counties, which have the state's highest percentage of Latinx residents.
Once the petition is filed, the EQC has 90 days to formally respond by either denying the groups' request, or initiating rulemaking proceedings. A public comment period is expected.
In response to the filing, petitioners issued the following statements:
"For too long the State has sat idly by while Oregon mega-dairies have been spewing toxic pollution into the air, wreaking havoc on our natural resources, climate, and communities," said Emily Miller, Staff Attorney at Food & Water Watch and lead author of the petition. "DEQ has a duty to protect us from this polluting industry, yet has chosen to ignore the science and wilfully disregard the destructive impacts of these operations. This head-in-the-sand approach must change. We hope that the agency seriously considers the regulatory program we've proposed and takes this long-overdue action. "
"Large industrial dairy operations create environmental and social justice crises in the communities where these facilities take root," said Ubaldo Hernandez, Senior Community Organizer at Columbia Riverkeeper. "The environment suffers from excessive water use, underground soil, water contamination, and poor air quality, leaving long-lasting environmental damage to the communities around megadairies. Contaminated water, soil, and breathing toxic fumes affect human communities' health and quality of life. These create health problems in low-income communities that do not have access to health care, turning these problems into an economic burden to families that live and work where megadairies operate."
"The environmental damage caused by mega-dairy operations in Oregon is built on the immense suffering of tens of thousands of cows who are confined in unnatural conditions, many never stepping foot on grass for their entire lives." said Adam Mason, Senior Manager of Farm Animal Welfare and Environmental Policy, ASPCA. "It is critical that we hold factory farming corporations accountable for their impacts on the environment, local communities, and animals. Regulation of the air emissions from Oregon mega-dairies is an important step in reining in this destructive and inhumane industry."
"It's time for Oregon to start prioritizing public health and the climate emergency over the self-serving wishes of these industrial-scale polluters," said Hannah Connor, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. "We're asking the state to take commonsense actions to rein in this harmful air pollution. This is about supporting healthy wildlife and ecosystems, and protecting people against greater climate chaos and the many health issues triggered by the nasty fumes emitted day after day by these massive, poorly regulated factory farms."
"Communities near confined animal feeding operations are breathing hazardous gasses like methane, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide," said Lisa Arkin, Executive Director of Beyond Toxics. "As a result of the pollution, headaches, breathing problems and heart conditions are plaguing low-income and rural communities. These fumes can make lives unbearable and the air unbreathable."
"Industrial animal agriculture's impacts on the environment, animals -- both in facilities and in the wild, and the health of local communities cannot continue to be ignored," said Stephen Wells, Executive Director at the Animal Legal Defense Fund. "The commitments made by Oregon's environmental agencies cannot be met -- nor the concerns of residents addressed -- without meaningful regulation as are identified in the petition."
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
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Nebraska Women Gets Two Years in Prison After Giving Abortion Pills to Teen Daughter
"In this particular case, here's the audacity: Self-managed abortion is not even a crime in fucking Nebraska," said one rights advocate.
Sep 22, 2023
Amid a wave of right-wing efforts to quash abortion rights across the United States, a Nebraska judge on Friday sentenced Jessica Burgess to two years in prison after helping her teenage daughter end her pregnancy and bury the remains in early 2022.
Police have said that over two years ago, then-17-year-old Celeste Burgess took abortion pills—provided by her mother—at approximately 29 weeks pregnant and gave birth to a stillborn fetus, which the pair burned and buried in Norfolk, Nebraska.
Celeste Burgess was sentenced to 90 days behind bars and released earlier this month. Tanner Barnhill, who pleaded no contest to attempting to conceal a death for helping with the burial, was sentenced to nine months of probation and 40 hours of community service.
Jessica Burgess, who took a plea deal, faced up to five years in prison. She pleaded guilty to providing an abortion after 20 weeks of gestation, tampering with human remains, and false reporting. As Jezebelnoted, the 42-year-old was charged even though the state's 20-week ban that was in effect at the time applied to "licensed abortion providers, not people self-managing their own terminations."
