Industrial agriculture

Butchering chicken and meat. It’s dangerous, low-paying factory work, and it leans heavily on immigrant workers, sometimes illegally. But some immigrants are deciding to move on from such tough work. Anna Boiko-Weyrauch reports from Missouri.

Air and water pollution from large, corporate-owned hog farms have prompted a new wave of regulation in some states. But, not in Colorado. Colorado’s hog industry has been growing fast ever since corporate hog farmers found out that it has some of the most lenient hog farming rules in the country. But that may soon […]

In North Carolina, pork now outweighs tobacco as the state’s major product. Aileen LeBlanc reports from North Carolina on the environmental impacts of the hog farm boom. Waterways that transport hog waste and drinking water are being especially hard hit by this rising industry.

Alan Siporin of KLCC in Seattle examines the puzzling drop in returns of salmon to Pacific Northwest hatcheries. Shrinking habitat has been pushing many species of wild salmon to the brink of extinction. Now, salmon bred in hatcheries are dwindling as well. Some blame the drop on temporary weather conditions. But some biologists say the […]