The reason I ponder such things — and I am known for pondering stuff most people never even think about — is because I’ve watched this week general media reporters botch up ag-related coverage.  Far be it from me to accuse anyone in the media of a bias, as in covering a story in a certain way to make a point. No, I prefer to think those who practice my previous profession just don’t get it when it comes to ag writing or, for that matter, covering the food business per se.

I had a journalism professor who was the avenging angel of business journalism, a man who dedicated most of his career to fostering among nascent journalistas a love for covering profits and losses, boardroom shenanigans, and, believe it or not, he used to preach to us that “business can be sexy!”

Well, if IBM can be sexy, life on the farm, in a feed mill, a meat plant or a processing facility can be sexy.

To give a kind unsexy example, I tracked the coverage this week of an announcement by FDA that out of more than 600 samples taken at the Iowa egg farms involved in the salmonella recall, preliminary results showed four had popped positive as matches to the suspected strain making folks sick in 17 states. Of those four, two were feed samples taken from the egg farm’s company-owned and operated feed mill.

FDA said “there’s no cause-and-effect relationship” between the feed samples and the outbreak, but major media outlets across the country ran stories about “the likely cause” and “feed is the culprit.” Several major outlets reported the samples were from “feed sold to the farms” when in fact the feed was manufactured by the farm, with some ingredients purchased on the outside.

I spoke with one FDA official who admitted when he saw the lineup of reporters for the briefing, he recognized them as “food reporters,” and said, “These folks are going to draw a straight line connection when there is none.”

Another example is FDA’s announcement late last week of a scientific review panel to look at the application by a biotech company for approval of genetically modified salmon eggs, fish roe that will produce fish that will reach market weight in half the time as conventional salmon. Nearly every reporter wrote that FDA was about to approve transgenic salmon — not eggs, but the fish. The company in question doesn’t raise fish, but that fact was lost in the media frenzy.

My point is if you’re going to write about an endeavor as arcane as production agriculture you have to understand it. You have to know the difference between a commercial feed mill selling to hundreds of customers and the guy who’s integrated and makes his own feed for his own animals. And if you’re going to write about fish eggs, you really need to know the which comes first, the egg or the adult fish.

Maybe it would help if every group put together a primer for their industry, kind of “The ABCs of Animal Production” or “The Basics of Growing Crops.”

Or maybe we need journalism schools, recognizing not every general assignment reporter can be an expert in all things, that teaches budding journalists to least ask the right questions.

But all of that niceness disappears when I read blogs, editorials, and other so-called informed opinion pieces about the horrors of American “factory farming,” that salmonella enteriditis is all because of cages in which about 95% of U.S. chickens live, that organic, natural or holistic “local” food production is the be-all and end-all of keeping us all fed.

Why don’t I tolerate these opinions? Because, to be frank, they’re flat out moronic, and they’re generally posited by an elitist cadre of upper middleclass white folks who haven’t got a clue what it takes to husband a chicken a pig or a steer, let alone how you get a ear of corn, a grapefruit or potato from seed to marketable foodstuff. These are the people who’ve drunk the Whole Foods Kool Aid, those who blithely pay three to four times what they need to for food on the erroneous assumption it’s healthier, safer or more environmentally friendly. These are the folks who go looking for pundits to tell them what they want to hear. I’m increasingly convinced they practice this religion out of a misplaced sense of guilt, because they don’t know any better, or if they do, they’re just not as smart as the rest of us.

We’re bombarded by these uninformed, misleading, and in many cases, dangerous opinions on an almost constant basis, leading me to believe a recent headline: “Is Food the New Sex?” We all obsess just a tad too much on where our food comes from, and can someone explain to this ex-reporter/editor why the media thinks it sexy or even newsworthy to trash the 5% of Americans who feed 100% of the country and about 25% of the world?

There’s rarely any research or fact-based information in these treatises. Mostly, it’s a regurgitation of a Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) pamphlet, or some other worldly hallucination from the Michael Pollans of the so-called “food literati.” Yet newspaper and magazine editors embrace these folks as if they’re anointed from on high. There’s no fact checking, no verification of assertion or allegation; just blind acceptance because, apparently, stupid farmer/unsafe food stories sell.