As Rafa Kidvai, director of If/When/How's Repro Legal Defense Fund—which is not representing Jessica Burgess—put it to Jezebel, "In this particular case, here's the audacity: Self-managed abortion is not even a crime in fucking Nebraska."
"None of this is about justice or safety or someone's health or society being better or kinder or safer—this is about control from the state," Kidvai argued. "Everything is a distraction, including conversations around gestational age... They're distracting you constantly by telling you that your individual choices are the problem, not the systems that keep you oppressed."
The Appeal reported Friday that "abortions after 21 weeks rarely occur within the United States, accounting for just 1% of all abortions. It is unclear when Celeste first knew she was pregnant. Police say Celeste, then 17, got an ultrasound showing she was 23 weeks pregnant on March 8, 2022."
"That same month, police say Jessica Burgess ordered abortion pills online. But the medication took about six weeks to arrive," the outlet added. "[Celeste] Burgess stated in court that she wanted to end her pregnancy because she was in an abusive relationship and did not want to share a child with the man who impregnated her."
While Celeste Burgess' stillbirth occurred a couple of months before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion rights advocates have connected the Nebraska mother and daughter's cases to a broader assault on reproductive freedom since the right-wing justices' Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organizationdecision.
Nebraska is among several states that have tightened abortion restrictions since June 2022. In May, Republican Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen signed a bill banning abortion at 12 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for rape, incest, and to save the life of the pregnant person—a measure which has taken effect but that rights group are fighting in state court.
The Burgesses' cases have also heightened concerns about digital communications, given that police obtained and Facebook parent company Meta complied with a search warrant for their private messages. Further, there are rising fears that U.S. law enforcement may eventually try to use new laboratory methods allegedly developed by researchers in Poland—which has outlawed most abortions—to detect medication commonly used to end pregnancies in biological specimens.
Across the United States from 2000 to 2020, "at least 61 people were criminally investigated or arrested for ending their own pregnancies or helping someone else do so," according to a report released this month by Pregnancy Justice and other groups. From 2006 to 2020, "more than 1,300 people were arrested in relation to their conduct during pregnancy," including people who experienced miscarriages and stillbirths but were suspected of self-managing abortions.
Emma Roth, senior staff attorney at Pregnancy Justice, told The Appeal that "even if the state's law does not criminalize abortion itself, prosecutors will still seek other creative ways to try to incarcerate, shame, or make a case out of that person."
"Prosecutors will charge anything that they can think of when what they're actually trying to criminalize is what they view as immoral conduct," Roth stressed. With the Burgesses, she said, "the prosecutor's whole case was about shaming somebody for being a young teenager and having an abortion later on in pregnancy. These prosecutions create a culture of fear."
Nebraska is one of multiple U.S. states where reproductive rights advocates are currently working to put a question on 2024 ballots regarding an amendment to the state constitution that would protect the right to abortion.
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Biden to 'Join the Picket Line and Stand in Solidarity' With Striking Autoworkers
"This is unprecedented: a sitting president showing up on the picket lines with workers," said Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal.
Sep 22, 2023
In a historic move, U.S. President Joe Biden vowed Friday to travel to Michigan next week and stand with striking United Auto Workers members, an announcement that came just hours after union autoworkers widened their strike to include all U.S. General Motors and Stellantis parts distribution centers.
"Tuesday, I'll go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create," Biden said on social media. "It's time for a win-win agreement that keeps American auto manufacturing thriving with well-paid UAW jobs."
Last Friday, Biden called on automakers to share more of their windfall with UAW workers, who are seeking better pay and benefits.
"Auto companies have seen record profits... They have not been shared fairly with workers," the president said. "I understand the workers' frustration. Over generations, autoworkers have sacrificed so much to keep the industry alive and strong, especially during the economic crisis and the pandemic."
"The companies have made some significant offers," Biden added. "But I believe they should go further to ensure that record corporate profits mean record contracts for the UAW."
Biden—who is seeking reelection next year—is a self-described "pro-labor president" but his response to the UAW is notably different from last year, when he came under fire for signing legislation to block a nationwide rail strike.
