Farming's true enemy Corporate-owned operations are danger to people, animals.

Agroterrorism was the topic at a meeting of the Lancaster County Chamber of Commerce & Industry last week, and it featured a visit from a counterterrorism expert with the FBI's Philadelphia office. Perhaps officials in Lancaster - the agricultural heartland of Southeastern Pennsylvania - were concerned with sinister plots to poison feed supplies, or to infect farm animals with mad cow disease?

Hardly. Their concern: Animal activists with video cameras going public with undercover footage taken inside massive egg production facilities.

Lancaster County's peaceful and pastoral way of life has certainly been shaken in recent years, but not by a few camera-toting citizen investigators. The change is due primarily to the growth of large-scale animal farming, often called "factory farming" or "industrial farming," in which family-run farms and green pastures are replaced with corporate-owned farms with large-scale agricultural operations. The result of this growing trend is loss of control - if not bankruptcy - for small farmers, health and environmental hazards for those who live nearby, and intense animal cruelty...
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/opinion/local2/region/14413444.htm