I’ve never been to Ohio. However, I love the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song “Ohio.” Neil Young wrote it after seeing photos of the Kent State shooting in Life magazine. I’m writing this after seeing the recent footage of animal abuse on an Ohio dairy farm. I know for sure that this post won’t be as poignant as those lyrics or as gorgeous as those four voices, but it must be written nonetheless.

In late May, undercover video taken by animal welfare activists from Mercy for Animals hit the newswire and went viral on the web. The video was taken at Conklin Dairy Farms in Plain City, Ohio, and documented the sadistic abuse of dairy cows. Watch it if you dare, but if you don’t (and who could blame you?), just know that these activists risked their safety to document workers, including the farm owner, doing the following: violently punching young calves in the face, body slamming them to the ground, pulling and throwing them by their ears, using pitchforks to stab cows in the face, legs and stomach, kicking cows too injured to stand in the face and neck, beating restrained cows in the face with crowbars, twisting cows’ tails until the bones snapped, and punching cows’ udders.

Conklin Dairy Farms is a fourth-generation family operation large enough to receive federal subsidies, effectively blurring the line between “factory farms” and “family farms.” The Ohio Department of Agriculture inspected the facility three times within the last year and approved it as a “Grade A” facility.

Of course, these are egregious instances of cruel treatment, but there are plenty of other forms of more routine, legal cruelty within agribusiness. It’s cruel to confine chickens in such a way that they can’t spread their wings or to keep sows and veal calves in cages that don’t allow them to turn around at any point during their miserable lives. It’s cruel to let sick and injured animals into the food supply rather than euthanizing them humanely (and it’s cruel to use inhumane methods of euthanasia on those animals).

But here’s some news that won’t make you cringe: Ohioans for Humane Farms, endorsed by The Humane Society of the United States, The ASPCA, and Farm Sanctuary, is trying to get a measure on Ohio’s November 2010 ballot that will set certain minimum humane standards for factory farms. Michigan recently adopted such reforms, providing farm animals with more space to turn around and extend their limbs. Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Maine and Oregon have done the same.

I’m sad to say I was so derailed by the footage that I avoided thinking about the issue. Now, with six days left to collect the signatures needed to make it a ballot initiative, I’m asking you to please forward this to anyone you know in Ohio. At ohiohumane.com, they can take action.

The B-side to “Ohio,” by the way, was Stephen Stills’s “Find the Cost of Freedom.”

This is the best practical guide to buying well-sourced meat and animal products I’ve ever read. It’s just a few pages and full of concrete strategies for better eating–well worth printing and keeping on the fridge. The author’s introduction reminded me of my own experiences:

To avoid the products of factory farms, I became something of a food detective. My groceries were the subjects of my investigations. Where were they coming from and how they were produced? I roamed grocery store aisles carefully reading product labels, but there was little to no information about the conditions in which the animals were raised… The food system’s lack of transparency was frustrating. Eventually, I mostly gave up on supermarkets and began exploring new ways to get at the good food I was seeking. Although the task was daunting, my goal was simple: I wanted all my food to come from places I would enjoy visiting.

–Nicolette Hahn Niman

Here are some similarities between meat and oil:

• Both are subsidized by the feds
• We’re consuming neither in a sustainable way
• Many Western consumers consider them a birthright
• Their consequences are getting harder to ignore
• Both industries keep the media away from the crime scenes

Here’s one difference, though. We can’t control the oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, but we can control our consumption of factory-farmed meat.

New college graduates have recently stepped into the bright sunlight of “the real world.” I recently had a wake-up call of my own as I learned a little about the role of universities in agribusiness.

I grew up not far from UCONN, where one could be an “ag major.” That sounded cool–a person could get a degree in farming. There are beautiful small farms all over Connecticut. Of course, I was oblivious to the big picture.

It’s this: Many state-funded schools were originally chartered with the purpose of teaching and fostering agriculture. These are called “land grant universities,” and Iowa State and Michigan State were two of the first. Cornell is one as well. These universities have agricultural “experimentation stations” and “agricultural extension agents” who support agriculture in the local communities.

This all sounded fine and good until I learned that the programs are funded by the USDA and the usual biotech conglomerates. Iowa State even has a Monsanto Auditorium. Naturally, it follows that this segment of academia conducts plenty of research that favors agribusiness practices. For instance, many land grant university “studies” support the caging of hens, GMO’s, and chemical-dependent agriculture.

It’s a bit like BP offering free science curriculum to public schools.