Animal-factory failure
A Jan. 30 Register editorial asked why candidates don’t talk about food. I would like to know why no one seems willing to talk about the failures of the industrial livestock system.
The federal government spent $1 billion dealing with the bird flu in 2015. Iowa’s secretary of Agriculture asked the state Legislature for $500,000 for 2016 to deal with bird flu and similar problems. Officials have said the bird flu will return, that it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. This is taxpayer money being spent on private enterprises. Have they decided these businesses are too big to fail so the taxpayers will be continuously asked to bail them out?
A similar problem occurred in 2013 and 2014 when disease outbreaks affected pigs in 31 states. Seven million pigs died. This could happen again and again.
When is someone going to tell the truth? Concentrated animal-feeding operations should not exist. Taxpayers should not be keeping them afloat. They degrade the environment, and they torture animals. They overuse antibiotics and are incubators of disease including superbugs. They put public health at risk. And they want to keep their dirty business behind closed doors. A New York Times editorial on Feb. 1, “No More Exposes in North Carolina,” sheds light on factory farms and the ag-gag laws passed to keep the public in the dark: http://tinyurl.com/hpug6xn.
Please do not support factory farming. We need to phase it out.
— Lynn Gallagher
Time for some voting sanity
Dear USA voters,
We the People must remember nothing is cast in stone, especially in “Granite.”
We the People cannot allow the media and a pubescent, indiscriminate “Voting Machine,” dictate to us how to think and act.
We the People are witnesses of two “radicals” who emerged from granite-covered ground, and we can see the dark shadows of insanity they cast over our future.
We the People can and must muse and enforce the sanity stated in the Preamble of our Constitution.
We the People, in each voting precinct, must choose representatives who will not cast a disparaging shadow over our nation but choose leaders who will bring the hope of spring during the next nine months and the next term of public office.
We the People can start over in every USA voting precinct and can “get it right” like Phil Connors did in Ground Hog Day.
We the People remember that nothing is cast in stone.
— Annamarie Marcalus
Let the goat go
The goat that escaped University of Iowa research facility on Jan. 29 eluded capture for nine days. Many citizens are concerned about this goat and want him to live the rest of his life without pain and suffering. We want him to be given to a sanctuary or other local home to live out the rest of his life. It’s very possible that he is no longer a suitable research subject because he has been roaming freely outside the lab environment.
It would be great PR for the university if it surrenders this goat to a good home. Please contact UI President Bruce Harreld and ask for him to release this goat ([email protected] and/or 319-335-3549).
Thank you.
— Brenna Trump