It’s the newest bandwagon, I guess, and it’s so “American” in that it’s predicated upon a total lack of appreciation of what we’ve got, how we got it, how we keep it, and what might happen if it disappears. We just expect all that safe, tasty, inexpensive and eternally available food to magically appear in our supermarkets.

A colleague sent me a letter to the editor today from a gentleman in the West to his local paper. In a measured, and I guess many would say “nice” way, this gentlemen admonished a previous letter writer on his choice of gubernatorial candidate. Here’s an excerpt that struck a chord – with edits that are all my own:

“In a recent letter to the editor there was a comment that this nation has grown from an insignificant agricultural country into a world superpower. Not only did the author seem to link agriculture with insignificance, but also with being simple-minded literalists…the implication seemed to be that we should embrace a more sophisticated urban approach…Even with all the harassment from urban groups, such as Sierra Club, HSUS and PETA, American famers and ranchers provide the food and fiber for the urbanites. American agriculture uses less than 5% of the U.S. population to provide for 24% of the world – not bad for a simple-minded, insignificant people.”

This is the heart of our message, but it must be echoed by the millions of people who make a living from agriculture and, hopefully, our converts. Stop and think, people. Without us, you would not enjoy the luxury to go out and pursue those trades that make you so successful. Instead of shunning your aggie cousins, embrace them, think about the 95% of Americans who don’t have the luxury to pay way more for food than they have to; consider the food stamp mom or the family with a laid-off breadwinner. And how about a “thank you” instead of an uninformed and often malicious ‘you-don’t-know-what-you’re-doing; here-do-it-my-way’ next time you get up from the table?

As a very wise man once said, “As I recall, we tried that whole organic, natural thing for quite a while. Didn’t work out so well.”

Food safety legislation was approved by the House over a year ago; the Senate bill was approved by the Health, Education & Pensions Committee in November, 2009. I’ve carped in this space about the lack of action on the Senate food safety bill, and the Senate’s yo-yo schedule of “priority” issues notwithstanding, I’ve laid the blame for the nearly one-year delay at the feet of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D, CA), who in her infinite wisdom has decided a particular chemical, a component of plastics used in can liners and various plastics manufacture, must be banned outright because it might — that’s right, it “might” — cause cancer.

Our European friends call this regulating based upon the “precautionary” principle, the notion that some day there may be evidence that demonstrates a real and present danger. I call this regulating based on the principle of “what if?” something proves to be a problem at some time in the future despite the fact no clear evidence demonstrates that danger right now.

The problem with Feinstein’s approach is it endangers FDA’s historical operation as a science-based regulatory agency. This means FDA weighs the evidence of science and makes an objective decision — the politics, email campaigns and name-calling don’t factor in – on whether government action on a compound, a drug, a device or a process should be taken.  It is exactly this objective science-based FDA process which has made it the gold standard among world food safety agencies. I can’t tell you many countries sit back and let FDA make its determination on a safety issue before they act.

Feinstein’s approach is a dangerous step away from science, almost an about face putting U.S. food safety regulation on the same footing as actions taken by the European Union (EU), which apparently has yet to confront a technology that doesn’t scare the bejeezus out of its politicians. Look at hormones in beef — the science says they’re safe, experience says they’re safe, but the EU says “not so sure.” Look at chlorine in poultry processing as an antimicrobial. We know it to be a safe and effective process, but our buddies across the pond say, “whoa, wait a minute, what if…?” That is unless you’re an EU member which uses chlorine baths for poultry, and then apparently it’s not so “unsafe.” Can you say “non-tariff trade barrier?”

The problem with following a precautionary principle in safety regulation is that it is impossible to draw the line. “What if…” is a dangerous criterion to use given how much uncertainty exists in daily life.  Since we might get hit by a bus crossing a busy street, should we not ban buses? Since speed is a contributor to automobile accidents, should we not regulate how fast cars can travel, and how fast is too fast? We know drinking too much water in too short a period of time can be fatal, so following the “what-if” approach, shouldn’t we limit folks’ access to water? Whoops, then they might suffer dehydration and die, right? So, we need to make sure they get enough water, but surely not too much.

