Avian Flu, the Farm Bill, and Dairy Spin: The Animal Industry’s Anxiety Spiral Continues | Rising Anxieties

This week on Rising Anxieties, Mariann digs into the messy, maddening world of animal agriculture — where trade economics trump bird lives, hunting bans aren’t actually hunting bans, a Wisconsin egg farm is trying to buy public wetlands to keep nature away from its chickens, and the dairy lobby is running a protein campaign that conveniently forgot soy milk exists.

• Avian flu vaccine exists — but the industry won’t use it because vaccinated birds can still carry the flu and trade partners penalize vaccinating nations, revealing that export profits consistently outrank animal welfare and disease prevention.
• A quiet Farm Bill provision would ban the use of live animals as lures in hunting dog training, drawing outrage from hunting groups — and raising the question of why live animals were being used as lures in the first place.
• A Wisconsin egg producer is lobbying to purchase state-owned public land originally acquired to expand waterfowl habitat — so it can use federal Wildlife Services to “deter” the waterfowl that keep infecting its flocks.
• Dairy’s new “Protein Power” campaign compares cow milk’s 8g of protein to almond milk’s 1g — a technically true but conveniently misleading comparison that ignores soy milk, which matches dairy, and appears at a children’s museum.
• Carnivore influencer declares tofu “not food,” despite the fact that tofu has been a dietary staple for over 2,000 years — but sure, one athlete’s “tummy” complaints should overturn millennia of culinary history.

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