SOUTHAMPTON COUNTY, Va. (WAVY) — A Southampton County woman was sentenced to 30 days for an animal cruelty charge.

Boykins police officials said in September 2017 that Tonya Brown was charged for the living conditions of two pit bulls.

It was alleged that the dogs were being kept in filthy conditions at Brown’s mother’s home. Police said at the time there was an ongoing investigation, and officers had been out to the home on numerous occasions.

Brown pleaded guilty to the charge this week, and was sentenced to 240 days with 210 of that suspended.

The Mighty Earth “Clean It Up, Tyson” Campaign, is working in 9 communities across the nation to push for more sustainable farming methods.

The group is demanding that Tyson Foods–the nation’s largest meat producer–eliminate fertilizer and manure pollution in their supply chain, which is contaminating ground water, rivers, and oceans.

The Mighty Earth ‘Clean It Up, Tyson’ Campaign will have an initial meeting next Wednesday (1/17) from 6pm-7pm at The Book Bin in Onley to talk about both the national campaign and some of the challenges particular to the Eastern Shore, and take action with  LTE writing.

The official Campaign Kickoff Meeting is the following Wednesday (1/24) at 7pm at the Naomi Makemie Presbyterian Church in Onancock. This will be a larger meeting and the best way to get involved moving forward.

Kickoff Event on Facebook

RSVP Here.

Sign the Tyson Foods Petition Here

Ten employees of a Tyson chicken farm in Accomack were fired Tuesday after Compassion Over Killing, a Washington-based animal rights advocacy group released graphic video that appeared to depict workers beating chickens to death.

The video shows workers stabbing, crushing and stomping on chicks at a Tyson Foods contractor in Temperanceville, Va.. In the video, sick or injured birds appear to be killed, run over by forklifts or impaled on nails stuck into pipes, while dying chickens are thrown into piles of dead ones.

“You need to kill him? Hit him on the head, then kill him,” one worker asks in the video.

In a statement, Tyson said it terminated its contract with the farm and removed its birds from the facility. Ten employees of the farm were fired, the statement said.

Tyson also said it would conduct a video conference with senior managers at poultry facilities to “stress our cultural commitment to proper animal handling.”

Karen Davis, President of United Poultry Concerns in Machipongo told the Mirror, “This investigation reminds us of the fact, repeatedly documented, that the chicken industry fosters sadistic behavior in its employees. It’s the nature of the business. Decades of investigations in the U.S., Canada and Britain have shown the same human viciousness we see here. Don’t wait for this industry to improve – it won’t. The one good, kind, compassionate, productive thing each person can do, and should do, is to choose food that is animal-free. A mouthful of misery is not heart healthy.”

Compassion Over Killing, an animal rights group, released video that shows the abuse of sick or injured chickens at Atlantic Farms in Temperanceville, Va.(Compassion Over Killing)

Special to the Mirror from United Poultry Concerns

Many animal activists are uncomfortable with farmed animal “welfare” initiatives because of their tendency to suggest that an acceptable alternative to “factory farming” is “ethically-sourced,” “locally-sourced,” “humanely-raised,” or “responsibly caught” animals. This approach to gathering support for an animal welfare initiative seeks ominously to sweeten the pot by offering the public a compensatory group of animals as bait for their support for an “anti-factory-farming” initiative. People are tacitly or overtly given permission to hurt this group of animals (“humanely-raised”), if only they will leave that other group (“factory-farmed” animals) alone.

The fact is that all animal farming is factory-farming, a business like any other – only the precursors of the final products, instead of being inanimate, are conscious beings like ourselves. What’s happening now, in the factory farming versus “humane” farming rivalry, is a version of George Orwell’s parable, in 1984, of how the revolutionary Brotherhood rises up to challenge Big Brother, only to become indistinguishable from its evil “opposite.” Turns out there is no real rivalry between them, because they are, at bottom, cut from the same cloth. [Read more…]