The irony in the Feinstein approach is that even the EU, the happy home of all things precautionary, has walked away from the alleged dangers of the plastics chemical, choosing not to regulate until it’s waded through the “oceans of literature and science” on the risks and benefits of the chemical. Similar EU inaction is remarkable in the context of several similar safety reviews by our own EPA, an agency which obviously considers itself immune from evaluating the negative econommic impacts and political fall-out of its own “what-if” approach to regulation.

I’m a pragmatist. If the science says it’s dangerous, act and act quickly. But the conclusion must be consensus and near-irrefutable. At one point the world was convinced saccharin would kill you; today, it’s well documented the substance is generally benign. The battle over antibiotic use in livestock and poultry to prevent disease while improving feed efficiency is another classic example. There’s no smoking gun science that says such professional, responsible on-farm antibiotic use is contributing to bacterial resistance in humans, yet we have an FDA willing to whack farmers rather than move against human medicine, the documented source of overuse leading to increased resistance.  The only apparent motivation is that we’re the low-hanging political fruit, meaning it’s thought to be politically easier to go after farmers than physicians.

This Administration dances dangerously close to the precautionary principle line when it does not openly tell the folks in Congress that Feinstein’s lack of science is reason enough to oppose such drastic action. Ditto Rep. Louise Slaughter (D, NY) and her zeal to ban antibiotic use on farms.  And the White House, in issuing its “enforce, enforce, enforce” mandate to federal regulatory agencies, needs to recognize and embrace the U.S.’ global reputation as a mature, science-based regulatory leader.

Once again, we’re reminded the Obama Adminstration promised it would base federal regulatory action on “the best available science and the rule of law.” This is one promise that should not be broken.

What I’m saying is this: Enough talk, more action.

Congress has diddled away two years without a food safety reform bill. The Senate has a well developed version, bipartisan in its support, but one Senator, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D, CA) has stood in the way of much-needed reform over a single issue. Apparently her single issue is more important than the broader issue of modernizing this county’s food safety inspection system.

No ag disaster funding has been approved because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) reportedly stripped it out of a piece of legislation in hopes of garnering a single vote based on White House assurances it would pay for the ag aid out of “other funds.”  Now it’s pretty apparent “there’s no checkbook down there,” as Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R, GA) put it.

We have no free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama or South Korea, despite this President’s publicly supportive statements about the importance of agriculture exports. His trade folks pull their hair and lament the inaction, but no where is there the action that bespeaks priority, no White House “push” to get these things done.

We don’t have a progressive energy bill because Republicans and Democrats both lack the backbone to face the reality that you’ll cut carbon emissions faster by providing incentives to use green technology and biofuels than by setting a hard cap on carbon emissions.

There’s no immigration reform measure recognizing the reality of 12 million illegal workers in this country, 12 million men and women who, like it or not, are critical to keeping production agriculture operating. Yet we have Administration memos on how to deal with immigration reform “absent legislative action” that have enraged members of Congress because they talk of more paroles and fewer deportations. That anger may be misplaced if those same members haven’t stepped up with their own solutions.

Voters have until mid-September as the entire House and one-third of the Senate march the campaign trail, visiting parades and county and state fairs. Now is the time to confront these elected representatives and find out why so little of substance was achieved by this Congress. And if those same voters are of a generous nature, inclined to give the incumbent one last chance, they need to find out what those representatives plan to do in the next Congress to overcome this inability to get from point A to point B.

When I was a reporter, my mom would tell everyone I was a “journalist.” When I became the head of government relations for an association and then moved to my own government/communications consulting business, she would tell folks I was a “government affairs representative.” She could not utter the word “lobbyist.” My mother and President Obama likely would agree when it came to the dreaded “special interests” in Washington.

I was building a resume not every mother could love, and I’m sure she feared at some point I’d sell used cars or go into the adult entertainment business.

But this week, I was pleased, though not surprised, to learn the public has more confidence in my chosen professions than it does in Congress. Whereas 25% of those polled by the Gallup Organization have confidence in newspapers, and 16% trust big business, only 11% of Americans trust Congress as an institution, down a whopping 17% from last year. The kicker: Confidence Congress is one point lower than the previous all-time low set in 2008.

