Action Alert
For Further Information Contact: Philip Lobo, Communications Director
Phone: (703) 562-5160
Date: 04/26/2006

Activist Group Conducts Indiana-Ohio Anti-Agriculture Training Sessions
The Animal Agriculture Alliance (Alliance) has learned that professional activists from New York-based Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE) offered to lend citizens in Indiana and Ohio one of the organization's five ''UVHounds'', portable monitoring devices that use ultraviolet light to detect things like hydrogen sulfide and ammonia in air. The extremist group lends the monitors exclusively to activists who plan to sue agricultural enterprises -- not to activists who are just curious -- because the devices are expensive (about $30,000 each).

In mid-March, more than 70 residents of Indiana's Blackford, Delaware, Wayne, Jackson and Rush along with Ohio's Darke counties met so GRACE activists could teach them how to use the devices to fight what the anti-agriculture activists consider to be ''factory farms.''

GRACE's professional activists, who call themselves ''consultants'', did their best to inundate the crowd with their off-base and off-beat messages advising the attendees to buy organic food, to vote, to not trust the government to protect them, to file lawsuits, to carry a camera at all times, to take water samples and to take air samples.

The propaganda session included activists running through their usual litany of ''findings.'' One activist focused on the alleged environmental and animal welfare misdeeds of America's dairy farmers. A proselytizing professional activist from Illinois distributed ''studies'' alleging that concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) generate antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can be deadly to people. She also promoted GRACE's baseless allegation that antibiotics are ''routinely given'' to animals to ''promote growth and compensate for the stress of being raised in confinement.''

Delaware County Commissioner John Brooke, a Democrat, was in the audience, as were Mike King, a Democratic candidate for County Commissioner, and former State Legislator Ron Liggett, a Democrat who is seeking to return to the Indiana House.

The Animal Agriculture Alliance (Alliance) urges its members in Indiana and Ohio to prepare themselves for this coming threat along with forwarding this alert to your friends, neighbors, suppliers and customers.

The Animal Agriculture Alliance is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. The Alliance's mission is to communicate the important role of animal agriculture to our nation's economy, productivity, vitality, security and that animal well-being is central to producing safe, high-quality, affordable food and other products essential to our daily lives. If you are not an Alliance member, but want to champion initiatives that support and protect America's farmers and ranchers, please visit the Alliance website at www.animalagalliance.org and click on Become a Member.