“GO GET EM!”

How is it, I wonder, that a group can be charged, tried and convicted of breaking election laws, but the law(s) that resulted from it’s illegal actions still stand? What is wrong with this picture? Am I misunderstanding the situation? I fear I am not.

The thing which concerns me most from this symposium is that we will have business as usual, with corporate and special interests prevailing, when what we need is true reform in the matter of animal agriculture. Even if AR interests are totally discredited, which they certainly should be, we need serious changes in meat production.

Among other things we need decentralization of meat production. We need this from the point of view of the security of the food supply - security from sabotage, as well as Mother Nature - and also for environmental concerns.

We need to shift meat production out of corporate hands and back into the hands of real, hands-on farmers, who are, conveniently, scattered across the country and would help us meet the necessity to decentralize. Meat produced by individual hands-on farmers will also be more humanely produced.

If we don’t do this, domestic meat production will quite likely fail, if not on the security issues related to the centralization of meat production, then on the tidal waves of public opinion which will not go away even if the AR organizations are discredited and their influence minimized. The public is (quite reasonably) unhappy about the welfare of the animals involved, and though they are confused about the differences between animal rights and animal welfare, their concerns for the welfare of animals are perfectly valid.

The reality is that the general public, many of whom would be hard put to tell the difference between a cow and a sheep if faced with the necessity of making the choice have been so deeply indoctrinated with animal rights propaganda that they will continue making obstructive agricultural laws even in the absence of AR organization influence, nor will they be willing to repeal the ones they have already put in place. Each year the public becomes less realistic about *all* animal issues, not merely agricultural ones. The damage has been done, and the cleanup job is an Augean one. However thoroughly discredited the AR organizations may be - and that is merely a hope, at this stage, not yet a reality by any wild stretch of the imagination - the laws written and sponsored and heavily marketed and supported by HSUS in particular will still be there, obstructing real agriculture as well as factory farming. In fact, most of these laws don’t touch factory farming, but as with pork production in Florida, they cripple even traditional meat production.

I’m sure it is too soon to broach these concerns to the USDA, but I hope they will be firmly in the forefront of the minds of those who follow you into the fray, after HSUS and its satellite AR activist groups have had their teeth pulled.

We are going to pull their teeth, aren’t we?

r.e. Lynn

I really like small local slaughterhouses.  Having said that, unless the laws of economics are repealed the best small slaughterhouses will become bigger by swallowing up the competition.  Sad, but realistic. 

HSUS won’t back off just because we manage to shift a % of the beef market from JBS Swift to more local sources. 

Pull their teeth?  No.  Render them politically impotent—that’s my choice.  I think this Humanewatch effort is a start. The animal industries have been slow to fight back against HSUS.  We have been told by “expert advisors” to fold our tents and compromise.  Probably good advice, because when we do go to a vote like Prop 2 in CA, we lose. 
We can give up, or we can start fighting back.  We cannot “do it their way and avoid a fight” or we are all “next” for the HSUS.

In response to Lynn’s concerns about bringing animal agriculture back into the hands of “hands on farmers, conveniently scattered around the country” I am one. I raise hogs right here in central Iowa. I care for my hogs daily and am proud to say that I am doing my part to provide safe, affordable livestock products for consumers to enjoy. The confusion that has been promoted by HSUS and various AR organizations needs to be addressed. These groups would have you believe that raising animals in a confined setting is cruel. This could not be farther from the truth. Controlled environment is far less cruel to livestock than requiring them to face the elements here in central Iowa. Imagine yourself having one thin jacket year round. Would you prefer to go outside to eat and drink every day no matter if the outside temperature were 20 degrees below zero or 100 degrees above or prefer a controlled 74 degree barn to live in? We as humans live in controlled environments, why not expect the same for the animals we care for? If you could visit my hog farm you would know exactly what I am talking about. My pigs are comfortable and provided adequate space,food,water to meet their needs. I am not an evil,corporate controlled person by any stretch, but am painted to be just that. I am an ordinary,every day farmer who has raised my family on an Iowa farm and am proud of the product I produce and also the means by which I produce it. Thanks.

Panel:  What is the Best Way to Address Animal Welfare Issues: Legislation or Market Demand?

  * Gene Baur, Farm Sanctuary

will someone attending please ask Mr Baur this question about legislation v market demand?

Proposition 2 passed by a clear margin in CA- which groups like Farm Sanctuary have said show voters wanted this legislation- yet market research shows that since the vote, consumers (presumable all those that voted for Prop 2) continue to buy eggs from caged hens from the exact same suppliers as before the vote.  Sales of eggs from cage free or free range hens not not increased by even a single percent. How do you account for this?

To help answer Romeo’s question.

It is obvious voters vote by emotion, but buy food from their wallet.  When current agriculture gets pounded with A/R rules after rules, the price of production will go up, reflected in the final cost of food.  Their objective is to price animal products out of the market.

