Podcasts about Smithfield Foods

James wraps up the show talking about the mystery around the pork industry, specifically Smithfield Foods. He also talks about how Maryland has become the center for immigration politics. He also talks with radio host Brian Kilmeade to discuss news of the day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On The Other Side of Midnight, Dominic Carter fills in to start! He discusses the terrible case of the killing of Rachel Morin and the El Salvador man who democrats are trying to bring back to the U.S. even though he is an alleged MS-13 member. Dominic talks about Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen's visit to El Salvador to try and retrieve the alleged gang member. He also discusses President Trump threatening to cut funds from Harvard and other universities. James Flippin steps in to fill in for the third hour as he talks about Katy Perry's Blue Origin space flight, uncovering the surprising prevalence of autism across the country and much more. James wraps up the show talking about the mystery around the pork industry, specifically Smithfield Foods. He also talks about how Maryland has become the center for immigration politics. He also talks with radio host Brian Kilmeade to discuss news of the day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's the Ranch It Up Radio Show Herd It Here Weekly Report!  A 3-minute look at cattle markets, reports, news info, or anything that has to do with those of us who live at the end of dirt roads.  Join Jeff 'Tigger' Erhardt, the Boss Lady Rebecca Wanner aka 'BEC' by subscribing on your favorite podcasting app or on the Ranch It Up Radio Show YouTube Channel. EPISODE 73 DETAILS Pork & Poultry To China; Beef Left Waiting U.S. Pork and Poultry Exports to China Resume, But Beef Industry Awaits License Renewals In a significant development for U.S. agriculture, pork and poultry producers have regained access to Chinese markets, while beef exporters remain in limbo. The General Administration of Customs of China (GACC) recently restored export licenses for over 300 U.S. pork processing and cold storage facilities, securing trade for the next five years. However, U.S. beef companies are still waiting for confirmation that their "expired" licenses under the Phase 1 trade agreement will be renewed. China Reopens Market For U.S. Pork & Poultry According to the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), the agreement reinstates billions of dollars in U.S. pork and poultry exports. Major producers such as Cargill Inc., Smithfield Foods, and Tyson Foods Inc. will now resume shipments to China, ensuring steady demand for American meat products. In 2024 alone, U.S. pork exports to China totaled over 367,000 metric tons, valued at approximately $1.1 billion. Uncertainty Looms For U.S. Beef Exports Despite these positive developments, the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) has confirmed that the recent license renewals did not extend to beef producers. The U.S. beef industry exported an estimated 170,000 metric tons to China in 2024, making it a critical market. However, industry analysts at Stephens Inc. caution that uncertainty remains until the registration status is clarified. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) noted that China has yet to respond to renewal requests for U.S. beef export registrations. Over the past few days, the registration status of U.S. meat exports shifted from "existing" to "expired," raising concerns within the industry. Without clarity from Chinese authorities, American beef producers face potential trade disruptions. Implication For U.S. Beef Producers With pork and poultry exports back on track, the focus now shifts to securing access for U.S. beef. Industry leaders and trade officials continue to push for renewed agreements, emphasizing the importance of stability in international trade. As the situation unfolds, stakeholders in the U.S. beef sector remain hopeful for a resolution that reinstates access to one of the world's largest meat markets. Stay tuned for updates on this developing trade issue and its impact on the U.S. meat industry.   Upcoming Bull & Heifer Sales On RanchChannel.Com Lot's of bull and heifer sales coming up on the RanchChannel.Com sale calendar.  Eichacker Simmentals & JK Angus, Fast/Dohrmann/Strommen Angus and Leland/Koester Red Angus are all the upcoming sales.  Check out the full line up HERE. SPONSORS Allied Genetic Resources https://alliedgeneticresources.com/ @AlliedGeneticResources American Gelbvieh Association https://gelbvieh.org/ @AmericanGelbvieh Axiota Animal Health https://axiota.com/ @MultiminUSA Jorgensen Land & Cattle https://jorgensenfarms.com/ @JorLandCat Ranch Channel https://ranchchannel.com/ @RanchChannel Questions & Concerns From The Field? Call or Text your questions, or comments to 707-RANCH20 or 707-726-2420 Or email RanchItUpShow@gmail.com FOLLOW Facebook/Instagram: @RanchItUpShow SUBSCRIBE to the Ranch It Up YouTube Channel: @ranchitup Website: RanchItUpShow.com https://ranchitupshow.com/ The Ranch It Up Podcast is available on ALL podcasting apps. https://ranchitup.podbean.com/ Rural America is center-stage on this outfit. AND how is that? Because of Tigger & BEC... Live This Western Lifestyle. Tigger & BEC represent the Working Ranch world by providing the cowboys, cowgirls, beef cattle producers & successful farmers the knowledge and education needed to bring high-quality beef & meat to your table for dinner. Learn more about Jeff 'Tigger' Erhardt & Rebecca Wanner aka BEC here: TiggerandBEC.com https://tiggerandbec.com/ #RanchItUp #StayRanchy #TiggerApproved #tiggerandbec #rodeo #ranching #farming REFERENCES https://www.meatingplace.com/Industry/News/Details/118359

On this episode, we'll learn about Canada's latest retaliatory move against the U.S. amid the ongoing trade war, U.S. Congresswoman Ashley Hinson's take on the trade war situation and what it means for producers long-term, the uncertainties farmers are facing as the growing season nears, and we'll hear an interview report with Jim Mintert from Purdue University at this year's Commodity Classic.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week: Innovation Forum's Anamya Anurag and Ian Welsh highlight some new themes and features at this year's future of food and beverage US forum, taking place in Minneapolis on 28th-29th May. They share latest confirmed speakers including senior representatives from General Mills, Danone, Kraft Heinz, USDA, Smithfield Foods, Kellogg Company and many more.   Plus: Kansas farmer Dwane Roth speaking at the 2024 future of food and beverage  forum in Minneapolis. He covers the farming challenges on-the-ground and the importance of farmer inclusion in improving agri-food systems, and highlights innovative solutions and collaborate water management efforts to sustain farming for future generations.   Host: Ian Welsh

In this episode, Mark Ledlow is joined by Martin Culbreth, a former Marine and FBI agent who now holds a leadership role in corporate security at Smithfield Foods. They delve into handling workplace violence and the impact of remote work on security. Martin discusses the decline in workplace incidents due to remote work, transitioning from military and law enforcement to corporate security roles, and the challenges of maintaining security in various industries. The episode also explores the importance of aligning with company culture and the necessity of understanding risk acceptance within the corporate environment. The conversation offers invaluable advice for security professionals and corporate leaders alike.Learn about all this and more in this episode of The Fearless Mindset Podcast.KEY TAKEAWAYSThe conversation emphasizes dealing with adversity and maintaining resilience in various sectors, including security, business, and entertainment.The shift to remote work due to COVID-19 has reportedly decreased instances of workplace violence but introduced new challenges and risks.Effective communication and understanding the company's goals and culture are crucial for security professionals transitioning from military or government roles to corporate environments.The necessity of educating the C-suite on the importance of security and the potential risks associated with being complacent.Security experts should be both knowledgeable advisors and effective communicators to influence company policies and decisions.CSOs need to be adaptable, as corporate roles and environments can vastly differ from government or military positions.QUOTES"Don't get enamored with the process. Make sure you're thoughtful about where you're going to land.""We all love being invited to the prom. But then when the limo shows up, you're like, Ooh, is that really who I wanted to go with?""Be the one telling my boss what the risk is. If my boss decides that they're willing to accept that risk, I can't be so married to my project and to my department that I fight with them.""The biggest thing is to continue to try to educate our C-suite away from the idea that it's not going to happen.”Get to know more about Martin Culbreth:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-culbreth-8930034a/To hear more episodes of The Fearless Mindset podcast, you can go to https://the-fearless-mindset.simplecast.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, etc. You can also subscribe to the Fearless Mindset YouTube Channel to watch episodes on video.

A meatpacking company will pay a $2 million penalty, after reaching a settlement with the state of Minnesota over alleged child labor violations. The state says it found that Smithfield Foods illegally employed 11 teenagers, some as young as 14, at its plant in St. James between 2021 and 2023. Also, Lindsey Vonn says she's ready to compete again. This is the evening MPR News update, hosted by Emily Reese. Theme music by Gary Meister

Fed Chair Jerome Powell spoke in Dallas today and made it clear that the Central Bank would slowly and deliberately reduce the prime lending rate. But he is still concerned about inflationary pressures.  And, yes, we'll have that story to share with you. Meanwhile, if you want to reach out to us on social media you can hook up with us all day on Twitter or "X" @IOB_NewsHour and on Instagram. Facebook? Sure were there too.  Here's what we've got for you today: Fed Chair Jerome Powell will be...cautious; Markets sank a bit and why; Seems that wholesale inflation is back; A nursing home company to pay a hefty fine; Meanwhile, Smithfield Foods employed minors they too get a fine; Chipotle is facing a lawsuit. Think portion sizes and social media; Advance Auto Parts to close hundreds of stores and why; The Wall Street Report; Disney shared some Q3 numbers and they are....mixed. Thanks for listening! The award winning Insight on Business the News Hour with Michael Libbie is the only weekday business news podcast in the Midwest. The national, regional and some local business news along with long-form business interviews can be heard Monday - Friday. You can subscribe on  PlayerFM, Podbean, iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio. And you can catch The Business News Hour Week in Review each Sunday Noon Central on News/Talk 1540 KXEL. The Business News Hour is a production of Insight Advertising, Marketing & Communications. You can follow us on Twitter @IoB_NewsHour...and on Threads @Insight_On_Business.

In this episode, Mark Ledlow is joined by Martin Culbreth, a former Marine and FBI agent who now holds a leadership role in corporate security at Smithfield Foods. From Las Vegas, Mark discusses with Martin his journey into corporate security, focusing on physical security challenges, integration of technology, budget management, and the importance of information in security strategies. Martin shares his experiences transitioning into his role, establishing a security department, and handling budget constraints. The conversation delves into the complexity of proving the value of security measures, the necessity of constant communication with the C-suite, and how to maintain security standards across diverse manufacturing facilities. Martin addresses the impact of inflation on corporate budgeting and highlights proactive measures like collaboration with law enforcement and conducting site surveys to enhance security, even during tight budget cycles.Learn about all this and more in this episode of The Fearless Mindset Podcast.KEY TAKEAWAYSEvent Recap: Mark talks about attending a security practitioner event in Las Vegas and introduces Martin Culbreth, former Marine and FBI agent, now in a security leadership role.Martin's Role: Martin outlines his responsibilities in physical security at Smithfield, including information gathering, setting security standards, and collaborating across departments.Technology in Security: Martin discusses integrating technology like Ontic for information gathering and case management, and the challenges of implementing such technology.Building a Security Program: Martin shares his journey from starting a new security department, handling budgets, and developing a comprehensive strategic security plan.Security Challenges: Both speakers discuss challenges like justifying security expenses to the C-suite, comparing security to revenue-generating functions, and educating the corporate world on the importance of security investment.Proving Security's Value: The difficulty of proving security's ROI with hypothetical "prevented incidents" and the need to constantly communicate security's importance.Budget Negotiations: The process of working with finance and other departments to justify security expenditures and prioritize security projects.Economic Impact: The impact of inflation and corporate budgeting constraints on security investments and strategies to adapt during tight financial periods.Coordination with Law Enforcement: Emphasizing the importance of collaborating with law enforcement for emergency preparedness and crisis response training.QUOTES"We have to understand coming into corporate security that it's a sales, right? They expect everything to have a solid and apparent and immediate return on investment.""Our job is to sell products and make as good a profit as we can while still keeping our prices where we should. So I get that.""In the military, the trick was to make sure you spend what you were budgeted for. Otherwise, your budget dropped to that new level.""You have to be almost like the communications guy. Because you're selling the program. All the time and trying to explain why this is important.""In the military, I always remember, okay, it was set, right? And you had your budget. Whereas here, it's almost a fight year over year to almost reestablish that budget."Get to know more about Martin Culbreth:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-culbreth-8930034a/To hear more episodes of The Fearless Mindset podcast, you can go to https://the-fearless-mindset.simplecast.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, etc. You can also subscribe to the Fearless Mindset YouTube Channel to watch episodes on video.

