Animal agriculture, “warts and all”

Commentary

This week, “The Hill,” a Capitol Hill newspaper ran a special section on “animal welfare.”  These “issue sections” serve two purposes:   They allow messages on a political issues to be crafted from your parochial point of view, usually by friendly members of Congress who write “guest editorials” with the help of industry or activist,  and they generate big income for the newspaper because groups from both sides of the issue buy ads in the special section.

“The Hill’s” section was a potpourri of various animal issues, from how to best care for great apes, to restricting loopholes in fur imports, to monkeys in laboratory research to, of course, animal agriculture.  The guest columns were, by and large, what you’d expect: Heartfelt support for whatever side of the issue the author happens to be on.  I am grateful key members of Congress were willing to publicly stand up for farmers and ranchers.  The champions of ag were articulate, but a bit predictable. 

I am not being ungrateful for the support of House members who wrote for the special section.  But after I read a couple of these guest columns,  I shared one of them with Dr. Stanley Curtis, University of Illinois.  Stan is one of those rare individuals who’s forgotten more about farm animal welfare/wellbeing than most of us will ever know. Through his research and his writings, Stan is internationally recognized as the architect of that school of animal science which esteems the measureable, quantifiable components of animal welfare, the art of empirical evaluation.

Stan is not only a valued friend, but I look to him as a mentor when it comes to how best and most effectively champion U.S. animal agriculture and the use of safe, effective technology in the husbanding of food animals. Back in the mid-1980s, when I was a fledgling lobbyist and just beginning to give speeches around the country on the threat of the then almost-unheard-of animal rights movement, Stan gave me sage advice: “Steve, if you’re going to talk about animal production, you must talk about it warts and all.”

This advice is fundamental to my efforts to educate farmers and ranchers, processors, retailers and consumers who fear criticism of farming and ranching. Stan very recently repeated his admonition: “To tout agriculture’s rights without admitting its wrongs — even to ourselves — is, I think, unwise.” 

Now, do not get this wrong. And any animal rights person reading this, if you take the first few paragraphs of this canon and quote it out of context, I will hunt you down. What we’re talking about here is the acknowledgement that U.S. farming and ranching is not a perfect endeavor — but it’s by far and away the world’s best system, and it strives — some might say it struggles in these times of anti-technology ranting — to constantly improve.

Today Stan sent me a copy of an email he’d sent to a colleague, complimenting him on a commentary he’d written for BEEF Online. The colleague wrote:

“As an industry we must stop giving our opponents the occasional ammunition to shoot at us with, and we had better begin preparing for what promises to be some costly legal battles…” 

This identifies a weak link in our chain of proactive actions: The “bad actor,” as we like to call them.

We must individually and collectively police ourselves and — and I know some of you will recoil in horror when I say this — we must “police” our neighbors to ensure we consistently perform as an an industry as best we can.

All I need do is remind folks that “undercover video” is and should be every producer, processor, livestock auction and transporter’s nightmare. Not because we routinely do bad things and might get caught, but because all it takes is one “bad actor” or one bad incident, and we’re all painted with the same broad brush.

Back in the 1980s, I remember an incident where a farmer, in dispute with his lender over who’d make the decision as to when to market cattle, threw up his hands in frustration and told the banker, “You think you own them, then you feed them” or words to that effect. The state cattle association moved with lightning speed to implement a program so that any producer, who, for whatever reason could not take care of his/her animals, need only notify the association and it would work with the producer to ensure the animals were cared for, moved to a ranch who could handle them or moved to market.

This kind of proaction should be universal among all species and organizations, state and national. We cannot and must not tolerate the rare producer, market, processor or other in the chain who, for whatever reason, can’t or don’t do the right thing. To turn a blind eye, mumble “the market will take him out,” is to avoid not only the business consequences of such avoidance, but it ignores the ethical mandate under which all of us in animal agriculture must operate.

We are not used to judging our neighbor’s operation, just as most of us don’t take kindly to unsolicited “advice” from someone who thinks he/she knows how we could do it “better.” But where there’s obviously a problem and the producer is for whatever reason unable to deal with it, then we have to act. To remain aloof is to reap the whirlwind of animals in need, negative publicity and the increasing likelihood of government intervention.

Just as we must constantly strive to improve our operations, we must constantly strive to help others in our industry do so as well. If a bad actor won’t accept the help that’s offered, and law enforcement or the media get a hold of the situation, then after investigation and the weighing of evidence, if the actor truly is “bad,” then we must be the first to stand and tell the consumer, “This is not business as usual for our industry. We do not tolerate such practices.”

As we so often say, “It’s just the right thing to do.”