Large farms are a necessity in this sue-happy world we live in.  What food processor or restaurant will take the liability from buying their meat, milk and eggs from a mom-n-pop farm two miles away?

The current Salmonella scare in Iowa has not found a single postive egg yet.  They have found it in feed and manure, but not the egg.  So now the A/R answer is to put the birds outside so they can eat their manure along with any migrating bird manure in the lot.  Mice carry Salmonella, so the birds get to live with them now.  Animals are kept indoors to protect them from the dirty environment.  Is the answer to put the birds back out in the dirty environment make sense?  Only for reducing production and raising prices (the A/R goal).

I support the idea of de-centralizing the meat industry, and bringing it back to local, family-owned, non-factory farms, which unfortunately have become few and far between.  It is bad enough to hear reports of how animals are “raised” in deplorable conditions in the factory farms—how calves are separated from their mothers and fed on goat’s milk (not to mention growth hormones), to make those nice, juicy veals that so many people order in restaurants or make in their own homes; how millions of cows are lined up on conveyor belts, and slaughtered in an assembly line fashion, without thought or concern for the cow’s feelings.  You heard me correctly—the cow’s FEELINGS.

Then of course there are the hens who are shoved into rows and rows of cages and who drop eggs onto a conveyor belt—who knows what kind of harsh chemicals they and their unborn chicks are exposed to in order for them to produce enough for the increasing demand from the ever-growing American population.

Animals need to be allowed to eat what they naturally would (chickens: grass & worms, pigs: grass, fruits & vegetables, etc.), and the transportation of their flesh needs to be lowered to a much more workable radius.  Being driven hundreds of miles to the supermarket, is exactly why food takes such little time to go bad, even in the best refrigerators.  We need to do away with factory farms completely, re-think our communities, and make it profitable to raise our food source in a healthy, clean environment.

@John250 -

If we had them, and patronized them, they’d survive. In fact, the only way agriculture will change is if we can patronize a different model. The one we have is truly not sustainable in any practical way. And I, for one, am no vegan, nor even vegetarian. Sadly, my system needs concentrated doses of animal protein to function. And I’m not alone - perhaps a third of the general population can do well with little animal protein, but no animal protein is not a healthy choice for any but a very tiny minority, and my metabolism is not a particularly rare one.

As things stand, it is difficult in some areas even to find a small packer, much less a small butcher. It will take time and education and determination to do it, but we can, and we should. The only ones who won’t benefit are the fat corporate cats whose only interest is in profit - the public, the animals and the small operators will all benefit.

@Bryce - yes, a few of you survive. I hope you continue to survive, and that more of you can be established.

I think that how stock is housed is dependent to a large extent on the location; but I’m aware of at least one professional hog raiser in the Northeast who raises pasture managed pork very successfully. At least he’s been there a long time. There is, as they used to say, more than one way to skin a cat. I assure you, though, that if HSUS thinks something should be outlawed, I am more inclined to think it’s a necessity than an evil if it’s something about which I have little knowledge. I admit to favoring diverse operations over single purpose operations, but there is a difference between ‘favoring’ and ‘outlawing what I don’t personally favor’.

@ Danielle - I would account for that discrepancy by citing the general ignorance and apathy of the general public. What appeals to them in theory and what they actually practise don’t necessarily coincide. They buy eggs where and how and at the same price as they did last week and last month, secure in the fact that they have passed a Good Law which will ensure that the hens producing the eggs are now in compliance.

Got that?

@Dr Joe - I think you are wrong. I think that restaurants, especially high end restaurants frequently buy from individual suppliers who meet a higher standard than the standard commercial one, and that food processors consistently buy the cheapest possible products, because their concern is only their quarterly bottom line. The restauranteur, on the other hand, has a reputation to maintain, if he wants to keep his doors open.

The AR answer will always be to force a very expensive change of some kind on the growers, because they ultimately want to put an end to the consumption of animal products. It makes no difference whether you are talking meat, dairy, eggs, or even wool. Oh yes, they will get to the sheep and alpacas and angora rabbits in their own time. It’s easy to demonize those who raise animals for slaughter, or even for milk and eggs - particularly if you can get a mole to falsify some evidence of abuse; the public needs a little more softening up before they can be brought to tears over shearing a sheep.

The AR activists know little about animal husbandry, and have no interest in learning more. All they need is enough knowledge to sabotage the farmer’s efforts. That they have, and they have no inhibitions about using it in any way they can.

Any means to an end is their ethic.

Also, please ask why USDA is so afraid of HSUS and has basically sold out to them in regards to dog breeders.

It was extremely evident when Dr. Gibbens of the CO. regional office testified at a legislative committee hearing at the Iowa capitol in 2009.

Several inspectors have either quit/retired, or transferred to other jobs within the dept. AR’s are now replacing these inspectors.  Straight from an inspector’s mouth.

