The forgotten ravages of factory farming

Just as there's a suburban war against America's cities, there's also a corporate war against our rural counties.

Factory farming expanded rapidly in the '90s, but our political leaders seem unwilling even to discuss the economic and environmental dangers that have grown with it.

Factory farms have driven family farms out of business and made rural America dependent on the whims of back-room corporate politics. It has helped change the character of once-rural communities by making them in effect an exurban parallel universe.

And factory farms are using animals for unnatural purposes. Animals are not machines. They are organisms resulting from the beauty of millions of years of evolution. Nature did not design animals to be packed too tightly on factory farms or shot up with artificial growth hormones. These greed-driven practices are inhumane, unnatural, and bad for humans who consume the resulting products.

I and a majority of other people eat animal products. Most family farmers have enough respect for animals to raise them in proper conditions. However, many factory farms do not.

Why aren't state laws on animal cruelty being used against factory farms?

And why doesn't the FDA insist that food carry a warning label if it came from a factory farm or involved genetically engineered animals? I believe several states tried this, but the Bush regime whipped out its "preemption" weenie to force them to stop.