EL PASO, Texas -- The Biden administration has promised to conduct a damage assessment after announcing that billions diverted for construction of former President Donald Trump's border wall would be returned to the Department of Defense.

The administration also wants Congress to approve funds to address "urgent life, safety, and environmental issues" created by the construction.

Bryan Bird, southwest program director for Defenders of Wildlife, said in some areas of Arizona, explosives were used to destroy entire mountains on public lands. In addition to looking at that destruction, he argued the administration should assess damage to Native American spiritual and burial sites.

"I would ask him to look at places where streams and rivers and springs occur along the border, and to immediately consider removing any border wall in those places," Bird urged.

As money was pulled back last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vowed his state would build a border wall with Mexico to deter immigrants, but provided few specifics about construction or funding. Trump declared a national emergency in 2019 to divert $3.6 billion from military construction projects to build the border wall.

Bird also hopes the administration will review migration corridors that were affected, preventing North American wildlife from using traditional border routes to seek out food, mates and new habitat.

"This is probably the first time in history that migration of wildlife has been stopped on a continental scale," Bird contended. "So this border wall that Trump was building affected that historic, monumental migration pattern."

In addition to Arizona, where roads were built through wilderness areas and waterways sealed off to endangered fish species, Bird pointed out California and parts of New Mexico also sustained damage from border-wall construction.

If part of the money is returned to the Defense Department, it is scheduled to go toward 66 projects in 11 states, 3 territories and 16 countries. It could also be used for enhanced technology along the border.

Animal-rights advocates in Nevada and around the country are sounding the alarm about the living conditions and treatment of turkeys on large factory farms.

This week, the group PETA held a demonstration in Reno to raise awareness of the 46 million turkeys it says are killed each year for the Thanksgiving holiday.

DeLana Barrett, a campaign organizer for PETA, said it's traveling to 30 states to educate folks, at a time when bird flu cases are also on the rise in some parts of the country. Barrett said commercial breeding and raising of animals can create hotspots for disease to spread.

"Animal agriculture, turkeys for instance, they live in filthy, overcrowded factory farms," she said. "That's not healthy for them, it is not healthy for us to consume. Turkeys are slaughtered at just six months of age in factory farming."

In the wild, Barrett said, turkeys can live between three to four years. In neighboring California and Utah, commercial flocks are already being affected by bird flu, which also is spreading among dairy cows in California.

Barrett is encouraging people to consider other food options for their Thanksgiving table. But she knows that'll be a challenge, as about 88% of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving, according to the National Turkey Federation.

PETA said three out of every four emerging infectious diseases in humans originate in animals, and Barrett said reliance on animal agriculture only exacerbates this. But she noted that turkey consumption across the United States has decreased in recent years.

"The majority of foods already on grocery store shelves are vegan - from fresh fruit to vegetables, grains, legumes, all of those things are already vegan," she said. "Processed vegan foods are just a small portion of that."

Barrett said animals such as turkeys feel pain and enjoy companionship, and suggested that people make the switch. The United States, however, is the world's largest producer and exporter of turkey products, meaning it's a significant driver of the farm economy.

By Grace Hussain for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Judith Ruiz-Branch for Wisconsin News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Lisa Castagnozzi considers herself an engaged community resident. The longtime animal rights activist stays plugged in on local issues, yet even she was surprised to learn a new slaughterhouse was planned in Milwaukee, right up until approval for the development of the land was poised to pass the city council. Castagnozzi wasn’t alone. Most of the community had been left in the dark, it turned out. Once Castagnozzi and the group Slaughter Free Milwaukee found out, they jumped into action to spread word of the planned slaughterhouse — ultimately winning their fight to prevent the plant from being constructed.

Slaughterhouse Owners Try to Keep Zoning Applications Quiet

Though the slaughterhouse was planned for Milwaukee’s Century City Business Park — a district that city officials have struggled to get businesses to move into — numerous residential neighborhoods would be affected. Yet initially, only a few people were there to weigh in on the proposal at the public council committee meeting where the proposal was first addressed.

It was at that meeting that members of the council, including Alderman Robert Bauman, began questioning company representatives, and learned what the company was proposing was a slaughterhouse. The facility would slaughter roughly 500 cattle daily, including animals from Illinois, Montana, Wisconsin and the Dakotas, according to the company’s representative at the meeting.

At a zoning meeting held a week later, Alderman Robert Bauman called these suspiciously quiet efforts a “strange proceeding,” pointing to the lack of briefing by the Department of City Development and the absence of citizens weighing in during the public comment period.

“There was nobody there,” he said during another zoning meeting. “There were no citizens in support and no citizens in opposition.” The effort to keep the new facility proposal quiet was alarming to Castagnozzi, both as an animal rights advocate and a member of the community.

“We didn’t know anything about a slaughterhouse potentially coming into Milwaukee,” she says, calling it “kind of out of the blue.” The fact that the meat processing plant would be constructed in a “city-owned lot” meant the community should have a chance to weigh in, she says.