Send us a textWe celebrate 50 years of local area company Grecian Delight | Kronos as they Honor Greek American Cuisine, Culture, and Heritage with Community Events. Mike Paribello is a seasoned marketing, sales, and innovation leader with over 25 years of experience in the consumer products and food industry. His extensive expertise in brand management, advertising, shopper and retail marketing, consumer insights, and staying ahead of the latest trends has made him a trusted figure among some of the most recognized food companies and brands found in millions of households today. Throughout his career, including over 20 years at Conagra Foods and Smithfield Foods, Mike has consistently driven growth and innovation. Paribello is now helping Grecian Delight | Kronos into its next 50 years, focusing on innovative and convenient solutions for both retail and foodservice operators making it easy for them to bring the finest Greek and Mediterranean food options to tables and menus everywhere.

Noticias Económicas y Financieras Los mercados financieros están reabriendo tras un intento de asesinato contra Donald Trump en un mitin de campaña el fin de semana en Pensilvania. Una bala que rozó la oreja del expresidente, y que podría haber tenido un resultado muy diferente, sigue siendo noticia, en medio de llamados a la unidad para unir al país. El tiroteo también se produjo antes del inicio de la Convención Nacional Republicana, que se desarrolla de lunes a jueves, en Milwaukee, y muchos analistas evalúan lo que la reciente serie de eventos puede significar para los inversores. Según se informa, Alphabet $GOOGL, la empresa matriz de Google, está en negociaciones avanzadas para adquirir la startup de ciberseguridad Wiz por aproximadamente $23B. Si se completa, el acuerdo sería la mayor adquisición de la historia del gigante tecnológico y ayudaría a impulsar sus esfuerzos en computación en la nube, un negocio importante y en crecimiento en el que se ha quedado rezagado respecto de sus pares. Cualquier transacción se produciría en un momento en que las autoridades antimonopolio están examinando el poder de mercado de Alphabet, así como de otras empresas tecnológicas. Los inversores de Wiz incluyen a Insight Partners, Blackstone $BX, Sequoia, Salesforce Ventures $CRM y Lightspeed. La economía está en el punto de mira, ya que los principales responsables de las políticas chinas se reúnen para una reunión conocida como el Tercer Pleno. La asamblea suele centrarse en cuestiones de largo plazo que enfrenta el país y que han dado lugar en el pasado a reformas radicales. Afectado por una desaceleración del mercado inmobiliario, una débil demanda interna, la caída del yuan y las fricciones comerciales con Occidente, el producto interno bruto de China se expandió un 4.7% en el período de abril a junio, según datos oficiales. Eso representó una desaceleración respecto del crecimiento del 5.3% informado en el primer trimestre y también incumplió las expectativas de los economistas. El mayor productor de carne de cerdo del mundo tiene grandes planes. WH Group, la empresa matriz china de Smithfield Foods, pretende sacar a bolsa el negocio de la empresa en Estados Unidos y México en la Bolsa de Nueva York o Nasdaq. WH Group compró Smithfield por $4.7B en 2013, lo que supuso una de las mayores adquisiciones de una empresa estadounidense por parte de una empresa china en aquel momento. Como resultado, Smithfield fue eliminada de la Bolsa de Nueva York, pero sigue siendo dueña de marcas populares como Nathan's Famous y sacrifica unos 30 millones de cerdos al año.

