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Sunday, January 04, 2015

A Letter To The Editor & Others: News your local media refused to provide attracts millions!


Congratulations are due to publisher Joe Albero!

In the past year his Salisbury News website has received over 25 million hits from folks hungry for:

"news and information your local media refused to provide"

Based in Salisbury, Md. -- which happens to be the corporate home of Perdue Farms -- Salisbury News is unafraid to publish facts about Perdue of concern to citizens across the U.S. This includes Pennsylvania residents whom powerful Perdue has spent the last four years trying to pollute by needlessly dumping toxic waste hexane into their air.

Dealing with lots more than environment and Perdue, Salisbury News deserves praise for printing all kinds of information traditional media won't or maybe no longer can. News readers increasingly expect self-serving political and corporate press releases to make front-page headlines -- and truth spoken by others to be routinely minimized if not totally ignored.

God bless independent Salisbury News.

Today's article about it’s success -- along with a hint about its future -- is here:

http://sbynews.blogspot.com/2015/01/salisbury-news-soars-past-25000000-hits.html

Well done!

Wishing you millions more readers in 2015,

Ray Wallace

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

love this blog and all Joe has accomplished. as far as "bashing" Perdue with Your facts; now that's another question. there are facts and then there are facts. example; global warming, Chesapeake bay, solar energy, wind farms, EPA (truth or lies) and on and on.

the "other side" has their facts as well and ner the 2 shall meet. all must be vigilant and not Trust just one side. Always continue to research and seek for the truth.

for me, I have looked at both side regarding Perdue and don't see where they are harming anything. we are blessed to have them in our area. they are always looking to improve and innovate. NO ONE has a corner on perfection; least not you, Mr. Wallace. sorry, but every time I see your post, it reminds me of someone who has been scorned and can't seem to move on. I'm sure there is Some Truth in what you have to offer, but again; you don't have a corner on all truth.

Anonymous said...

3:53 nailed it.
Thanks for your intelligent response.

Anonymous said...

Anyone that thinks Perdue would deliberately or knowingly harm the environment clearly does not know Perdue.
That couldn't be farther from reality.

Anonymous said...

6:54 --

Wrong!

Perdue has ruined Salisbury and the lower shore.

Anonymous said...

And what have you done? ??

Anonymous said...

The guidelines that Perdue follows, created by the National Chicken Council, have drawn criticism for allowing birds to be deprived of light, food, and water for long periods, and also for permitting animals to be hung upside-down by their ankles before slaughter In 2010, the Humane Society of the United States filed a lawsuit against Perdue for violating a New Jersey consumer fraud law by applying the labels "purely all-natural" and "humanely raised" to its products when reasonable consumers would not consider the conditions Perdue chickens are raised in “humane.” The Human Society filed a similar lawsuit in Florida in April of 2013 after an appeal by Perdue to have a similar case rejected was turned down by a federal court. In response, Perdue issued a statement claiming that its practice “exceeds the National Chicken Council guidelines in several areas, including monitoring air quality in the poultry house, video monitoring of live-bird handling areas at the processing plant and USDA audits of producer farms and...hatcheries.”

Perdue has also been criticized for contributing to pollution in Chesapeake Bay.


In the beginning I thought that the way we were raising chickens was the only way it was done. About five years into contract farming, I started questioning the conditions that farmers were forced into through the contracts. I learned early that you weren’t supposed to talk about it—at least not publicly. A well-meaning friend of my husband said at that time that I needed to put a lid on it or we would lose our contract. Having not grown up in the system, it was impossible for me to understand that we weren’t allowed to speak or that we had no say over how we operated our farm and the raising of the chickens. Looking back, I can remember us sitting at the kitchen table talking about the system and actually lowering our voices as if someone might hear.

Picking up dead chickens and having to kill many that weren’t thrifty or uniform in the size that the company wanted was a daily chore. It was disheartening. There was never any choice in the matter or the option to give the animal a chance. The culling [killing] of chickens was something that I could never bring myself to do; I always left it for my husband. I do believe in euthanizing animals that are suffering or don’t stand a chance of survival; however, I don’t believe in killing animals just because they don’t measure up to the cookie cutter demands by industry.