Alderman Bauman expressed similar concern in his public comments. “Slaughterhouses and…all types of businesses that produce noise and dirt and odor have historically had a stigma in central city communities,” he pointed out in his remarks to the full city council. “Why? Because for whatever reason, those types of negative land uses just seem to always end up in poor neighborhoods — primarily neighborhoods of color.”

Only Days to Inform Their Neighbors

Once Castagnozzi and her small cohort of animal rights activists did learn about the proposed measure, they had just a few days before the next meeting was scheduled to get the word out. With limited time and resources, the group took to online and physical spaces to reach community members, and began to make headway. “We as a group, made flyers, did social media, we physically spread out in the community and went to the coffee shops,” she says.

Some policymakers “don’t care what kind of jobs they are, how much they pay or what the working conditions are like — they’re jobs,” says Robert Grillo, head of Slaughter Free Network. According to government documents, the facility would have paid employees an average of $17 an hour — significantly above the city’s $7.25 minimum wage but well below the salary needed to live comfortably in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee’s residents do care, it turns out. In a matter of days, activists organized dozens of opposition letters and delivered them to council members. “Jobs are not just jobs. Slaughterhouse work is among the most exploitative, dangerous and relatively low paid work in the market,” reads the letter signed and sent by many of the opposing residents.

During a city council meeting, Alderman Khalif Rainey who at the time represented the neighborhood raised objections to campaign efforts. Rainey argued that the letters were not reflective of the community, and that he had received messages from people out of the state, but barely heard from his own constituents.

Though he voted to send the proposal back to committee for further discussion, Rainey argued that the jobs it would bring would improve the lives of the majority-Black community in which the slaughterhouse would be constructed. “That’s a good, well-paying job,” he said in the council meeting, “so again, it’s crazy how all roads lead back to this one question: do Black lives matter?”

Castagnozzi disagrees. “No one we spoke to was for it,” she says. At one community cafe near the proposed site, Castagnozzi says, none of the customers knew what was planned and, when they found out, they were appalled. “They just couldn’t believe it. Like, ‘what do you mean? Like, that’s the business they’re going to put in our neighborhood’.”

Getting communities to agree, collectively, to oppose a local initiative that offers jobs can be difficult. “People are afraid of retaliation. People are afraid of speaking out or they have certain relationships, and they’re worried about those relationships causing them problems with their work or in their personal life,” says Grillo.

It’s a risk that paid off for the Wisconsin group that have now organized themselves as an official chapter of the larger national organization. Strauss canceled their plans to build a new facility in Milwaukee. Ted Beneski, head of Insight Equity Holdings, LLC, which owns a majority share in Strauss Meats, sent an email from his iPhone to Grillo. The company’s “strategy has changed,” it read, and Strauss is “not planning to build a slaughterhouse [in or near Milwaukee] or anywhere else for that matter.” Earlier that summer, the remaining Strauss Meats slaughterhouse in the Milwaukee area was also shuttered. According to a press release the decision was the result of their recent divestment from the lamb and veal businesses, combined with the relocation of their beef operations to Illinois.

To persuade community residents to speak out, advocates and organizers have to “create a tension,” says Grillo. “It’s a moral crisis,” he adds. “You have to create that to get people to take sides.”


Grace Hussain wrote this article for Sentient.


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The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved field trials for bird flu vaccines among cattle, but one Utah State veterinarian says to his knowledge those trials haven't begun yet.

Dr. Daniel Christensen, state veterinarian for the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, said the USDA is likely still a long way from having the vaccine developed that would help mitigate the spread of bird flu in livestock.

The initial field study would only involve dairy cows to evaluate the safety of the vaccine. Christensen said H5N1 among cattle isn't a death sentence as it is among birds.

"So, they seem to recover pretty well and return to a decent level of production," said Christensen, "within two to three weeks, something in that range."

But Christensen added that the bird flu can lead to a drop in milk production for a two- to three-week time period while cattle recover.

The current risk level of bird flu in the general public in Utah is low - as there are no human and cattle infections being reported, according to the state's Department of Health and Human Services.

Christensen said as we enter the fall and migratory season, the risk of animals contracting the flu does increase. He said last fall, Utah lost about 140,000 birds.

Christensen said bird flu can pose serious and even lethal health complications for backyard and commercial poultry producers.

The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food encourages folks to practice strong biosecurity measures - such as keeping poultry away from waterfowl, and to be on the lookout for symptoms of bird flu like sudden death, nasal discharge, and decreased appetite or water intake.

"Generally speaking, what we get reported most often is, from our producers, is unexpected mortality," said Christensen, "and can we come down and test to figure out if it is highly pathogenic avian influenza or if it is something else."

Christensen said Utah currently finds itself in a good spot with zero dairy and poultry operations reporting outbreaks, but said that could change as we transition seasons.