In 2013, US-based Smithfield Foods – the world's largest pork producer – was bought by a Chinese firm for nearly $5 billion. But was it just a run-of-the-mill acquisition for a big Chinese company, or was there more to the story? It was a question that would send investigative reporter Nate Halverson down a rabbit hole that exposed a hidden war across the world over two vital resources: food and water. This week on Whale Hunting, Tom Wright welcomes Nate to discuss The Grab, his new documentary delving into global conspiracies to control food and water, spanning everything from China's acquisition of US pig farms to Saudi investors exploiting Arizona's aquifers. Nate also shares his discoveries about Blackwater mercenary Erik Prince, what Putin's invasion of Ukraine means for world wheat supplies, and how food insecurity and climate change will make fresh water the 21st century's new oil. The Grab is available to stream now on Apple TV and Amazon Prime in the US, and is coming soon to screens elsewhere in the world. Find out more at www.magpictures.com/thegrab. For more from Whale Hunting, make sure to follow the podcast – and you can subscribe to our newsletter at whalehunting.projectbrazen.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode, my guest is David Bacon, a California writer and documentary photographer. A former union organizer, today he documents labor, the global economy, war and migration, and the struggle for human rights. His latest book, In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte (COLEF / UC Press, 2017) includes over 300 photographs and 12 oral histories of farm workers. Other books include The Right to Stay Home and Illegal People, which discuss alternatives to forced migration and the criminalization of migrants. Communities Without Borders includes over 100 photographs and 50 narraatives about transnational migrant communities and The Children of NAFTA is an account of worker resistance on the US/Mexico border in the wake of NAFTA.Show Notes:David's Early YearsLearning about Immigration through UnionsThe Meaning of Being UndocumentedNAFTA and Mexican MigrationThe Source of Corn / MaizeBinational Front of Indigenous Organizations / Frente Indigena de Organizacaions BinacionalesThe Right to Stay HomeAndres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) CampaignThe Face & History of Immigration in the USAImmigration Reform and AmnestyThe Violence of Fortuna Silver Mines in OaxacaSolidarity, Change and OptimismHomework:The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican MigrationIn the Fields of the North / En los campos del norteIllegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes ImmigrantsCommunities without Borders: Images and Voices from the World of MigrationThe Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico BorderDavid's Twitter AccountDavid's Official WebsiteTranscript:Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome to the End of Tourism podcast, David. It's an honor to have you on the pod. To begin, I'd like to ask you where you find yourself today and what the world looks like for you there. David: Well, I live in Berkeley, here in California, and I am sitting in front of my computer screen having just what I've been up to today before talking with you. Chris: Hmm. Well, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for your work. Perhaps I could ask you what drew you to the issues of labor and migration.David: Sure. Well, I come from a kind of left wing union family, so I knew about unions and workers and strikes and things like that from probably since before I can remember. And so I was kind of an activist when I was in high school, got involved in the [00:01:00] student movement in the 1960s at the University of California, got involved in the free speech movement, got tossed out by the university, actually, and wound up going to work after that, really, because I got married, had a daughter, and I got married, had a daughter, and, I needed to get a job and, you know, worked for quite a while as a a printer in the same trade that my father was, had been in went back to night school to learn more of the, of the trade, how to do different parts of it, how to run presses and so forth and then got involved, this is, you know, in the late 60s, early 70s got involved in the movement to support farm workers, really, and I was one of those people, you know, if you're my age, you remember this, if you're younger, you probably don't, but we used to picket supermarkets to try to get them [00:02:00] to stop selling the grapes and the wine and the lettuce that was on strike, and we would stand out in front of Safeway and other supermarkets with our red flags with the black eagle on them, And ask customers, you know, not to go into the store, not to buy the products that farmworkers were on strike against.And I got really interested in. I'm curious about the workers that we were supporting. You know, I grew up in Oakland and so I didn't know anything about farm workers, really. I didn't know anything about rural California, rural areas, didn't speak Spanish didn't know much about Chicano, Latinos.Oakland's a pretty diverse city, but in the area of Oakland where I grew up in you know, in our high school, you know, the students were African American or they were white, and that was a big racial question in, in school when I was in high school. So I grew up not knowing any of these things.[00:03:00] And Because I was involved in, you know, standing out in front of these stores and supporting workers, I, you know, began wondering, who are these workers that we're supporting? And eventually, I went to work for the union. I asked a lawyer friend of mine who was in their legal department if they needed any help, and of course he said yes.I went down to, Oxnard and de Santamaria began working for the union, originally taking statements from workers who had been fired because of their union activity. I didn't know much Spanish, so I had to learn Spanish on the job. Fortunately, you know, the workers were very patient with me and would help me learn, help me correct my still bad pronunciation and bad grammar.And, and I began to learn. And that process has been going on ever since, really. That was a, that was a formative time in my life. It taught me a lot of [00:04:00] things. It taught me about, you know, the culture of. farm workers who were mostly Mexican in those years, but there were still a good number of Filipino workers working in the fields.That eventually led me to the woman I eventually married, my wife, who was the daughter of of immigrants from the Philippines from a farm worker family. So I learned about that culture and I began learning about immigration, which I hadn't really known anything about growing up. Why people come to the U.S., what happens to people here. I, I saw my first immigration raid. When I was an organizer, I later became an organizer for the union as my Spanish got better. And I remember going to talk to a group of workers that I had met with the previous night, who were worked up in palm trees picking dates.And I went down to the date grove, this was in the Coachella Valley, and there was this big green van, and there were the [00:05:00] workers who I'd been talking to the previous night being loaded into the van. I was just You know, really shocked. The van took off. I followed the van all the way down to the Imperial Valley, to El Centro, where the detention center was.Stood outside the center trying to figure out what the hell is going on here. What am I going to do? What's going to happen to these people? And that was sort of an introduction to the meaning of being undocumented, what it meant to people, what could happen. And that made me an immigrant rights activist, which I've also been ever since, too.But also, over time, I got interested in the reasons why people were coming to the U. S. to begin with. You know, what people were finding here when people got here was very, very difficult work, low pay, immigration raids, police harassment, at least, and sometimes worse than that, poverty. You know, Why leave Mexico if this is what you're going to find?[00:06:00] And it also made me curious about the border. And so that also began something that has continued on in all those years since. I eventually went to the border, went to Mexico, began getting interested and involved in Mexican labor politics, supporting unions and workers in Mexico, you know, doing work on the border itself.After the Farm Workers Union, I worked for other unions for A number of years and they were generally reunions where the workers who were trying to join and we were trying to help were immigrants. So the government workers union, the women in the sweatshops sewing clothes or union for factory workers.And so my job was basically to help workers organize and. Organizing a union in the United States is like well, you know, people throw around this word, you know, this phrase class war and class warfare pretty freely, but it is like a war. You know, when [00:07:00] workers get together and they decide they want to change conditions and they want to you know, get the company to, speak to them and to deal with them in an organized way.They really do have to kind of go, go to war or be willing to, for the company to go to war with them. You know, really what people are asking for sometimes is pretty minimal, you know, wage raises or fair treatment at work or a voice at work. You know, you think, you know, what's wrong with that. But generally speaking when employers get faced with workers who want to do that they do everything possible to try and stop them.Including firing people and harassing people, calling them to meetings, threatening people, scaring people. You know, there's a whole industry in this country that consists of union consultants who do nothing but, you know, advise big companies about how to stop workers when they, when they try to organize.So that's what I did for about 20 years. Was help workers to get organized, form a union, get their bus to sit down and talk [00:08:00] to them, go out on strike, do all those kinds of things. And eventually I decided that I wanted to do something else. And I, I was already involved in, you know, starting to take photographs.I would carry a camera and I would take pictures of what we were doing as workers. We would joke about it, kind of. I would tell workers, well, you know, we're going to take some pictures here and you can take them home to your family and show them, you know, that you're really doing what's right here and 20 years from now you'll show your grandkids that, you know, when the time came, you stood up and you did what was right and people would joke with each other about it.And I discovered also that you could use them to get support for what we were doing. You know, we could get an article published in a newspaper somewhere. Some labor newspaper might run an article about us. You might get some money and some help or some food or something. But after a while, you know, I began [00:09:00] realizing that these photographs, they had a value beyond that.And that was that they were documenting this social movement that was taking place among immigrants and, and Latino workers, especially here on the West Coast of people basically trying to. Organize themselves for social justice in a lot of different ways, organizing unions for sure, but also trying to get changes in U.S. immigration laws, immigration policies those people who are citizens and able to vote, registering to vote, political change. You have to remember that if you go back to the 1960s or 1970s, Los Angeles was what we used to call the capital of the open shop. In other words, it was one of the most right wing cities in America.You know, the mayor Sam Yorty was a right wing Republican. The police department had what they called the Red Squad, whose responsibility it was is to go out and to deal with [00:10:00] people that wanted to change anything or to organize and Unions or strikes or belong to left wing political parties or whatever.And today, Los Angeles is one of the most progressive cities in the United States, and it has to do with what happened to those primarily Central American and Mexican and workers of color, women, who over time got organized and changed the politics of Los Angeles. And so, you know, I was really fascinated by it.This process, I was involved in it as an organizer and then later as a somebody taking photographs of it and writing about it that and so that's, that's sort of the transition that I made for the last 30 some odd years. I've worked as a freelance writer and photographer, basically doing the same kind of thing.I look at it as a way of organizing people, really, because the whole purpose of writing the articles and taking the [00:11:00] photographs is to change the way people think, and make it possible for people to understand the world better, and then to act on that understanding, which to me means trying to fight for a more just world, a more just society.And so. That's what, that's the purpose of the photographs, that's the purpose of the writing, is to, is to change the world. I think it's a big tradition in, in this country, in the United States of photography and of journalism that is produced by people who are themselves part of the movements that they are writing about or documenting, and whose purpose it is to sort of help to move forward social movements for social change.Chris: Amen. Some of the stories you were mentioning remind me of my mother who also worked for a labor union most of her life. And I was definitely still very much concerned with the state of affairs. I should [00:12:00] say that you know, I'm incredibly grateful as well to have a man of your stature and experience on the pod here to speak with us your work Has definitely opened my eyes to a lot of things I hadn't seen living here in southern Mexico, in, in Oaxaca.And one of these, these books, which I'd like to touch on a little bit today, is entitled, The Right to Stay Home. how U. S. policy drives Mexican migration. And we're actually at the 10 year anniversary of the publication of this book. So I feel honored to be able to speak with you in this regard about it.And, you know, it's, for me, someone who was a backpacker and a tourist, and then later a resident of this place, of Oaxaca, to come to understand much more deeply the complexities and nuances around migration, and especially in the context of Mexican migration to the United States. [00:13:00] What's left out of the conversation as someone who grew up in urban North America and Toronto, Canada very much on the left in my earlier years, in terms of organizing and, and and protesting, the, the, the dialogues and the conversations always seem to be around the the treatment of migrants once they arrived and, and not necessarily, as you said, why they left in the first place, the places that they left and the consequences to the places that they left.And so I guess to begin, I'm wondering if you could offer our listeners a little bit of background into How that book came to be written and what was the inspiration and driving factors for it? David: The book came to be written to begin with because I began going to Mexico and trying to understand how [00:14:00] the system of migration works in the context of the world that we live in, you know, people call it globalization or globalism, or you could call it imperialism.So I was trying to understand that from the roots of first having been involved with people as migrants once they had arrived here in the U. S. I was trying to understand Well, two things. One was why people were coming, and also what happens to people in the course of coming. In other words, the journey that people make.Especially the border. The border is the big And the border has very important functions in this because it's really the crossing of the border that determines what the social status of a migrant is, whether you have papers or not, whether you're documented or not, which is a huge, [00:15:00] huge, huge distinction.So as a result of that, and as a result of kind of listening to people listening to the movement in Mexico talk, about it, investigating, going to places like Oaxaca. I first wrote a book that tried to look at this as a system, a social system. It's really part of the way capitalism functions on a international or global basis in our era because what it does is it produces Displacement, the changes that are, you take a country like Mexico, and this is what the first book, the first book was called Illegal People.And what it looked at was the imposition on Mexico, for instance, it starts with NAFTA, the free trade agreement. In fact, the first book I ever wrote was about the border and was called The Children of NAFTA, the [00:16:00] North American Free Trade Agreement. But this book Illegal People, what it really tried to do is it tried to look at the ways in which People were displaced in communities like Oaxaca.And of course, for Oaxaca, Oaxaca is a corn growing state. It's a rural state. Most people in Oaxaca still live in villages and small communities. Oaxaca's a big city, and there's some other cities there, but, but most people in Oaxaca are still what you call rural people. And so NAFTA, among the many changes that it imposed on Mexico, one of the most important was that it allowed U. S. corn corporations, Archer Daniels Midland Continental Grain Company other really large corporations to dump corn in Mexico at a price that we were subsidizing through the U. S. Farm Bill, our tax money. In other words, we're, our tax money was being [00:17:00] given to these corporations to lower their cost of production.And that allowed them to go to Mexico and to sell corn at a price that was so low that people who were growing corn in a place like Oaxaca could no longer sell it for a price that would cover the cost of growing it. That had an enormous impact on people in Oaxaca because what it did was it forced people to basically to leave in order to survive.It's not that people were not leaving Oaxaca already before the agreement passed. There were other reasons that were causing the displacement of people in rural communities in Oaxaca. A lot of it had to do with this relationship with the U. S. even then, but certainly NAFTA was like pouring gasoline on all of that.And so three million people was the estimate that in a period of 10 years were displaced as corn farmers in Oaxaca. That's a huge percentage of the population of Oaxaca. [00:18:00] And so people were forced to go elsewhere looking for work. People went, you know, to Mexico City. You know, Mexico City, the metro system, the subway system in Mexico City was built primarily by workers who came from somewhere else.A lot of them from Oaxaca. Who wound up being the low cost labor that the Mexican government used to build a subway system. They went to the border, they became workers in the maquiladoras, in the factories that were producing everything from car parts to TV screens for the U. S. market. And then people began crossing the border and coming to the U.S. as either farm workers in rural areas of California or as low paid workers in urban areas like Los Angeles. So one of the big ironies, I think, of it was that here you had farm work, farmers who were being forced off their land. And remember that these are corn farmers, so [00:19:00] the Domestication of corn happened first in Oaxaca, and the first earliest years of domesticated corn, thousands of years old, have been discovered in archaeological digs in Oaxaca and caves near Oaxaca City to begin with.So here we have people to whom the world really owes corn as a domesticated crop, who are winding up as being wage workers on the farms of corporate U. S. agribusiness corporations in California, Oregon, Washington, eventually all over the United States. That was the migration of Oaxacan people. And so you could sort of see In this, as sort of a prism, what the forces were, what the social forces at work are, in other words, that in the interests of the profits of these big corporations, these trade agreements get negotiated between [00:20:00] governments, okay, our government, the U.S. government negotiates with the Mexican government, but that's like David negotiating with Goliath, or the other way around, rather, you know, The agreements are really imposed. It's not to say that the Mexican government of those years was opposed to it. It was a neoliberal government too, but the power in this negotiation is held by the U.S. government. And so that trade agreement in the interest of making Mexico a profitable place for, you know, Archer Daniels Middleton to do business gets imposed on Mexico. And then as a result of that, people get displaced and they wind up becoming a low wage workforce for other corporations here in here in the U.S. In fact, sometimes they Wind up working for the same corporation Smithfield foods, which is a big producing corporation [00:21:00] went to Mexico. It got control of huge areas of a valley called the Peralta Valley, not that far from Mexico city. And they began. Establishing these huge pork or pig raising facilities.In fact, that's where the swine flu started was because of the concentration of animals in these farms. Again, displacing people out of those communities. And people from the state of Veracruz, where the Perote Valley is located, many of them wound up getting recruited and then going to work in North Carolina at the huge Smithfield Foods Pork Slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North Carolina.So that sort of tells you a lot about how this system works. It produces displacement. In other words, it produces people who have no alternative but to migrate in order to survive. And those people go through all the things that people have to go through in order to get to the United [00:22:00] States because there are no real visas for this kind of migration.And them wind up being The workforce that is needed by the system here, Smithfield Foods or other corporations like them in order for them to make high profits here. And in the process of doing this, I was developing a a relationship with a very unique organization in Mexico, in Oaxaca, a part of which exists in Oaxaca, called the Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales, which is the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations.And this is an organization that was actually started by Oaxaca migrants in the U. S., in Los Angeles, and then expanded both into the Central Valley here in California and then expanded back into Mexico in Baja, California, where there are also big corporate farms where primarily Oaxaca, people from Oaxaca are the workforce, and eventually chapters in Oaxaca itself.[00:23:00] And so I would got to be friends with many people in this organization, and I would go and take photographs at their bi national meetings, they would have meetings in Mexico where people could come together and and talk about their situation. And, you know, I began, obviously, listening to what people were talking about.And, People developed this, I think, very kind of path breaking, unique analysis of migration in which they talked about a dual set of rights that migrants need and migrant communities need in this kind of world. And so, What they said was, on the one hand people need rights as migrants where they go.In other words, people, when they come to the United States, need legal status. People need decent wages, the ability to organize, you know, an end to the kind of discrimination that people are subject to. But, [00:24:00] people also need a second set of rights as well, which is called the right to stay home. And that is the title of the book, The Right to Stay Home.And what that means is that, People need political change and economic and social change in their communities of origin, which makes migration voluntary. So these are communities that are so involved in the process of migration that it would not make any sense to say that migration is bad, because In many cases, these are communities that live on the remittances that are being sent by migrants, by members of people's own families who are living and working in the United States.So the discourse in these meetings was sort of on the order of saying that people have the right to migrate, people have the right to travel, people have the right to leave, but they also have the right to stay home. They have the right to a decent future. A young [00:25:00] person who is growing up in Santiago, Cusco, Oaxaca in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, for instance, has a right to a future in Oaxaca so that you can make a choice.Do you want to stay and have a decent life for yourself in Oaxaca, or do you want to leave and hopefully have a decent life for you and wherever you go, whether Baja California or California or Washington State? So in order to have a Right to stay home. What has to happen? What do people need? It's kind of a no brainer. People need well high farm prices to begin with. They need the ability to raise corn, tomatoes, Whatever crop it is that they need and sell it at a price that is capable of sustaining those families and communities. People need education.They need healthcare, but people also need political change because the Frente Indígena is a political organization. And so it was fighting [00:26:00] against the domination of Oaxaca by the old PRI, the party of the institutionalized revolution, which had been running Mexico for 70 years, trying to find a government that would begin to push for those kinds of social rights.And that was you know, a very important kind of eye opening for me was to hear people talking about the right to stay home, so much so that I said, you know, we need a book about this. So we're not just describing the system itself, how it works, but we are talking about what are people's responses to it?What do people think should happen here? And this was one of the most important developments of it. And it was not just. The people in Oaxaca, the more I did work on trying to investigate it and document it, there's part of the book, and also this was being done in people's [00:27:00] voices, the main voice in the right to stay home belongs to Rufino Dominguez, who was one of the founders of the Frente Indígena, who was my teacher in this, and so at one point they did knock the PRI out of power in Oaxaca and elected a governor, Gabino Cuei, who turned out to be not as good as people had hoped that he would be, but he was not the PRI.And he appointed Rufino, the head of the Oaxacan Institute for Attention to Migrants. So here was Rufino who had, was a left wing radical who spent his whole life opposing the government in Oaxaca, who then joined it for a while until he could no longer stomach what was going on there and had to leave.But. Pushing for that kind of political change in Oaxaca. There's another part of the book that talks about the miners in Cananea near the border with the United States. And their Effort to try to. win justice from this huge corporation that [00:28:00] was basically intent on destroying their union. And when they were forced out on strike, those miners also had to cross the border to Arizona to become workers in Arizona to survive.Again, you know, you see how the system is working here, but they also were talking about what kind of political change has to happen in Mexico for the right to stay home. to become reality. And that movement in Mexico grew strong enough so that, you know, after The Right to Stay Home was published, some years after, since it was, as you said, 10 years ago that Andrés Manuel López Obrador campaigned.He went all around the country speaking in every little tiny village that Mexico has, practically, in the course of four years. And one of the main things he talked about was the right to alternatives to forced migration. And I was there in Mexico City in the Zócalo when he took office. He finally won it.I don't want to go into all the things that had to [00:29:00] happen for Andrés Manuel López Obrador to win an election and become president of Mexico. But in his, in his inaugural speech as he was being sworn in, he talked about, we are going to make Mexico into a place where Mexicans can be happy living, where you don't have to go to the United States in order to survive, and I think you can talk about the, Things that the Mexican government has not been able to accomplish in the last four or five years.But I think one thing is beyond question and that is that that has been the main direction of the policy of the government of Mexico in that period of time because that's what got him elected. was this idea that, as he said, we are going to reject the liberal, neoliberal hypocrisy of the last six administrations in Mexico, meaning no more trade agreements like NAFTA, no [00:30:00] more opening Mexico up to U.S. corporations to come in and make money and as a result of which everybody's going to have to leave, that there had to be some kind of different direction in Mexico. So, in a way, I think that. Maybe that book, The Right to Stay Home, was like a little grain of sand that joined with other little grains of sand like it in helping to move forward that process of political change, because it happened on really on both sides of the border.Gosh, millions and millions of Mexicans who are living in the United States. So the process of political discussion that goes on about the kind of government Mexicans should have happens not just in Mexico, it happens here too. You know, part of Mexico is here on this side of the border. So you know, the book, and the book actually was published in Spanish and in Mexico as well too.So I think that it talked about things that were very important to people. [00:31:00] At the time, and that people are still debating about what has to happen in order for the right to stay home to be a reality. And I think it's something very important for people in this country to listen to and to think about as well, too, because in all the debates about migration that happen in here in the U.SThere's not a lot of attention that's paid to this whole idea of the two sets of rights, what has to happen. You know, certainly, you know, there are people like Trump and the right wing of the Republican Party that just, you know, never going to talk about anything like this. But even among Democrats, even in the Biden administration, you know, it's really too much about how to manage the border, you know, which basically boils down to how many people are we going to detain and deport.Rather than thinking about what kind of [00:32:00] world do we want to live in. Therefore, what kind of places migration going to have in it? ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Chris: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's it's been fascinating reading and rereading this book in, in, in part to be able to give voice to not just migrants and not just migration issues in the places that people move to or migrate to, but also in the places that they, that they leave behind and the voices of the people that they leave behind.And you know, I think for. Many North Americans, especially those who are first or second generation citizens of those countries of Anglo North America, of Canada and the United States, that these are, these are the stories these are the voices that that maybe they haven't heard of in their own families as well.And so, you know, you started to mention a little bit about this. the kind of superficiality, perhaps, if I'm, if I can say it in that, in those terms, of the [00:33:00] political conversation around migration in the United States, in Canada, and perhaps even in Mexico. And so I'd like to ask you about the reception and perhaps the fallout Once the book was published, and I'm curious how the declaration to the right to stay home or the right to not migrate has altered at all the political or social social landscape in rural Mexico, you know, at least in terms of the people that you know in these places.And also if there was any response, any, any ground shaking movements as a result of the book coming out among activists in the United States. David: Well, I think that the book contributed to an important change. In the immigrant rights movement in the United States here, because, you know, having participated in that movement as an activist [00:34:00] for, gosh, 40 some odd years now, maybe more, Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986 with the so called amnesty law.Which not only gave amnesty to undocumented people, but also made it illegal for undocumented people to work in the United States after that and started the whole process of the border militarization. In fact, you know, the negative parts of that bill were so bad that many people like myself opposed the bill, even if it had amnesty in it, saying that it was not a this was not a good deal.And I think that over time. You know, history has proven that we were right not that amnesty was unimportant and not worth fighting for, but that the price that we paid turned out to be much higher than people were willing to give it credit for, you know, at the time. But what was also really missing from that debate, for instance, in [00:35:00] those years, was any sense that we had to really deal with and think about the causes of migration and the roots of migration, the displacement.It was really all about the status of people when they were here. You know, should it be legal or illegal for people to work? Should people get papers or should people not get papers? And that was a very limiting Conversation, because what really, what it really meant was that it could not acknowledge the fact that the migration from Mexico is not going to stop.For instance, the, in that, in that bill, the, the qualifying date for amnesty was January 1st, 1982, meaning. That if you came before that date, you could apply for the amnesty and get legalization, and if you came after that date, you couldn't get it. For people migrating from [00:36:00] Oaxaca, for instance, almost everybody came after.So all the Oaxacans who came to the United States, hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people really hardly anybody. Qualified for amnesty because of that bill, which is one reason why legal status is such an enormous question for the Oaxacan community here in the U. S. So it, the, the discussion of that bill didn't acknowledge that and also by setting that date, it was, I think, very cynical because Mexico had what was called the Peso Shock in 1982, where the economic crisis in Mexico got so bad that Mexico had to devalue its currency.And what that meant was that thousands, hundreds of thousands of people in Mexico lost their jobs and had to come to the United States. And by setting that date, January 1st of that year, what you were really saying is, none of those people are going to qualify for amnesty. So they were [00:37:00] already here. But also it didn't acknowledge that, you know, in the, that, that bill set up a a commission to study the causes of migration, supposedly.And that commission came back and recommended the negotiation of a trade agreement between the U. S. and Mexico. And it said, well, in the short run, maybe this would result in the displacement of a lot of people, but in the long run, it would lead to the economic development of Mexico, and then people would have jobs and they wouldn't have to come here.Well, that was another very, very cynical kind of thing, because the negotiations of NAFTA started not long after the report of that commission, and in fact, NAFTA did lead to the displacement of millions of people in Mexico. There were four and a half million migrants from Mexico living in the U. S.when NAFTA went into effect and by 2010 it was [00:38:00] 12 and a half million people. So an enormous increase in people and the rise in Mexican living standards. Never happened. Well, that's not true. When López Obrador finally came into office he began taking measures to raise wages and raise the living standards in Mexico, which previous administrations had resisted bitterly because they wanted to attract investment.And things have started to improve economically for workers and farmers in Mexico a little bit. But up until then, so being unable to face the roots of migration and its connections to corporate America and the way our government was on the one hand producing migration or doing things to produce migration on the other hand making The status of migrants, illegal criminalizing it here.It was a really, a very difficult debate for people in [00:39:00] the immigrant rights movement. As a result, a lot of organizations said, well, MSD, we need MSD. Let's just forget about a lot of other stuff. Let's just get down to seat on what we paid a really bad price for it. Today I think there is a lot more discussion in the immigrant rights movement about what happens in Mexico and Central America in particular that causes people to come to the United States.I think still there's not enough of a willingness to deal with the economic part of it. the poverty. So these days, the way it gets dealt with is mostly by talking about the violence in Honduras. For instance, San Pedro Sula, which is called the murder capital of the world. You know, I wrote a whole article about how did San Pedro Sula become such a violent place to begin with?And what did it have to do with U. [00:40:00] S. companies going and growing bananas in Honduras? But in any case it gets put down, I think too much to violence, to the exclusion of the causes of the violence. What is the, what is the root cause of violence in Central American countries? The Civil War in El Salvador was fought about who was fighting on what side, what kind of changes were people proposing.The more you unpeel it, the more you look at it, the more you see that this is really, again, about the economic and political relationship between the U. S. and China. Those countries. And so I think that books like Illegal People, like The Right to Stay Home, played a role in trying to get us to look more at this as a whole system, what produces migration, and then criminalizes migrants here.I think that it's a very [00:41:00] limited accomplishment. Because we still have an extremely unjust immigration system. You know, we all hated Trump and the detention centers and, and his racist orders. But the reality is, is that we have more people crossing the border this last year than any other previous time in our history.And we have thousands and thousands of people living in detention. In the United States in detention centers and in detention centers on the Mexican side of the border. And this is under a democratic administration. So, I think that we have to be real about how limited our impact has been up to now.But, having said that, I think it is still a big advance for us to be able to talk. in this country, in the United States, about the roots of migration, and also be able to reach out to organizations and people and communities in Mexico and talk about, well, [00:42:00] okay, what is our, what should our relationship be?Well, how do we work together? How are we going to be able to try and change this system together? I think those efforts are kind of only starting, really. I don't think there's nearly enough of it, but I think that's the future. That's where the change is going to come from. Chris: And I can't stress enough, you know, how devoid of complexity and nuance most any political conversation has these days, and that most people don't go looking for it, in part because You know, most people haven't been taught.So, you mentioned a little bit earlier, as you wrote in, in your book, The Right to Stay Home, about the consequences of mining companies, as an example, in, in Mexico. Foreign owned mining corporations. And Here in Oaxaca, it's very well known that these corporations undertake geological testing without the [00:43:00] consent of communities, that they lie to the communities about concessions when trying to push their way into the territory, and then sponsor community violence by dividing the people against each other through bribery, corruption.Intimidation, threats, and sometimes assassination. And so, I'm curious, first, if you could offer a little bit more of what you've seen in this regard, and secondly, why do you think that in this example that, you know, Canadians, in the context of the one particular mine here in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, is a Canadian owned mine, why they have no idea that this is happening on foreign soil in their names?You David: know, I wrote a long article about San Jose del Progreso in the Vice Centrales in, in Oaxaca, and Fortuna Mine there, which is a Canadian, Canadian company. And I think this is [00:44:00] another way of seeing what this kind of, just to use shorthand, this free trade arrangement between the US, Canada and Mexico, what it really means for people on the ground.Mexico in previous administrations changed this mining law so that it became possible. And the purpose of to make it possible for foreign corporation to get a mining concession anywhere in Mexico and develop a mine without having to get the consent of the people who live in the community around it.Basically saying that, you know the Mexican government was entitled to sell off these concessions regardless of what the people there thought about it. And so the purpose of this was to, again, attract foreign investment into Mexico. This is part of the neoliberal policy that says [00:45:00] that the economic development policy of Mexico should be to sell pieces of Mexico to foreign investors, to foreign corporations.And supposedly this money is going to make life better. For people in Mexico well, first of all, it's a very corrupt system, so the selling of mining concessions involves, you know, millions and millions of dollars that wind up in the pockets of those people who grant the concessions. So it was a source of enormous corruption in the Mexican government in granting those concessions and in passing that change in the law to begin with.And then in fighting for changes in the legal system, the free trade set up, those mining corporations could then, basically, it gave them not only a kind of impunity against communities that protested about it, but in which they could even sue the Mexican government. If the Mexican government tried to stand in the way and say, well, you [00:46:00] can't develop the mine, then the mine could sue the Mexican government and say, well, you deprived us of potential profits and you owe us millions of dollars.And there were decisions like the metal cloud decision that allowed for this kind of thing to happen. So what this meant is on the ground, you have mining mining concessions sold and mines being developed all over Mexico. In the face of local opposition, and the mine in San Jose de Progreso is a really good example of that, where you have a Canadian company that comes in and says, okay, we are going to, in fact, they weren't the originators of the mine, they basically bought a mine that had been played out by previous owner.And so we are going to dump a lot of money into this and we are going to make it a producing mine and the impact on the community. We don't really care. And so the impact is really enormous. You know these are open pit mines. They're a scar on the land. They [00:47:00] contaminate the water, the aquifer, so that these farming communities can no longer support themselves in the same way.In order to develop the mine, what they do is they divide the communities. And so, as you said, in San Jose de Progreso, they bought off the town's, the town's government who basically gave the company permission to do whatever it wanted to in spite of local opposition. Then when local opposition got organized to, to oppose it, the company cooperated with the with the local leaders that it had bought off to basically go after those leaders in a very violent way.So, Bernardo Vazquez. who had was from this community. He had actually gone to the United States and become a farm worker in Petaluma, in California. And then seeing what was happening in his community, went back to San Jose de [00:48:00] Progreso and to and began leading the opposition. And he was then ambushed and assassinated.Other people in his, around him were also killed, and then the violence went both ways. People on the other side got killed. And so this whole community became a warring camp, camps against each other. You know, I remember when I visited there, there are two taxi companies in this community. There's a taxi company that's associated with the People who are pro mine and the taxi company is associated with people who are against it.And you better not get into the wrong taxi because you could, some terrible things could happen to you. I took pictures of these threats that were spray painted on the walls of, some of the irrigation canals there, Bernardo Vasquez, your time has come, you know that was before he was assassinated.A lot of the people who work in the mine come from somewhere else, some of them from Canada[00:49:00] but it takes a few of the jobs in hand somehow. to certain people in the community there as a way of buying them off and giving them a stake in the continuation of the mine. And so what happens is that you have a community that's a continuing, a continuous war with itself.And this happens all over Mexico. In fact, it's not just Mexico, this is happening in El Salvador, it's happening in Guatemala, and actually mostly by Canadian companies. So you ask, do people in Canada know about this? I think there are some journalists like Dawn Bailey who have Canadian journalists who have tried to write about it, and tried to make people in Canada aware of it.I don't think that most people in Canada have the faintest idea of what those corporations are doing, and that's because I think the corporate media in Canada has very little interest in showing that, partly because, you know, they have the same basic set of economic interests that the mining corporations themselves do.[00:50:00] Probably share, same shareholders, who knows? In any case That's something that could happen and that should happen if people in Canada became more aware of what these companies were doing and then began taking action in Canada to try to restrict them. I think it would have a big impact on the ability of these communities in Oaxaca to survive.I think that San Jose the Progresso is going to be a war with itself and this continuing political violence is going to happen. Until the company, basically until the company leaves, really. I don't see any other solution, I don't see how the mine can continue operating there under any ownership and not have this war taking place there.So, but I think that the way to get that company to leave is for people in Canada to take some action in cooperation and in solidarity with the people in that [00:51:00] community. So, maybe by Organizing delegations from Vancouver or Toronto down to San Jose del Progreso would be a way of helping that to develop.That's possibly something that might happen, but basically you need that relationship in order, I think, in order to stop this from happening. Chris: Hmm. Thank you. Yeah, and you know, of course it just ends up contributing to migration, right, and exile, displacement within those communities. And and so I'm curious, what do you think the right to stay home or the right to not migrate can offer us as modern people, as citizens or migrants in the context of the current crises and perhaps the crises to come?You know, you mentioned that Immigration the numbers, the number of people coming into the United States over the last year has just been unprecedented. The number of migrants [00:52:00] flowing through Oaxaca, for example, in Southern Mexico right now is unprecedented and it really seems, you know, like.not just my opinion, but in terms of statistics and predictions and all of these things, that it's only going to get more unprecedented. So I'm curious what you might, what you might think that this, this declaration, the right to stay home or the right to not migrate, might offer us going forward. David: Well, I think it offers us something to fight for.That it gives us a vision of what a future could and should look like in the communities where displacement is taking place. In San Jose de Progreso, for instance, the right to stay home means a community that's not at war with itself, which means that the mining operation has to end. But, Ending the mining operation doesn't necessarily mean that people are [00:53:00] going to have an educational system or a health care system that's capable of meeting their needs.So you need political change in Oaxaca, San Jose de Progreso, and Mexico in general, that is able to deliver those things. For people. I think we could take that same thing and and look at people coming from Venezuela. There are a lot of Venezuelan migrants who are crossing Mexico coming to the U.S. border. On the one hand, the U. S. government is sort of a little bit more friendly. to Venezuelan migrants, although it's still doing whatever it can at the border to try to keep people out. Because, you know, this gets used in the media in the U. S. as a way of saying, well, this is the proof that the socialist government in Venezuela is incompetent and corrupt and ought to be removed, which has been U.S. policy for a long time. But in reality, the economic problems in [00:54:00] Venezuela would certainly be a lot less if Venezuela wasn't subject to the U. S. sanctions regime, which is basically sought to strangle the Venezuelan economy. And so the people who are leaving Venezuela, whether they're middle class people who are, you know, fed up with the problems of Caracas or whether they're poor people who have you know, have to migrate in order to survive those are due to U.S. policy again. So really, the right to stay home means in the United States that people in the United States, progressive people especially, have to seriously take a look at what the impact of U. S. policies are on the people that are being subjected to them, and to begin with, cause no harm.That would be a good starting place to stop those policies that are actively producing migration. You know, the people who drowned in the Mediterranean, those 600 people who [00:55:00] drowned in that horrible boating accident, who were they? A lot of them were Afghans. A lot of them were Iraqis. Why were they leaving?What were they doing on that boat? They were the product of that U. S. war. Now, I was a very active, you know, opponent of, of the war. I went to Iraq twice to try to make connections with trade unionists and other people in Iraq who were trying to fight for kind of a progressive nationalist solution to the economic problems of Iraq in the wake of the occupation to end the occupation.But you know, that's kind of what we need. We need to take responsibility for the impact of what this government has done. When we take a look at what the, what is going to happen to the people of Palestine and Gaza, [00:56:00] Under the bombardment, you know, if people were able to leave Gaza, there would be literally hundreds of thousands of people going wherever they could.And the Middle East simply in order to get out from under the Israeli bombs. And those bombs are coming from where? They're coming from the United States, that military aid package. You know, you cannot have a military policy and a military aid package the way the U. S. passes them without its having enormous impacts on migration, on the displacement of people, and at the same time it also Produces impacts here in the U.S. that we also need to take a look at and see what the relationship are. You know, people migrate in the U. S. as well, too. We have factories to close when Detroit stopped being an [00:57:00] auto manufacturing center and the Factories in Detroit closed, the car factories, thousands and thousands and thousands of auto workers became migrants in the U.S., going from city to city to city, looking for. So the price of the economic crisis that exists for us isn't felt just by people in Mexico or Palestine or Iraq. It's felt here in the United States and in Canada too. These problems They require a political solution, you know, they require us to organize ourselves in a way that is strong enough to force political change on our government here, so that it takes responsibility for the past devastation.And the past displacement and also stops doing the things that are going to keep on causing it in the future. And then I think we can think about kind of repairing the world. I think we have to repair the world, too, after this. But the first thing we have [00:58:00] to do is we have to stop hurting it. We have to stop the damage, and that means having enough political courage and enough political power to make our government do that.That's a tall order. That's a tall order. I don't think it's something from today to tomorrow. But it's a long process. You know, I'm a, I grew up during the anti Vietnam War movement and the civil rights movement, and I saw this country at a time when it was possible and when we did it. So I'm the optimist.I believe that it's within our power to do this. But looking at where we are right now, I think we have a long way to go. And so, you know, if what I do contributes is granito de arena to it, you know, a lo mejor. Chris: Thank you so much, David. Yeah, it's definitely really, really important to hear words such as yours in a time of deep nihilism.[00:59:00] And, and also the absence and I think the disregard of, of Elder Voices in our midst and in our movements. So, I deeply appreciate your willingness to speak with me and, and to our listeners today. And just finally, before we depart, how might our listeners find out more about your work?How might they purchase your books? David: I have a blog and a lot of what I write and the pictures that I take are up there and I put them up there pretty regularly. And so the way to find it is to Google my name, David Bacon, and the blog is called The Reality Check. And so if you Google that together, you'll find it and that's how you can connect.Chris: Thank you so much, David. David: My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