I always said the American public is a whole lot smarter than folks here in DC think.

This sad number should be an eye-opener for every member of Congress.  Alas, I’m afraid it will be brushed off in the same cynical manner most folks on Capitol Hill treat the folks who put them in office.

But let’s ask ourselves why the public doesn’t trust Congress. Could it be the inability for Republicans and the Democrats to agree on anything, including apparently what day of the week it is? Could it be how Congress appears to operate in a vacuum, oblivious to what’s happening in the real world, enacting legislation its members can neither explain nor pay for? Could it be the constant reminders that many members continually demonstrate greater loyalty to their party than to their constituency?

Yup to one and all.

Instead of a wake up call, this poll will be likely dismissed with one of those “that-doesn’t-apply-to-me” mutterings.  And the fact is similar polls reveal that while the public does not have faith in the institution that is Congress, individuals generally respond favorably when it comes to their own elected representative or senator. I think this has more to do with not wanting to shoulder blame for putting the yahoo in office to begin with.

As we get closer to the November 2 midterm elections, I can guarantee you every member of the House and one-third of the Senate will miraculously become incredibly responsive to the good people who put them in office. The problem is this responsiveness only lasts until November 3.

What do I think this means for the November election? Let me allow the good folks at Gallup to explain in words used to lay out a previous poll on the dismal job approval ratings for Congress — a different set of sad numbers than those compiled for “trust in the institution” poll:

“From a historical perspective, Americans’ job approval ratings of Congress in 2010 rank among the lowest Gallup has measured in a midterm election year. The 16% recorded in March is the lowest single reading in a midterm election year, just above the low from all years of 14% in July 2008.  This year’s low approval ratings for Congress are a potentially ominous sign…Gallup has found greater party seat change in Congress in midterm elections when Congress has had low approval ratings.”

So there you have it. The folks on Capitol Hill enjoy neither your trust nor approval. I think the old axiom, “there are none so blind as those who will not see” applies.

Oh, by the way, I never wanted to run for Congress. Mom could never have found the appropriate euphemism.

There’s nothing lobbyists dread more than a lame duck session of Congress, that “work period” called after the general election, ostensibly to complete unfinished business. Generally, lame duck sessions bode no good — too much mischief can occur, both good and bad, depending on which side of an issue you stand.

The term lame duck derives from old British description of a stock broker unable to meet his financial obligations, and hence, is disgraced and unable to make a living. My preferred derivation comes from British nautical slang: A damaged ship was considered a “lame duck” because neither a lame duck or damaged ship could move easily across the water.

So it is with a “special” session of Congress that’s peppered with members who either lost reelection or retired. This is their last hurrah, their final shot at “legacy” legislation without having to worry about the consequences of votes back home. Imagine how scary it gets if the party in power will no longer enjoy that status come the new session in January, 2011? Talk about your last hurrah.

The good news is most lame duck sessions are short and tend to be focused on a couple of pieces of legislation so close to enactment it’s worth calling the folks back. However, another phenomenon of lame duck sessions is the “omnibus” bill. This is what I call trash can legislation, or a bill that carries anything and everything that didn’t make it during regular session. This kind of legislating is what keeps me up at night.

More and more we’re hearing about what may or may not be done in a 2010 lame duck session. So concerned is the House GOP that Minority Leader John Boehner (R, OH) has already warned the Democrat leadership to

“guarantee — right now — that they will not bring members back for a ‘sour grapes’ session after the election.” A little bit of early chicken counting, I guess.

For their part, Democrat leaders have said any lame duck session will be used to take care of minor unfinished business. But the GOP is beating the drum out on the hustings that the Democrats will use the session to ram through massive spending bills, cap-and-trade energy policy and gosh only knows what else.

The zeal to legislate will be directly proportional to the number of seats won or lost in the election. At the same time, last I looked, it still takes two chambers to enact legislation, and the Senate will likely be no more efficient during a lame duck that it is right now.