Perdue pressured the USDA to create this verification process and applied even more pressure to make sure they were the first.

But here’s their official USDA Process Verification:

All Vegetarian Fed – Chickens are fed a high quality vegetarian diet, with no animal by-products.
Raised Cage Free – Perdue chickens are free to roam within the chicken houses.

So, what does the verification mean? From Perdue’s press release:

“We feed our birds the finest natural grain products, including corn, soybeans and marigolds, with no animal byproducts,” says Perdue. Products carrying the Raised Cage Free claim are verified to come from birds that are free to move about within temperature-controlled chicken houses.

Big deal!

The official-sounding verification really means nothing in terms of humane treatment of animals, but I am sure that it won’t matter to consumers. People hear the phrases cage free and vegetarian fed, and they think they are doing a good thing by buying.
They feed their chickens cheap GMO {Genetically modified} soy and corn and their chickens don’t live in cages. They still can be cramped together (like poor cage free egg layers), and there is no stipulation for fresh air, outdoor access, lighting, etc.

Oh and they feed marigolds so the chicken skin turns a nice yellow color! But it does evoke a lovely scene of chickens roaming freely through fields of yellow flowers doesn’t it?

Anonymous said...

If you think Perdue has ruined the lower shore you've lost your mind. You want to see ruination? Let Perdue pull out. Salisbury is already dead, Perdue leaving will put the last shovel of dirt on it's grave.

Ray Wallace said...

To the first three anonymous commenters above:

Maybe if it were your family that Perdue wants to force to breathe hundreds of tons of toxins a year, you might take a moment to examine the facts:

1. Perdue’s application to build a Pa. soybean factory failed to meet Federal EPA and State DEP air quality requirements under the Federal Clean Air Act.

2. But before DEP even started considering Perdue’s application, Pa. Gov. Tom Corbett OK’d giving Perdue an $8.75 million grant.

3. Now, during the final weeks of Corbett’s term (he was voted out of office), Perdue is waging a last-minute propaganda campaign in the Pa. press, claiming to be cutting its proposed soybean factory’s pollution.

4. To the contrary, Perdue’s own application filed with the State DEP says "No revisions to the Facility's VOC and/or hexane emissions are being proposed.” Perdue confirms its planned hexane emissions of “208 tons per year."

5. Perdue paid someone from the tobacco industry to publicly tell us living here not to be concerned about what we breathe.

6. Breathing hexane damages human lungs and nervous systems, putting our unborn babies, children, and elderly at special risk.

7. Another Pa. company processes soybeans without using hexane and without polluting. Perdue could too.

8. Even if Perdue used hexane, it could reclaim its waste hexane instead of dumping it directly into our air.

9. Just because it’s cheaper for Perdue to permanently pollute us with waste hexane doesn’t make it right.

10. Having spent FOUR YEARS failing to get its polluting Pa. factory approved, Perdue is now resorting to playing political and media games in what seems a final, desperate attempt to silence people like me.

The above statements you three commenters posted sound like just more of the same. Are you employed by Perdue?

Your resorting to calling me -- or anyone else trying to protect his family -- names as nutty as “scorned” only underscores how little you care about anything but the dumb and dangerous noise you make. It's sad to see the lengths to which you are willing to even anonymously display your total lack of character.

All this brings me back to again thanking Joe Albero for providing this forum -- where facts about issues as important as this can still be aired openly.

Sincerely,
Ray Wallace

Anonymous said...

It seems that the Daily Times has further reatricted it's website for 2015. Can you hear the death rattle? Congrats, Joe.

Anonymous said...

So what...idiots they (CHICKENS) are going to be slaughtered and eaten for food! So if they are suffering, it won't be for long, maybe 6 - 8 weeks then they will be nice and warm surrounded by rice on a plate or fried with some Texas Pete on the side. I'm sure Perdue will survive without you consuming its product!