Post written by VegBlogger. Follow me on Twitter.
In this week's issue of "In the Veg News" there are stories about football, manure and
chickens. First up, since this weekend is Super Bowl weekend, is the leather football.
The Freakonomics guys did a little calculating to see what the odds are that one particular cow would end up the one used for the leather on a Super Bowl football. The results? One in almost 17.5 million. You can read the full story here. By the way, there is no reason to use a leather football. One quick search on google for "synthetic football" yields many options to choose from.
We environtmentalists understand the vast problem that animal manure creates. But just in case you needed a little more news on the topic, here is a story about an Iowa farmer who was just fined for releasing the manure into the water supply. Oh, and even though he got a $60,000 fine, keep in mind it was his fourth such violation. Here's yet another story of a lawsuit being filed over manure management. And here's yet another recent one on a hog farm odor trial that just got underway.
In chicken news, China is penalizing the U.S. for their chicken import pratices, citing that Americans undercut the prices to the point of damaging their own market. And free range chicken farmers are seeing huge heating bill increases due to the cold weather. Will this force them to re-think their free-range practices?
And finally, Tyson Inc. is happily reporting that for the first quarter this year sales rose two percent, up to $6.63 billion. Yes, that's for one quarter. For selling slaughtered cows, chickens and pigs.
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