Michigan Grandmother Wins Environmental Prize

Richard C. Paddock San Francisco Correspondent
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SAN FRANCISCO (April 19) -- A Michigan grandmother who has fought pollution by factory livestock farms will be awarded the coveted Goldman Environmental Prize here tonight, along with activists from five other regions of the world.

The prize, which comes with an award of $150,000, is the world's largest prize for grass-roots environmental activists. It was established 21 years ago by San Francisco philanthropist Richard N. Goldman and his late wife, Rhoda.

One recipient is chosen from each of six continental regions: North America, Central and South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and islands and island nations.

Tom Dusenbery, Goldman Environmental Foundation/AP

Lynn Henning, a Michigan farmer, samples water in December. Henning was due to receive the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize Monday in San Francisco.

"Goldman Prize recipients are proof that ordinary people are capable of doing truly extraordinary things," Goldman said in a statement issued by the Goldman Environmental Foundation. "Although the prize winners represent a wide variety of nations and work on very different issues, they have much in common. All have shown conviction, commitment and courage."

Lynn Henning will represent North America at the gala ceremony. For a decade, the 52-year-old family farmer has battled with large factory livestock farms over the pollution caused by their operations in rural Michigan.

The farms are known as "concentrated animal feeding operations." The largest raise millions of animals in enclosed spaces and produce as much waste as medium-sized cities. Unlike cities, however, they are not required to treat the waste, which includes feces, urine, pesticides, hormones, carcass parts and E. coli bacteria.

The waste is collected in large vats or open pits and then periodically sprayed on fields as "fertilizer," polluting groundwater and creating toxic fumes. Some farmers are paid to spray the waste on their own farms.

These livestock farms have recently been identified as among the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, the Goldman Environmental Foundation said.

Henning and her husband farm 300 acres of corn and soybeans in Lenawee County within 10 miles of a dozen concentrated animal-feeding operations. Henning's parents-in-law, who live close to one factory livestock farm, have both been diagnosed with poisoning from hydrogen sulfide, one of the chemicals produced by these farming methods.

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BEAUTIFUL: Bob Barker donates $1M for animal rights professor

Bob Barker donates $1M for animal rights professor
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SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Former television game show host Bob Barker, who ended episodes of "The Price is Right" by asking viewers to spay and neuter their pets, donated $1 million to Drury University to establish a professorship on animal rights that he hopes will lead to a full undergraduate degree program.

Barker, who graduated from the small liberal arts school in 1947 with a degree in economics, said Tuesday that he hopes the school will eventually be able to offer a program of studies that would train them to be animal rights activists and to respect animals.

"I think some students would become full-fledged animal rights activists," Barker said. "Some will become lawyers and doctors who will always be interested in animal rights. And some will have more respect for animals."

The new professorship went to Patricia McEachern, a professor of French who will work full time to develop what Barker and McEachern said would be the nation's first undergraduate program in animal rights.

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