In IA., evidence points to a kennel owner suffering a heart attack due to the stress of an inspection of which several points were disputed.
Upon a return visit, the inspector REFUSED to acknowledge several things that had been brought into compliance. Again, I have personal knowledge of the situation.

What’s with all the anti-capitalist vitriol?

So, let me get this straight, just because a business is big it’s bad? Ohh, corporations, scary! Factory farms, eviiilll! How reactionary can you get?

First off, the idea that “independent” farmers will automatically be more humane than a big corporation is infantile. People are more complex than that, it depends on the attitudes of the people involved. Have you been even following the blog? It has shown time and again that large agriculture is perfectly humane to their animals.

Second, corporations are not ‘fat cats.’ They provide goods people want and people pay them voluntary. It’s a beneficial arrangement. Profits are good as they come from that, not bad. Besides, you think small farmers and slaughterhouses do what they do for their health? They care about the bottom line too, and they should. To not profit means to be inefficient and to pursue a loss. Profit is a result of you giving people what they want and need. I always laugh when people demonize profit, that is like demonizing success and effectiveness.

And what’s with the snobbery? Just because a product is less expensive doesn’t mean it’s cheap or bad. Excuse us if we all can’t be foodies and afford to eat Fillet Mignon every day. ‘Commercial” food processes (so, small agribusiness aren’t commercial, I guess, they are all not for profits, huh? ALL farmers/buthers are commercial, duh.) don’t just buy the “cheapest stuff”, they try to get a trade off between inexpensive and quality, to have a product that is affordable but good, otherwise people would go to a different food processor who had a better product and/or a less expensive one. Again, the tired demonizing of the bottom line. In order to have a healthy bottom line, you have to be pleasing your customers. You talk about restaurateurs having a reputation to protect. Duh, of course. But so does every business including the “evil” food processes. People won’t give you money if they care for you and your product. See that incentive works for everyone, not just restaurants. Personally, what is ‘cheap” and more tasty is subjective, and I find the supposed differences between “high” and “low” quality negligible. You can have your fancy meats all you want, a good ole McDonald Cheeseburger tastes just as good to me.

Our current system isn’t “sustainable?” That is insane. We are getting more product out of smaller land each year. You see, you make sure you raise as much beef as you sell. It’s pretty simple. Our system is the most stable and sustainable ever. Despite all the gooey romanticism about them, small farms are not efficient enough to feed the world. *That’s*  unsustainable. You can’t run a food system efficiently via a gazillion small, less financially secure and resource starved tiny farms. There is just no way. We did have such a system and guess what, it died of their own inefficiency. Without big agriculture we’d have all starved years ago.

You people are more like the AR folks than you think. You claim to dislike them, but you have the same knee jerk anti-capitalist anti-corporation communist ideals.

@zf - no one here is ‘anti capitalist’ that I’ve noticed. Some of us would like to see some profit in the hands of smaller producers, and why shouldn’t smaller producers make a viable profit on their lifetime’s work? Are mega corporations the only entities which are entitled to make a profit?

The reality is that even in CAFO operations, they almost always have to manufacture the evidence to show them to be abusive. A true instance of abuse is a gift to them, and they never fail to exploit it to the fullest.

All I am saying - and I don’t speak for anyone else, is that there are a lot of good reasons to disperse all our food production apart from the issue of confinement, which in truth I, personally dislike. I buy from local producers whenever possible, which I believe is the best way to support smaller, local agriculture. No one seems to be concerned about the impact on the gene pools of the agricultural livestock, and the risk of losing some very useful breeds altogether, because we have so much concentration on the breeds which are most profitable to the biggest producers. That’s not a trivial concern.

The reality is that the mega corporations would not make a profit on agriculture if it weren’t for the subsidies they receive out of the taxpayer’s wallet. Those subsidies should be going to the smaller farmers, which would make their model affordable and competitive. Or, we could demand an end to the subsidies altogether, and see how that works out.

I hadn’t noticed that the USDA was in HSUS pocket. It seems to me that the consumer is caught between the USDA and federal subsidies and the HSUS, who is determined to regulate farmers our of business altogether. Now THAT’S anti capitalism.

HSUS policies don’t target industrial farming. They badly need industrial farming to eliminate the little guys, who are easy targets. To HSUS, all animal agriculture is ‘factory farming’, and they have brainwashed the public to support all legislation against it.  They do the same to pet breeders; they keep screaming about ‘puppy mills’, but their legislation doesn’t stop USDA licensed HVCB, and in fact, if you read the full text of their ‘stop puppy mill’ legislation, most of it explicitly *exempts* USDA licensed breeders. In fact, only a few states have any authority at all over USDA licensed kennels.

They are trying to eliminate all animal use, and because they know no one would support that, they are doing it deceitfully.

hi just registered ,,  tina