Big Ag is OK With Farm Fires as it Fights Guidelines

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Big-Ag-is-OK-With-Farm-Fir-by-Martha-Rosenberg-Agriculture_Agriculture_Corporations-Agriculture_Fire-140222-170.html

Big Ag is OK With Farm Fires as it Fights Guidelines
By Martha Rosenberg
General News 2/22/2014 at 08:55:44

There is a reason hospital burn units have the highest turnover of nurses. There is a reason the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York City and the 2012 Tazreen Fashions fire in Bangladesh live on in the world's consciousness. There is a reason hell is depicted as eternal fire. Perishing from a fire is an unfathomable death.

Yet millions of farm animals a year die in just this way--in preventable fires enabled by industrial scale, "factory" farming. Recent burn victims include 7,000 turkeys at a Butterball operation in North Carolina, 250,000 chickens at an Ohio Fresh Eggs, a Costco supplier and 500,000 chickens at Moark Hatcheries, a Walmart supplier in Colorado. These heartbreaking fires are underreported and news stories always say "no one was injured." What? After it allowed 250,000 birds to perish, Ohio Fresh Eggs even had the temerity to assure the public its "Easter egg donation project" would proceed as planned. A few hundred thousand burned hens would not affect the supply of cheap, plentiful eggs.

In 2012, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) addressed the sad and preventable scourge of farm fires by proposing an amendment requiring all newly-constructed farmed animal housing facilities to be equipped with sprinklers and smoke control systems. NFPA already requires sprinklers in facilities housing animals like bears and elephants that can't be easily moved. NFPA, established in 1896, is the "leading advocate of fire prevention" according to its website, dedicated to reducing "the worldwide burden of fire and other hazards on the quality of life by providing and advocating consensus codes and standards, research, training, and education."

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But soon after the NFPA amendment, 15 Big Ag groups including the National Chicken Council, National Turkey Federation, United Egg Producers and cattle, pork and dairy producers appealed the NFPA proposal and it was scrapped. The reason? Animals' lives are not worth the cost says Big Ag.