Craig Hatmaker With over 40 years of experience, Craig Hatmaker is a results-driven IT professional skilled in optimizing technology investments. He has held director roles at global companies like Smithfield Foods and Canon. Now retired, Craig remains passionate about helping organizations solve business challenges through strategic solutions like his pioneering 5G methodology for component-based Excel...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: New Jury Analysis of the Smithfield Piglet Rescue Trial, published by JLRiedi on August 31, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Faunalytics analyzed transcripts from interviews with jurors of the Smithfield Foods criminal trial - in which two animal rights activists were found not guilty of "stealing" two piglets from a factory farm in Utah. This qualitative analysis will help advocates understand why jurors sided with the defense, how to potentially apply these findings to future trials, and what forms of animal activism are most convincing. Key Findings: The "not guilty" verdict hinged, in part, on the monetary value of the piglets to Smithfield, which was argued to be less than zero. The piglets required veterinary care that exceeded their value to Smithfield. The jury was initially hesitant to say the piglets had no worth because they saw them as having inherent worth as living beings, however they ultimately decided the theft charges hinged on monetary value only. The jury members believed the defendants, Wayne and Paul, did not have the intent to steal. Before their investigation of the Smithfield facility, Wayne said on video "if there's something we'll take it." The jury interpreted the "if" as meaning the two activists did not enter the facility knowing they'd have the opportunity to take piglets. However, one juror noted that if the defendants had a pattern of doing this in the past, the jury might have been more likely to find them guilty. The participants all reported being more receptive to animal advocacy and animal welfare after the trial. One participant reported that they no longer eat ham. Another reported that while they still believe that pigs are here to be eaten, as a result of the trial they now believe that pig welfare should be improved. Another was even inspired to pursue animal activism. Despite what media coverage indicates, the "right to rescue" was not a major factor in the jury's decision. Some media outlets (such as The Intercept and Democracy Now!) have characterized this trial as a test case for the "right to rescue" argument - the idea that one should be able to rescue animals, sometimes farmed animals, from distressing conditions. However, only two jurors mentioned this concept at all, and no jurors mentioned this idea as critical. Background The Smithfield Trial refers to the prosecution of two animal advocates who were charged with felony theft and burglary after they removed two piglets from a Smithfield Foods facility in Utah, United States. Wayne Hsiung and Paul Darwin Picklesimer, a co-founder and member of Direct Action Everywhere, respectively, are activists "working to achieve revolutionary social and political change for animals in one generation." In 2017, Wayne and Paul entered the Circle Four Farms facility in Milford, Utah, and removed two injured piglets (later named Lily and Lizzie). Circle Four Farms is one of the largest industrial pig processing facilities in the United States and a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, which is the world's largest pork producer. Once rescued, the piglets were provided with veterinary care and relocated to a sanctuary where they currently reside. The removal of the piglets was filmed and posted on social media under the title "Operation Deathstar." In September 2022, Wayne and Paul went on trial in Washington County, Utah on charges of felony theft and burglary for removing the piglets. They were acquitted (i.e., found not guilty) by a jury on both counts. This trial may interest animal advocates because it provides potential guidance for future trials and investigations. Additionally, this analysis provides insight as to which pro-animal arguments are more persuasive more generally. In this study, we analyzed themes from interviews with five Smithfield Trial jury members (referred t...