At noon Eastern time this Friday, workers at all 38 GM and Stellantis parts distribution facilities across the U.S. walked off the job as the UAW escalated its strike.
"We will shut down parts distribution until those two companies come to their senses and come to the table with a serious offer," UAW president Shawn Fain said in a video update. "The plants that are already on strike will remain on strike."
Fain said Ford was spared the escalation because UAW and company negotiators were making "real progress" at the bargaining table.
While some striking workers said they'd prefer the president didn't join them, others welcomed the solidarity.
"Me personally, I wouldn't mind if Biden stepped up and showed some support," 55-year-old Laura Zielinski of Toledo, Ohio, toldReuters earlier this week, recalling 2010, when he was vice president and visited her city's Stellantis assembly plant.
"Support like that would put a spotlight on the talks—kind of give a nudge to the companies," she added.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said Friday on social media that it was "unprecedented" for a sitting U.S. president to join striking workers on a picket line.
Jeremi Suri, a historian and presidential scholar at the University of Texas at Austin, toldReuters the last time it happened was probably in 1902, when then-President Theodore Roosevelt invited striking coal miners to the White House.
"This would be a major, major shift for Biden to identify the presidency with striking workers," said Suri, "rather than siding with industry or staying above the fray."
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Netanyahu Shows Map of 'New Middle East'—Without Palestine—to UN General Assembly
"Netanyahu made clear with his little map today what normalization really seeks: eliminating Palestine... from the region and legitimizing greater Israel, all with the blessing of Arab regimes," one critic said.
Sep 22, 2023
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu angered Palestinians and their defenders Friday after presenting a map of "The New Middle East" without Palestine during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Speaking to a largely empty chamber, Netanyahu—whose far-right government is widely considered the most extreme in Israeli history—showed a series of maps, including one that did not show the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or Gaza. These Palestinian territories have been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967, with the exception of Gaza—from which Israeli forces withdrew in 2005, while maintaining an economic stranglehold over the densely populated coastal strip.
Middle East Eyereported Netanyahu also held up a map of "Israel in 1948"—the year the modern Jewish state was established, largely through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs—that erroneously included the Palestinian territories as part of Israel.
Palestinian Ambassador to Germany Laith Arafeh said on social media that there is "no greater insult to every foundational principle of the United Nations than seeing Netanyahu display before the UNGA a 'map of Israel' that straddles the entire land from the river to the sea, negating Palestine and its people, then attempting to spin the audience with rhetoric about 'peace' in the region, all the while entrenching the longest ongoing belligerent occupation in today's world."
As Middle East Eye noted:
The inclusion of Palestinian lands (and sometimes land belonging to Syria and Lebanon) in Israeli maps is common among believers of the concept of Eretz Yisrael—Greater Israel—a key part of ultra-nationalist Zionism that claims all of these lands belong to a Zionist state.
Earlier this year, Netanyahu's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, spoke from a podium adorned with a map that also included Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria as part of Greater Israel. In the same event, he said there was "no such thing as Palestinians."
The use of such maps by Israeli officials comes at a time when Netanyahu's ultra-nationalist government has taken steps that experts say amount to the "de jure annexation" of the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu used the maps in an attempt to illustrate the increasing number of Arab countries normalizing relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords brokered by the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump.
"There's no question the Abraham Accords heralded the dawn of a new age of peace," the Israeli prime minister said. "But I believe that we are at the cusp of an even more dramatic breakthrough, an historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia will truly create a new Middle East."
Critics have countered that peace between apartheid Israel and Arab dictatorships has come at the cost of advancing Palestinian rights. In the case of Morocco, the United States recognized the North African nation's illegal annexation and brutal occupation of Western Sahara in exchange for normalization with Israel.
Netanyahu's props on Friday reminded numerous observers of the time during his 2012 General Assembly speech when he used a cartoon drawing of a bomb to illustrate Iran's progress on advancing a nuclear weapons program that both U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies said did not exist.
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