NBC TV-26 Features Kathy Navis on Factory Farms, Eggs and Food Safety
Recalls of more than one half billion eggs brings NBC 26 to Greens N Grains in Egg Harbor to find out what local consumers are buying.
Kathy Navis tells viewers she has seen more people looking for eggs produced in Northeast Wisconsin, especially in Door County where chicken farmers have hundreds of chickens, instead of hundreds of thousands. She says, “we’ve seen about a 25 to 50 percent increase in egg sales.”
The Organic Consumers Association provides the following things we can to do to get moving in the right direction:
1. Congress should exempt small-scale, direct-to-consumer, local, pasture-based, and organic farmers and food processors from inappropriate food safety regulations. Support Tester-Hagan amendments to Senate Bill 510.
2. Consumers should swear off factory-farmed animal products and eat vegetarian when pasture-raised organic isn’t available. We also need to press the USDA to require pasture for organic chickens, as it has for cows.
3. Regulators should phase-out the worst factory farming practices. To address salmonella, we can start by banning battery cages. The USDA organic standards ban battery cages. Michigan and California are the first states to pass phase-out laws. Banning battery cages can cut the risk of salmonella contamination in half.
4. Localities should lift restrictions on residents raising chickens in their backyards.
