A California town will vote on banning factory farms. What does that mean for the rest of the US?
by Katie Rodriguez from Environment | The Guardian on (#6J82X)
Activists in Berkeley, which has no factory farms, hope other cities will follow suit - but not everyone is convinced
This year voters in Berkeley, California, will get to choose whether to ban factory farms in its city limits - marking the first time in the US that such a measure has been put on the ballot.
It may seem like an unusual mandate for a city that presently has no factory farms. (There's a horse race track field that would be shut down if the measure passes.) But the activists behind the ballot initiative say it's part of a broader strategy to ban this type of industrial style of livestock production in which cattle, chickens and pigs are held in confined spaces before slaughter.
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