The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "cattle" ...
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CHE: Scientists Shilling for Beef Industry
Agriculture school scientists are singing the praises of drugs that supersize beef cattle-- even though the resulting meat is tough and tasteless. The drugs' effects on animal health, human health, and the environment are even less appetizing. Guess who is sponsoring their research.
Tags: agriculture; beef cattle; meat; animal health; food safety
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Poisoned
“Africa’s lions are in trouble” and the reason why was because they are being poisoned. The lions are found outside protected game reserves, where they mingle with cattle. The lions kill the cattle and eat them; the cattle are a large percent of revenue for the population and puts food on the table. As a solution, cattle herders have begun using pesticides to kill the lions and protect their cattle.
Tags: Kenya; meat; market; Furadan; animals; protection; rights; wildlife; conservationists; creature
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Cash Cows: Companies reap benefits of agricultural tax break as cities, schools lose out
An extensive investigation by the Dallas Morning News reveals how big corporations use agricultural tax breaks, which were intended to help farmers, for their own benefit. These companies found loopholes which allowed them to set up their own farms or maintain their own herds of cattle in order to receive huge agricultural tax exemptions. These exemptions can reduce a company's tax bill from $240,000 per year to $300 per year. The article goes on to mention that the biggest sufferers of these breaks are the school districts which rely on these taxes for revenue, losing upwards of $169 milllion.
Tags: agricultural exemptions; Ross Perot Jr.; Frito-Lay; Hillwood Development Corporation
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"Downer Cow Controversy"
This investigation began by raising questions about the lack of federal inspection outside a slaughterhouse and the treatment of cows. Particularly it raised questions about health risks involving "downer" cows -- weak, sick or crippled dairy cows processed into beef for the kitchen table. The state's beef and dairy commissions, state agencies funded by fees attached to beef and dairy products, criticized the station's reports. The television station was tried in abstentia by the Washington News Council and found to have been unfair to the beef industry. The station earlier had refused to participate in the arbitration, saying its reports were accurate and that the council itself is partial. On Dec. 23, the first U.S. case of mad cow was announced. The animal was a downer cow processed at the same slaughterhouse that was the subject of the station's initial investigation.
Tags: beef; cattle; mad cow; downer cows; USDA; dairy; E. coli; food safety; meat-packing plants; slaughterhouse
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Downer Cows
A KIRO-TV report on how sick, dying and injured dairy cattle are being processed for hamburger, with little or no oversight by federal meat inspectors.
Tags: TAPE; TRANSCRIPT; meat; federal meat inspectors; beef; cattle; dairy cattle; slaughterhouses; food safety
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Billion Dollar Business
CBS News reports on the illegal trafficking of women from Eastern Europe to Italian brothels. Christiane Amanpour from CNN, on a special assignment for 60 Minutes, tells the stories of young girls who have been recruited from bankrupt ex-socialist countries. They have been lured with promises for decent job or marriage abroad, and then sold and resold in the prostitution "cattle market." The police in the girls' home countries - Moldova, Romania, Ukraine - is aware of the illegal recruiting but is too corrupt to take any measures. Few of the victims manage to escape due to the help of Italian priests. Some find help in a shelter funded by the U.S. and Swiss governments and run by Ken Patterson from Missouri. Still, most victims remain ensnared "in an underworld controlled by ruthless gangs."
Tags: TAPE; TRANSCRIPT; Mafia; gangs; violence; organized crime; Albania; Vlora; poverty; post-communism; human rights
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The Most Important Fish In The Sea
Discover reports on the decline of a fish called menhaden, one of the most important links in the food chain. Menhaden are used as high protein feed for chicken, cattle and hogs. Many larger fish consumed by humans feed on menhaden. The decline in their numbers is cause for alarm. Not only is the food chain suffering, but the algae and detritus which menhaden feed on now clogs inland waters. "Since market forces are unlikely to curtain the menhaden fishery, governments may have to take action," Discover reports.
Tags: food chain; environment; menhaden
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Family Feud
The Florida Trend looks at the controversies that have teared apart the "once a billion-dollar family empire that encompassed Sunkist juice, Peoples Gas, Lykes hot dogs and meats, First Florida Banks and half-a-million acres of cattle ranches" in Florida. The story reports how 81 Lykes family shareholders have "dragged the once-formiddable, and always private Lykes Bros. company into court over their fair share of a shrunken empire." The author finds that regardless of the lawsuit's outcome, the future of the company is at risk.
Tags: stocks and bonds; courts; litigation; shareholders; privacy; trade; real estate assets; Credit Suisse First Boston; valuation
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The Tortoise and the Cattle Rancher
The Progressive reveals that the federal administration has failed to keep its promise to protect the threatened desert tortoise in the California Desert Conservation Area. The story describes how the Bureau of Land Management consistently has done nothing "to stop cattle grazing on lands essential to the survival" of the tortoise. One of the findings is that "California's roster of endangered species is growing rapidly" with "an average of twenty species per year for the last ten years."
Tags: BLM; politics; The Center for Biological Diversity; environment; the Sierra Club; Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
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Get Along Little Druggies
This article examines how a group of drug addicts would steal and then sell cattle to get money for drugs.