Frank Butler

President Robert Mugabe says Zimbabweans failed in their responsibility to protect Cecil the lion, who was shot by an American dentist.

Military police raid a house in Cameroon and free around 70 malnourished children, some of whom were kept in chains for years.

by Minhee Cho

When we go to the supermarket, we rarely think about how that piece of chicken or piece of pork ended up on the shelves. There’s a high level of disconnect when it comes to our food, author Sonia Faruqi says. We don’t know how the animals were treated, or the conditions on these industrial farms.

She joins ProPublica reporter Cezary Podkul on the podcast to discuss her book, “Project Animal Farm” – pulling back the curtain on how America keeps up with its insatiable demand for meat, dairy and other products, often with little regulation or concern for the external costs.

Highlights from their conversation:

• The ‘Frankensteinian genetics’ sown into our livestock: Chickens today grow at an extremely unnatural rate. Their legs often cannot keep up with the weight of their bodies and actually collapse underneath them, Faruqi says. “It would be similar to a human being gaining hundreds of pounds in the first couple of months of life.” (1:28)
• The environmental cost of factory farms: “They contribute more to global warming and to climate change than all the transportation in the world combined,” Faruqi says. The industry is really becoming a “global goliath.” (5:34)
• How America’s factory farm model has been exported elsewhere, much like Hollywood and our fast food obsession. (10:26)
• What can consumers do? For starters, we can reduce our meat consumption. Per capita, Americans consume 300 pounds of meat, dairy, eggs and other animal products per year. “It’s unsustainable, it’s inhumane and it’s also very unnecessary,” Faruqi says. (20:02)

You can listen to this podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud or Stitcher, and check out Faruqi's book, "Project Animal Farm," for more on America's food industry.

A UK court dismisses a bid to extradite Rwanda's spy chief to Spain to stand trial for his alleged role in massacres after the 1994 genocide.

King Mensah is known as the "Golden Voice of Togo" and is one of the most popular music acts to emerge from West Africa.

South African police investigate a raid by opposition activists of a church run by a self-styled prophet accused of making his followers eat snakes.

The Nigerian military arrests six after four soldiers and a policeman are killed in an attack by suspected pirates in the oil-rich Niger Delta.

Several people are arrested in Burundi over the assassination of a powerful general as a wounded rights activist is flown to Belgium for treatment.

At least 13 people, including five UN peacekeepers, are thought to have been killed in a hostage siege at a hotel in Mali.

Ugandan activists celebrate gay pride, a year after a law requiring homosexuals be jailed for life was overturned.