Welcome to Barn Talk! What happens at the barn, stays in the barn, but not today! We're letting it all out. In this episode we're tackling a controversial subject that has been making waves in the industry. Our discussion revolves around Smithfield Foods, the Chinese acquisition, and the implications it holds for American hog farmers. From the company's aggressive expansion strategies, we'll unpack the facts, examine the challenges faced by farmers, and explore potential solutions. But first, we want to address a thought-provoking video by Robert Kennedy Jr. that has stirred up emotions and raised concerns on his integrity as a presidential candidate.  Buy Our Pork From Our Farm ➱ https://farmergrade.com Barn Talk Merch!

Mark Malagon has over 16 years of experience in industrial refrigeration and mechanical contracting. Mark earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech as well as an MBA from Mercer University. He is also a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) in multiple states and holds an active NCEES Record. Mark started his career as a project manager, quickly advancing to sales engineer. Soon thereafter he found himself in sales and engineering management, and after a successful run as a sales director, Mark chose to leave the industrial refrigeration industry for a general management position in HVAC. His time as a GM provided invaluable experience in business and finance. Eventually Mark was drawn back to his passion for industrial refrigeration, now with the experience to start his own company. Mark is an accomplished leader with a strong record in management, sales, engineering, and operations. He has been responsible for over $200 million worth of work from prominent industrial clients such as Americold Logistics, Tropicana, Preferred Freezer, Con Agra, Smithfield Foods, Pepsi, Purdue, Pilgrim's Pride, Nestle, and Cuisine Solutions. Read the show notes here:   https://www.voiceofinfluence.net/280 Give and receive feedback that makes a difference! Register for our 20 minute Deep Impact Method video course here:  www.voiceofinfluence.net/deepimpact

EPISODE 1574: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Nate Halverson, the producer and lead reporter on the new documentary movie THE GRAB, about the money, influence and rationale behind covert efforts to control the planet's most vital resource  Nate Halverson is an Emmy Award-winning senior reporter and producer at The Center for Investigative Reporting, covering business and finance with an emphasis on the global food system. Halverson broke the international news that California was literally sinking, a result of farmers over-pumping groundwater in the drought stricken Central Valley. He won a national Emmy Award for his reporting on the Chinese government's involvement in the takeover of the world's largest pork company, Smithfield Foods. He revealed the Saudi government's plan to support the acquisition of food and water resources around the world that included a 15-square-mile farm in the parched Arizona desert, and other farms across drought stricken California. He reported on classified cables from the U.S. State Department that detailed wealthy countries were concerned about looming water and food shortages, including dire shortages in Yemen that helped trigger its devastating civil war. He has reported across the world, including Russia, Guatemala, England, Zambia, China, and Venezuela, and on investigative topics ranging from financial fraud and organized crime to uncovering internal documents that helped result in a $155 million settlement with a tech company. Before joining CIR, Halverson worked on projects with the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, PBS NewsHour and at the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Press Democrat. He was awarded a 2014 McGraw Fellowship by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and he received degrees in economics and journalism from the University of Minnesota. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Host and American Family Farmer, Doug Stephan www.eastleighfarm.com begins with news about dust storms across Tennessee farms cause 70 vehicle pile-up, 7 deaths and lawsuits against the farmers, Chinese owned Smithfield Foods closes 37 of their plants, Safeway grocery stores recalls oatmeal cookies and mid-May frosts takes it's toll on New England produce. Next, we meet Bill Short a family farmer in Franklin, TN and developer Brian Wright. The Short family plans to turn their 200-acre farm into an agrihood. The family has owned the farm since the late 1800s. They've had dairy cows, beef cattle, hogs, two kinds of sheep, every kind of chicken and fowl you can think of, and were growing and sustaining the crops that sustained those animals. The family plans to say goodbye to traditional farm and transform it into an agrihood. Learn all about their plans. Finally, Farmer Doug opines about what he calls "The Ridiculous Farm Bill."This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3010081/advertisement

Beast and Cleaver, a butcher shop and charcuterie in Seattle, is on a mission to elevate the craft of butchery to true artistry. They want you to eat meat of higher quality, and yes, less of it. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, the founder of Beast and Cleaver, Kevin Smith, joins Ross to discuss his butcher shop's unique approach to localized meat production in a carbon heavy industry. Have you heard the expression “it's the how, not the cow”? That very much reflects Beast and Cleaver's ethos. With more and more people eating meat globally as they gain access to financial means, the details of meat production become incredibly important. Part of the good news is that American consumers are increasingly interested in Old World food traditions of pâté and offal rather than merely prestige cuts, and even things like aspic that went deeply out of fashion decades ago are seemingly making a foodie comeback. Kevin and Ross discuss the perception that major factory meat producers like Tyson and Smithfield Foods are incredibly efficient at using all parts of the animal. But are they in comparison to local, small-scale operations like Beast and Cleaver? They also discuss the challenges of running an artisanal meat business and how they are working to educate consumers about the benefits of sustainable meat production. So if you're in the Seattle area and are a meat-eater (and enjoy classical charcuterie), be sure to check out Beast and Cleaver and get yourself a slice of pâté en croûte! Listen to the full episode to learn more about their innovative approach to localized meat production and learn how to possibly indulge with respect and care on your plate. Connect with Nori ⁠⁠⁠⁠Purchase Nori Carbon Removals⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Nori's website⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Nori on Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check out our other podcast, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Carbon Removal Newsroom⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Carbon Removal Memes on Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Carbon Removal Memes on Instagram Resources Beast and Cleaver ⁠Kevin's Instagram⁠ Global meat consumption increasing Pat LaFrieda's Glorious Beef Fergus Henderson of St. John --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/support

It's an EmMajority Report Thursday! She hosts author Corban Addison to discuss his recent book Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country On Trial. First, Emma dives into updates on the indictment of George Santos, Dianne Feinstein's return, the end of the COVID national emergency, Israel's continuing genocide against Palestine, Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Sen. Bernie Sanders teaming up for a Nakba day, healthcare legislation, and Amazon's tax breaks, before parsing through the absolute sh*t show that was CNN's Town Hall with Donald Trump, and the Media's complete capitulation to his celebrity. Corban Addison then joins as he walks Emma through his story on the real-world legal thriller that was the Mass Action lawsuit against North Carolina's hog farms, beginning with a discussion of the broader legal avenues this case followed, before stepping back to explore the history of North Carolina's hog industry, which arose in the 1960s following the Tobacco industry's collapse as Wendell Murphy, owner of the largest feed mill at the time, took a page out of the book of Tyson's chicken industry, contracting the floundering NC farms to be packed full of his pigs. Moving forward, Addison dives into the slow but sure monopolization of the region's industry, culminating in the purchase of Murphy's Smithfield Foods by the WH Group, the world's biggest pork manufacturer based out of China, who continued to streamline the production in the US, as China did not allow the same industry tactics that North Carolina saw. Parsing through these practices, Corban and Emma tackle the creation of mass cesspools of hog waste by these corporations, and the complete disregard for the environmental impact or the well-being of their neighbors. After looking at the horrors that came out of this regulatory disaster, Addison wraps up by assessing the compensation in the case, and why, ultimately, the only solution is federal regulation. And in the Fun Half: Emma is joined by Brandon Sutton and Matt Binder, diving into the genuine horror that is Dianne Feinstein's staff (and Democratic leadership) letting her return to the Senate, Kowalski from Nebraska calls in with his assessment of today's interview, and Charlie from New Jersey dives into the Mainstream media's obsession with Donald Trump and their co-dependent relationship with far-right politics. They also tackle the indictment of George Santos, the right-wing response to the Allen, TX shooter citing Tim Pool and LibsofTikTok, and Lucy from Brooklyn dives into the role of NDAs in elite culture, and the despicable and alien behavior of today's ultra-wealthy, plus, your calls and IMs! Check out Corban's book here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/688403/wastelands-by-corban-addison/ Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! http://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: http://majority.fm/app Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattBinder @MattLech @BF1nn @BradKAlsop Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Subscribe to Discourse Blog, a newsletter and website for progressive essays and related fun partly run by AM Quickie writer Jack Crosbie. https://discourseblog.com/ Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder - https://majorityreportradio.com/

