So me and N.C. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler are like, buds now.

One of my new year's resolutions was to try to get to know Steve Troxler better. So when I saw the News and Observer was having an "Ask Anything: 10 Questions with Steve Troxler" feature, I was all over it.

And my question was selected and answered.

9. A December 2006 article in Rolling Stone magazine painted a very ugly picture of pollution and cruelty perpetrated by the Smithfield Foods corporation in North Carolina. Smithfield refutes the claims, and I know we've since passed Swine Farm Environmental Performance Standards Act. What is your position on so-called CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) and their role in North Carolina agriculture? Do you see CAFO's as the future of hog farming? – Matt McCann, Durham

By and large, North Carolina hog farmers care about the environment and care about humanely treating the animals on their farms. It doesn’t make good business sense for them to think, or do, otherwise.

Raising hogs indoors allows farmers to properly care for and feed their animals. And hog farms are held to strict standards regarding manure storage. Currently, there is a moratorium on construction or expansion of any hog farms with more than 250 hogs.

Well - there ya go. Thanks Steve.

USDA caught in bed with agribusiness

Out of sunny California comes word today that a federal judge has ordered the USDA to stop spending money to buy ads to defeat a state ballot measure that would ban cramped cages for chickens and other farm animals.

I love this part:

In a lawsuit filed Aug. 13, sponsors of Prop. 2 said the American Egg Board voted to spend $3 million against the ballot measure at a November meeting in Napa. The board is a government-supervised group of 18 egg producers that uses fees from the industry to research and promote egg products.

The USDA assured Prop. 2 sponsors that no such expenditures were planned, the suit said, but documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act confirmed the egg board's plans. Government records also showed that Agriculture Secretary Ed Schaefer had approved the spending and endorsed the advertising, the plaintiffs said.

Ohhh, you mean THAT $3 million expenditure...with my signature on it.

Real nice. Now, while finding the USDA in bed with agribusiness doesn't even shock me anymore, I would like to talk about Prop 2. Is it really a good idea?

You know I hate CAFO operations, you know I'm all for treating the animals we eat with respect; but we're talking about legislation here. It's the wrong way to go about it; like using radiation to sterilize meat instead of trying to keep shit off it in the first place.

With legislation like this, how is it going to be enforced? Who's going to keep all the records? Will it actually force egg producers out of the state?

I would much rather have seen the efforts to get legislation like this passed instead used to educate consumers about what CAFO's do to the environment; how the animals are treated - and show people that there are alternatives and to let consumers have the choice.

There are people that don't care at all if a chicken is kept in a shoebox with it's beak cut off, unable to stand for it's short lifetime; if it means cheaper eggs and 99 cent KFC snackers, then so be it! I think they are idiots, but they exist.

But I also think those people are a minority. If given unbiased information and choices, I do believe people are smarter than they're often given credit for.