The Agriculture Sector gets a big F

I don't like to point fingers, but this person's name is all over the Collegian, so I don't feel bad at all. Over the past few weeks, Beth Mendenhall has painted some pretty ugly pictures of Animal Agriculture. Some of the negative things she says are true, but a lot of them are not. I would be fairly interested to see her references aside from PETA and HSUS materials. She blatantly says not to trust any sources that are linked to Animal Ag, which includes info you can find through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Unfortunately, those tied to the animal agriculture industry are the only ones who can or will tell our story. And it is the story that we all find ourselves entwined in.

I think that any of you would struggle to convince me that groups such as PETA and HSUS are not selling propaganda and exploiting portions of our industry that the general population knows little to nothing about. It's PROPAGANDA. It is not all true, and what facts they do share are told in a biased way to help their agenda. They make no attempts to pretend they are anything but that. If they had their way, animal agriculture would disappear and the entire US would be vegetarians. Quite frankly, it is not realistic and I do not believe it will ever happen. On the flip side, I am not naive -- I know that the same things happen in the Animal Ag sector. There ARE problems, our industry is NOT all kittens and roses and smiley faces. We do the same thing. I wont say that there are no articles from our side that tell lies, but I will tell you that I have yet to read one -- biased yes, untruthful, no. Honestly, the truth or the right way to go is probably somewhere in the middle. It's like politics, why do you think so many people define themselves as moderate?

We are also told by leaders of our industry as well as motivational speakers, like Trent Loos, to be ambassadors for our industry. Telling the 'true' story, the story of the every day farmer, of the care that we show the animals, etc. But, how? We never address the how. I've witnessed a lot of people engaged in discussions with folks about our industry. More often than not, they sound like Christians who picket yelling out that everyone is going to hell. When you tell someone that the choices they make are wrong or stupid, or any other negative approach to disagreeing with someone, do you know what they do? They get defensive. And somewhere in there, they tune you out. And they should. I want to be respected when my opinion differs from someone else's. I think that's a fairly standard thing that we, as humans, want and deserve.

The problem with telling the "how" is that a lot of things that we do don't intuitively sound awesome. Gestation crate sound... like they don't have room to move around. And you're right. But, there are a lot of benefits to them. The thing is, in animal production, we have made changes to the process of animal rearing. Everyone thinks factory farms are evil. What do you know about factory farms? They are large scale farms, usually owned by companies. Do you know how they came to be? Society demands a certain amount of product (in this case meat) and they also have expectations about cost. In order to meet their demand, we have to be able to produce a greater amount of product (meat) in a smaller amount of space. It's basic economics here: supply and demand. The way we make up for increased demand is how? Increased efficiency. The funny thing about factory farms is that they are often really just conglomerates of those good old family farms -- you know, that every day farmer whose story makes you all warm and fuzzy. Just because the farms are large in no way means that the care for the animals goes away. Farmers, ranchers, etc. care about the animals they raise because their livelihood is RELIANT on them. Are there crappy farmers out there? yes. But, have you seen animal cops? There are crappy people who treat their pets terrible, too. There are a lot of crappy people in this world in each and every walk of life and they make other people look bad. It's hard to see past bad seeds, but I think it's important.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but I do think that on the whole Agriculture needs to do some serious soul searching. We need to find a way to educate people on HOW to tell the story. It makes sense to us. For a lot of the industry (myself not included), they grew up in this industry. It makes sense in the same way growing up in a high rise in New York City makes sense to people who love living in the city. For the large majority of city folk, they've heard about (or seen) cows out in pastures and they see meat in a store. And, IF they even make the connection that that steak was once one of those cute cows in a field, how it got from point A to point B is largely lost on them. And, most of them are okay with that.

We are forced to explain animal production practices to people who put sweaters on their dogs (no offense Kristin) and who treat their animals like family. Heck, I treat my animals like family, they ARE my children. But, I am able to separate the idea of animals as pets and the idea of animals for food. A lot of people have never had to do that -- and as a result look negatively at some of our practices. They don't understand how or why we do what we do just as much as you don't understand why they take their dog to the groomer, put it in a sweater, and cuddle with it at night. Perhaps that's where I have some sort of benefit, I didn't grow up in agriculture so I understand better the plight of mainstream America. We need to teach people how to see through someone else's eyes. I think it can be done, I'm just not sure how.

PETA, HSUS, and other animal rights groups have realized this, embraced it, and used it to their advantage in "educating" the general public. Now, it is our turn to do the same. The ball is in our court.