Lori begins the show with the story of the five activists who, in 2017, entered Circle Four Farms in Utah, intent on documenting animal abuse at Smithfield Foods huge pig facility housed there. But not only was extremely graphic video obtained, but the men also rescued 2 nearly dead piglets, which was not part of […]

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Summary of “Animal Rights Activism Trends to Look Out for in 2023” by Animal Agriculture Alliance, published by Aashish Khimasia on February 23, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. A blog-post by a member of the Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA) has identified several trends in animal rights activism that they project for 2023. These trends are likely to be causes for concern for the animal agriculture industry, and the piece was written to make AAA supporters aware of them. Recognising these trends and identifying the views held on these animal advocacy tactics by proponents of animal agriculture may provide advocates with valuable insights. In this post, I list the key trends identified by the article and bullet point tactics highlighted by the article which are of particular interest. I'm thankful to “The Cranky Vegan” for bringing this article to my attention through their linked video. Linking CAFOs to negative human and environmental health Drawing attention to the detrimental effects of CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) to human and environmental health Using historical precedents of CAFOs being charged in court such as in North Carolina and Seattle in messaging Exploring cases where ethnic minorities have experienced disproportionate negative health impacts of CAFOs This strategy may create opposition to CAFOs from individuals and organisations that may not be compelled by animal-focused driven arguments, and could be further integrated into outreach and media messaging. Referring to historical precedents of CAFOs being charged with breaching environmental regulations may help to legitimise messaging against them. The use of undercover footage in court and media Using undercover footage from factory farms to motivate arguments in court that such operations engage in unfair competition, false advertising, market distortion and fraud Using undercover footage from factory farms pressure retailers to cut ties with such farms Using undercover footage from animal rescue missions from factory farms as evidence against charges of trespassing and theft The continued and increased use of undercover footage from factory farms is clearly concerning for animal agriculture, given the extensive efforts to block this such as through so called Ag-gag laws. However, the suppression of undercover footage from factory farms may lead to increased media attention on these items and public scrutiny on the conditions of factory farms. Indeed, in a recent case, Direct Action Everywhere activists who were being prosecuted after liberating piglets from a Smithfield Foods farm and releasing footage from their mission, were acquitted by the jury, despite the judge blocking the jury from viewing the footage taken. The aforementioned ways in which undercover footage may be used to aid the acquittal of activists, challenge farms in court and pressure retailers to cut ties with farms highlight the potency of combining undercover footage with legal action. Prioritising Youth Engagement Engaging young people in programmes that rival agricultural programmes like FFA and 4-H Fostering social disapproval of animal product consumption and normalising plant-based foods in classrooms, presenting the suffering caused by factory farming in an emotive way Educating young people and creating a shift in culture towards empathy, through recognising the suffering caused by animal agriculture and normalising plant-based foods, may challenge the image that animal agriculture is trying to maintain. This may be an important factor in changing consumption habits of future generations. Deconstructing legal personhood The use of the writ of habeas corpus, a right that protects against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment, as a way to challenge the legal personhood of animals by the Nonhuman Rights ...

In our celebration of Black History Month, Stephanie and Mandy are joined by Jessica Jones to talk Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging in the workplace. Jessica Jones serves as Manager, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Smithfield Foods, Inc., with over 15 years of experience in program management, corporate communications, equity and inclusion and organizational change management. Jessica manages the full strategic implementation of Smithfield's DEI strategy including EBRG (Employee Business Resource Groups) governance, three-part DEI training series company wide, and oversight of their college and university programs. Jessica actively partners with business leaders across the company to ensure Smithfield's DEI commitment is shared in multiple ways Jessica also leads the Operations Leadership Program (OLP) and Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) to grow and retain current operations leaders in direct partnership with Smithfield's commitment to its people. Jessica began her career at Smithfield in July 2018. Previous to that, she worked with state government and other Fortune 500 companies in communications, global event planning and human resources. She is a graduate of Radford University where she earned her bachelor's degree in corporate communications and public advocacy and she is currently pursuing her master's degree at Georgetown University. “The advocacy part is, instead of just observing, you go to your leadership and say, ‘I'm happy to have a seat at the table…but there are other women of color who need to be sitting right beside me, who have thoughts, opinions, and expertise that we need at this table to be successful. What are we doing about that?'” In this episode, you will learn: ● Why Black History Month makes Jessica smile from ear to ear; ● How to use the tools of DEI to make positive change and increase metrics; ● What it means to be an Advocate and an Ally; ● How to have uncomfortable conversations that build connection, make an impact, and develop belonging. Don't miss as Jessica shares WHAT SHE'S GOT IN HER BAG at the end! To be sure you catch every episode of Women Who Work, like and follow us on Apple Podcasts and Instagram@soarlead. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/womenwhowork/message

My discussion of how the China regime owns approximately 192,000 acres of Farmland as well as corporations like Smithfield Foods, and other food processing plants across the United States and how the United States itself has been sold out to China. Email: realnewsocala@gmail.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lee-leffingwell/support

Wayne Hsiung is a former law professor who was recently acquitted by a Utah jury after being charged with stealing two piglets from a factory farm, in a story that made national news. In 2017, animal liberation activist group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) released a video showing the horrifying conditions of pigs in a facility run by Smithfield Foods, and showing the rescue of two dying piglets from the farm. The activists, including Hsiung, were pursued relentlessly for the next five years, with the FBI even invading animal sanctuaries in order to try to recover the stolen piglets. Hsiung faced significant jail time if convicted, but successfully managed to convince the jury to acquit him. The case is important because a conviction would have had a chilling effect on important activism exposing the abuses of factory farms. But jurors even went so far as to ask why Hsiung hadn't rescued more of the facility's sick piglets. Today, Wayne joins us along with DxE investigator Matt Johnson, to discuss the original nighttime operation, the Utah trial, and what DxE hopes to expose about the animal farming industry. We talk about why DxE chooses the tactic of going into factory farms and removing animals, how a Utah jury became convinced Wayne's actions weren't a crime, and the work yet to be done in creating a humane life for animals everywhere.More on the time Matt tricked Fox Business into thinking he was the CEO of Smithfield Foods is here. Wayne's blog The Simple Heart is here and information on the campaigns surrounding is at righttorescue.com. The interview with Marina Bolotnikova on factory farming is here. 

In this episode, I interview Mona Lisa Wallace, Founding Partner of the law firm Wallace & Graham. Mona has dedicated her career to obtaining justice for people harmed by corporate giants. We discuss the case against Smithfield Foods, which is described in detail in the amazing book Wastelands by Corban Addison - it is truly a must read! I really enjoyed talking to and learning from Mona, and I hope you do too!

A widely watched case pitting animal welfare advocates against a Fortune 500 company has come to a conclusion and the results could have far-reaching implications in how the courts view the concept of “theft” versus “rescue.”In 2017, two members of an animal rights group called Direct Action Everywhere (or, DxE) were investigating conditions for pigs being raised for slaughter at Circle Four Farms, a Utah-based factory farm owned by Smithfield Foods.While on site, the two men – Wayne Hsiung  and Paul Picklesimer  – reportedly discovered two newborn piglets they determined to be sick and dangerously underweight. They then removed the piglets, took them for veterinary care, and transferred them to an animal sanctuary.When the incident was discovered, the two men were charged with felony burglary and theft and were facing up to five and half years in prison pending the results of their trial.In what's being viewed as a huge victory for opponents of animal cruelty, a jury has unanimously agreed that the two men be acquitted for their actions, with legal experts suggesting this could lay the groundwork for a legal “right to rescue” – establishing a difference between what took place and what would be considered theft.The pig rescue operation reportedly occurred during an attempt by DxE to verify whether Smithfield had ceased to use highly-criticized “gestation crates” that were too small for pregnant pigs to turn around in. They contend they did find these, despite Smithfield pledging to no longer use them at Circle Four. Throughout the course of this, the men from DxE say they also found dead and sick piglets, including the two in question – who they named Lilly and Lizzie.

-Cody Easterday claims Tyson Fresh Meats owes him $163 million. -Smithfield Foods to pay $75 million in pork price-fixing settlement. -Meat, poultry inflation at 43-year high. -Drought conditions in western states most intense in 20 years. Sponsored by AgRisk Advisors & Circle 5 School for Cattleman. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/burnindaylight/message

Matt is Press Coordinator and an investigator for Direct Action Everywhere (DxE). As part of his activism he has conducted animal farm investigations, been threatened with prison for rescuing farm animals from abuse and pranked NewsMax and FoxNews by posing as the CEO of Smithfield Foods – exposing to millions of viewers the damage their industry does to non-human animals, human animals and to the planet. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 02:50 Matt's Intro - DxE press & investigations 03:28 Eyes open to animals - Deer hunting uncles. "Factory farms everywhere" in Iowa - 4 yrs old "I don't want to eat animals" - Family push back - A religious family "God gave us animals for food" - Being "a silent vegetarian" at school... in secret... feeling shame - "Good friends of mine... through 13 yrs of grade school... never knew I was vegetarian" - An aunt: "you're going to die if you don't eat animals" - Uncles painting a dead deer's nose red for Xmas - "These people around me are monstrous" - The dissonance of "be kind" messages in kindergarten 10:24 What's Real? - "In adulthood I'm not a religious person" - New atheists, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris - As a child: "The ethics smacked me in the face" (Problem of Evil) - As an adult "facts & rationality" - Jehovah's Witness dad... "I was hating the prospect of doing the door to door evangelising" - Shunning. It's worse where the JW community has more power - "#Freewill is an illusion" so "I don't... have any anger towards anybody" - JW "We have will, we make choices, but they're not 'free'". Removing #retribution from the justice system? #MoralLuck - An investigation "As cruel a practice as you can imagine" #VentilationShutDown... "The COO shows up ... I was straining my free will determinism in that moment" - "Guilt & shame can be useful" 25:11 What & Who Matters? - #Utilitarianism ? - "High-minded philosophical ideals... often used to launder right-wing ideas" - "Sorry humans... but I have to put my energy towards the 99.99%" - #Offsetting & totalising utilitarianism - Animal agri as a core case most ethical systems should reject ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham.

Dr. Ty Lawrence is a Professor of Animal Science and Director of the Beef Carcass Research Center at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, TX.  He was reared on a cow-calf operation north of Dalhart, Texas before pursuing formal education in the animal sciences at West Texas A&M University (B.S. '97, M.S. '99) and Kansas State University (Ph.D. '02).  Dr. Lawrence spent two years with Smithfield Foods in the position of research manager for pork harvest and processing facilities on the eastern seaboard.Dr. Lawrence spends countless hours consulting with businesses throughout the industry, especially in the packing, feeding and dairy segments. Dr. Ty Lawrence | WTAMUtlawrence@wtamu.edu

Ralph interviews North Carolina attorney, Mona Lisa Wallace, whose litigation team won more than $500 million in damages for the facility's North Carolina neighbors against the hog production component of Smithfield Foods along with author Corban Addison who chronicled the gripping John Grisham-like tale in his book: “Wastelands: The True Story Of Farm Country On Trial.”  

