Are animal rights activists jeopardizing the food security of the United States?
That question will be one of the topics of discussion at this week’s Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit in Arlington, Virginia. The group’s executive vice president, Kay Johnson Smith, says if activists continue to be successful in imposing tougher restrictions on the nation’s livestock industry, many producers may just leave the business.
“Ultimately, down the road, we’re going to become a nation of net importers of food,” says Johnson Smith, “and from a food security and a national security standpoint, we can’t allow that to happen.”
Smith says that’s what has happened in Europe, which now has to import food products from countries that don’t apply the same strict standards to their ag production.
However, Smith is encouraged by McDonald’s recent decision not to require cage-free eggs in its operation. She applauds the fast food giant for not caving in to pressure from the Humane Society of the United States, and hopes it might represent a trend reversal in the food industry.
“We’d encourage all food companies to also have those conversations with their suppliers and with the farmers and ranchers that are part of their supply chain,” she says, “because I think they will be pleasantly surprised to know that they are implementing animal welfare programs, and they have been for many, many years—long before activists started targeting this industry.”
The Animal Agriculture Alliance summit is April 28th and 29th.
AUDIO: Kay Johnson Smith (9 min MP3)
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Just some food for thought here…those of us who were around as recently as even the 1960′s; hog farmers were hog farmers – it was not a mega corporation with major hog confinements that fowled up the air and some waterways with spills…When all that started is when the “activists” seemed to have taken root ——and——-here we are today. Well that’s progress for you!
The perfidy of HSUS was proven through its legal push to abolish laying crates under Prop 2 and as soon as that became law next taking the position that free range eggs were not acceptable either. Likely the only truth the group out to wipe out all pets and farm animals has ever told is that they’d never approve of ANY type of houring or any other facilities for any animals.