The federal government enacts the second part of the Biden Administration's Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, with nearly $38 Billion of new money for agricultural programs and rural development; pork processing giant Smithfield Foods settles pork class action claims; and one of the nation's largest dairy cooperatives, Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), is again facing an antitrust suit from its own members over member milk payment levels.    Hosted by Ethan Durand, Research Assistant—With Brook Duer, Staff Attorney—Produced & Written by Ethan Durand Penn State Center for Agricultural and Shale Law https://aglaw.psu.edu/ Follow us on Twitter: @AgShaleLaw Like us on Facebook: Penn State Center for Agricultural and Shale Law This material is based upon work supported by the National Agricultural Library, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Cattle News Central July 31 headlines: Billionaire-funded eco group is quietly taking agricultural land out of production in rural America. A lawsuit claiming Smithfield Foods misled consumers about the state of the meat supply chain during Covid will continue. Beef export net sales post strong gains. Sponsored by Circle 5 School for Cattleman, 4 T Ag Insurance, & AgRisk Advisors. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/burnindaylight/message

Smithfield Foods will pay $42 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the meatpacker of conspiring to fix pork prices. CBS News says lawyers began notifying companies like restaurants and caterers of the settlement. Smithfield previously settled with a different group of pork buyers for $83 million. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cattle News Central July 7 headlines:

The president heads to Cleveland for remarks about pensions rescue; Smithfield Foods settles price-fixing lawsuit; E.U. leader warns of potential Russian gas cut-off - July 6, 2022 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode I talk to Soraya Karimi-Ghovanlou. Soraya is the supply chain director at Smithfield Foods. Smithfield Foods is part of a global business that puts food (predominantly meat) on our dinner tables. We talk about the challenges Smithfield foods has and still are facing due to Brexit and Covid and what effect this has had on prices for us as consumers. We are all aware that the cost of living is increasing and Soraya tells us some of the reasons why. We talk about pivoting, the relationship between different departments in the business specifically the operations and finance of course and what is success. Hope you enjoy AW

In today's episode, I outline major events in the primary race for Utah County attorney between Republican incumbent David Leavitt and challenger Jeff Gray. We also include audio from a news conference Gray held at the Utah Capitol on Tuesday. And managing editor Grant Burningham talks with new Tribune reporter Leto Sapunar about a story he and reporter Scott D. Pierce wrote concerning the major job cuts looming at Smithfield Foods, Beaver County's largest employer.

Cattle News Central June 14 headlines: Smithfield Foods to close California processing plant. Both beef and pork prices were up over 10% year-over-year in the month of May. The current beef cow slaughter rate suggests beef cowherd numbers could shrink more than one million head this year. Inflation is moving from goods to services, which is often a sign inflation is becoming embedded in the economy. Sponsored by AgRisk Advisors, Circle 5 School for Cattleman, & 4 T Ag Insurance.

SHTF PREP NOW Limits at walmart and limits at costco have started to spread all over the country. Soon we will see shortages in all of our favorite foods and items from supply chain disruptions. Learn from people like appalachia homestead and Patrick Humphrey. Prepping for shtf is more important than ever now. Prep now to stay prepared in a hectic world. Lots people have been saying there is no fruit at walmart or no fruit at costco. We all have seen empty shelves at walmart and empty shelves at costco. Empty shelves are at almost every store from supply chain disruptions. Prep for shtf now before its too late. What are you doing to get prepared on your homestead? Are you a prepper like canadian prepper or ? shtf is here. Smithfield Foods, Citing High Costs of Operating in California, to Close Pork Plant The U.S.'s largest hog processor says it isn't worth doing business in the state due to higher inflation, taxes. https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbmVmMFptdHd1d0l4OFpTS3dOQjlmakhlbW5zQXxBQ3Jtc0trT09xQmc2M05IT2F1WkJodmE5d0xFWmxrVjBXVkt0YTkzbVFBbVpUd0N5ZWF5cy1oNFo4Ukh0UGMydG42cEswVHZ3MDhreVM0MWVzQm9wYmQ4OS1YVDdKdmdXMWl6bUF3c3BLeFBCQmhBSG9GVVdUYw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fabcnews.go.com%2FHealth%2FwireStory%2Fsmithfield-foods-shutter-california-meat-packing-plant-85321387&v=mxp8_z1NHiI

Decreasing swine mortality still tends to be the largest opportunity for farmers to increase overall profitability, which is why it is important that we understand all the factors that play into herd health. Dr. Chris Rademacher and I address this issue in today's episode and talk about methods that can increase disease preparedness and what is necessary to start your nursery pigs off properly. "We will always have some sort of disease status in our industry, so it's really more about coming up with ways to manage around that." - Dr. Chris Rademacher

TOPICS AND TIMESTAMPS: Major Event 0:00 Recession or Inflation 0:17 Wall St Warns Recession 6:03 Inflation of Everything 8:24 Bull or Bear 11:07 Soaring Inflation Fuels Bets on Sharper Fed Rate Hikes | Top News | US News https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2022-06-10/fed-seen-raising-u-s-interest-rates-further-to-battle-hot-inflation#:~:text=June%2010%2C%202022%2C%20at%2010%3A31%20a.m.&text=(Reuters)%20%2DStubbornly%20hot%20U.S.,rate%20hike%20in%20coming%20months. Bernanke Says Fed Can Sidestep Big Recession in Inflation Fight - Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-12/bernanke-says-fed-can-sidestep-big-recession-in-inflation-fight Aggressive Fed Moves Back in Play as Yields Surge on CPI Shock - Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-13/treasury-two-year-yield-surges-as-cpi-shock-spurs-fed-re-pricing?srnd=premium-canada Powell Facing Choice Between Elevated US Inflation and Recession - Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-12/powell-facing-choice-between-elevated-us-inflation-and-recession Jamie Dimon, Jane Fraser Talk Up Possible Recession - Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-10/jamie-dimon-jane-fraser-talk-up-possible-recession?srnd=premium-canada Economist Mohamed El-Erian: Most current inflation ‘could have been avoided' if Fed acted earlier | Fox News https://www.foxnews.com/politics/economist-mohamed-el-erian-inflation-federal-reserve Finally. No Bid on MBS. - NotoriousROB https://notoriousrob.com/2022/06/finally-no-bid-on-mbs/ Heat Wave: Record Temperatures Sears Texas, Central US - Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-12/record-heat-sears-texas-central-us-this-weekend?srnd=premium-canada Texas Power Use Tops All-Time Record as Heat Bakes State - Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-12/texas-power-use-tops-all-time-record-as-heat-bakes-state#:~:text=With%20air%20conditioners%20humming%20across,Texas%2C%20which%20runs%20the%20system. Smithfield Foods, Citing High Costs of Operating in California, to Close Pork Plant - WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/smithfield-foods-citing-high-costs-of-operating-in-california-to-close-pork-plant-11654950795 McDonald's Is Cutting Healthy Food to Speed Up Wait Times - Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-09/mcdonald-s-is-cutting-healthy-food-to-speed-up-wait-times?sref=6uww027M

Get the latest agriculture news in today's AgNet News Hour, hosted by Danielle Leal. Today's show covers Smithfield Foods shuttering in 2023, cantaloupe supply up as seasons peak, and using drones in biological control approaches prove to be beneficial. Tune in to the show for these news stories, interviews, features and more.

In a first of a series of interviews with up and coming leaders in UK cold chain businesses I talk to Soraya Karimi-Ghovanlou Supply Chain Director at Smithfield Foods UK.  A fascinating conversation seeing the recent and current issues facing the cold chain through the eyes of a business that is a customer of cold chain services. As a major importer of protein from EU into UK, Smithfield have navigated Brexit and global supply insecurity.  Shane and Soraya explore what makes up a strong relationship between supply chain operations in an importing business and their transport and storage partners. 

In August 2017, I received a phone call that changed my life. “Wayne, there are FBI agents here,” the voice said. “They're searching for Lily.” For years, DxE had been openly rescuing animals and daring the industry or government to prosecute us for rescuing dying animals from factory farms. We knew repression was going to come. What we didn't know is that it would start with a multi-state hunt for a piglet named Lily that would end in an FBI raid at a sanctuary in Colorado. Shaleen Shan is the owner of the sanctuary in question, Luvin Arms in Erie Colorado. And until now, Shaleen has not told his story publicly. Shaleen, you see, is not a rule breaker. And when a small armada of FBI agents descended on his sanctuary that day, he faced a choice that could change his life – and the course of the animal rights movement. Stay silent and cooperate with the government, to ensure the safety of his sanctuary, his business, and even his family. Or speak out and face the full power of the largest pig farming corporation in the world – Smithfield Foods – and its government allies. I would have understood taking the former choice. Shaleen is a business owner, a husband and father, and a nonprofit director; he didn't sign up for direct action or legal repression. But Shaleen did something that, increasingly, people across the world are realizing they have the power to do. He spoke out. And because he fought back and spoke out – resisting the agents' violent efforts to “collect DNA” from Lily and her sister, then speaking to a legendary journalist to blow the whistle on what happened – millions of people were exposed to not just the corrupt influence of corporate power on our government, but on the plight of pigs like Lily. This is a podcast I've wanted to do for years. And as we end one pig trial, it's time for us to tell the story of the next one. And in the fight against Smithfield, which sought unprecedented racketeering charges against me in May 2018, Shaleen's story will be crucial. The FBI's Hunt for Two Missing Piglets Reveals the Federal Cover-Up of Barbaric Factory Farms - Glenn GreenwaldLuvin Arms Sanctuary in ColoradoMusic by Moby: Everything That Rises

Esta semana contamos nuevamente con la visita de dos invitados que anteriormente participaron en nuestro podcast en inglés, para continuar la conversación sobre la calidad del cerdo en exportaciones. El Dr. Travis Arp y el Dr. Dustin Mohrhauser de USMEF y Smithfield Foods, respectivamente, hablan sobre algunos de los desafíos para la industria del cerdo en términos de calidad de la grasa y cómo lo abordan en primera línea. En este episodio aprenderás: 1. Exportaciones 2. Mediciones objetivas de la calidad 3. Desafíos actuales 4. Calidad de la grasa 5. Mercado en Asia 6. El rol del nutricionista

Past MeatsPad guests, Dr. Dustin Mohrhauser of Smithfield Foods and Dr. Travis Arp of the United States Meat Export Federation return to discuss the pork export market. 

In this episode, we are visiting pork producer, Ron Simmons, with Masterblend Farms. When many people think of North Carolina and pork production, companies like Smithfield Foods comes to mind,. But in Kenansville, NC Ron and his crew take vertical integration in a different direction. They are 100% pasture-based and market all of their own pork products via restaurants like the famous "The Pitt" in Raliegh to their own storefront at the farm. Learn more about how Ron is chasing greatness and making a pasture-based system thrive in the heart of the mega-producers.