It would also be a colossal misstep — and a significant disservice to the public — if either party were to use and abuse a lame duck session to purely political ends. If, as they fervently hope, the GOP takes control of the House going into the 112th Session of Congress, I simply cannot believe House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) would want as her speaker’s legacy a “revenge” agenda of legislation. Nor do I think Boehner is paranoid enough to block bills simply because he’s the new big kid on the block.

So, friends, I ask that you say a few good words in hopes that should we go into lame duck session, cool heads will prevail, folks will do the “right thing,” members will remember the messages sent by the voters back home, and we will emerge on the other side without having to anticipate the opening session of the 112th Congress undoing a whole lot of bad legislation.

(My colleague just read this and said, “You really are a round-headed midwesterner, aren’t you?”)

As long as I’ve been a lobbyist, I’ve always marveled at the “priority-setting process” of chamber leadership during an election year, and it matters not one whit whether it’s a D or an R that follows the member’s name. It seems folks would rather do political battle and bang their collective head against a wall rather than do what’s doable first, tackling the ugly bills later.

That’s the case with the Senate’s food safety bill. This is one of those extremely rare pieces of legislation enjoying not only bipartisan support — thank you, Sen. Dick Durbin (D, IL) and Sen. Richard Burr (R, NC) — but which also enjoys the support of just about all stakeholders in the FDA regulatory process, including consumer advocates. But so frustrated are these constituents, they’ve now taken to running ads in Capitol Hill publications, urging, nay begging Congress to complete its work on food safety.

This bill was completed by committee last November.  Sen. Tom Harkin (D, IA), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee, shepherded a good bill through his committee, tweaking it as he went along, protecting the good work of the bipartisan gang who drafted the bill, and the resulting legislation is arguably a better bill.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D, CA) is Harkin’s big headache right now, arguing the food safety bill should be the vehicle by which BPA, a chemical used in can liners and in plastics manufacture, should be banned by FDA. She’s so far refused to settle for anything short of a full ban — though there’s talk she’s mulling over a couple of options — even though even the hyper-precautionary European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has opted not to whack BPA until it wades through the oceans of science surrounding the issues of the chemical and its toxicity.  Feinstein’s refusal so far to back off her BPA ban language threatens stakeholder support for the bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV), rather than brokering a deal between Feinstein and Harkin, continues to do partisan battle with his GOP colleagues over climate change/cap-and-trade, financial reregulation and extension of much-needed tax breaks for things like small business research and development and biofuels development and on and on.  Minority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R, KY) is helping Reid dig a very deep trench between the two parties, one which is becoming so wide some speculate it cannot be bridged. This is not the best use of Senate time or political capital.

Food safety reform was a priority for this Congress, but attention was paid only in the wake of a major food recall.  If the goal is to avoid these recalls, then passing the bill would seem the next logical step.  President Obama last week laid out the concrete achievements of his Food Safety Working Group, an effort which has brought increased coordination and cooperation to a heretofore somewhat fragmented federal food safety system. But the administrative changes can only go so far. There’s needed new authority in the food safety legislation that will make a good system better.

From a purely political standpoint, Reid and McConnell can both declare victory with passage of food safety, both can deliver to their parties’ reelection efforts a palpable “win” and both can use enactment as evidence the system is not as broken as some suggest.

For stakeholders, most will not throw themselves on the floor kicking and screaming if no food safety legislation passes.  They can live with an FDA system as it now exists. They’ll suit up for next session’s legislative battles.  But contrary to popular belief, where benefit is demonstrated and a practical approach is embraced, industry will support — and does support — smart modernization of FDA authority. 

There’s increasing talk food safety will be done during the post-election lame duck session. This is wrong-headed. Too much mischief goes on during lame duck sessions, as retiring or defeated members chase their legacy legislation, the media attention and the magnifying glass of reelection are significantly less, and some inevitably try and seize the opportunity to get done during lame duck what couldn’t or shouldn’t have been done during regular business fully believing no one will notice or, my personal favorite when it comes to political philosophies, “the public has a short attention span.”

The pressure is off during a lame duck, and in the case of legislation of all stripes, pressure to do the right thing is a something devoutly to be wished.

Perhaps this is a situation where our lawmakers are too close to see the options. If that’s the case, then I suggest these folks step back and identify what’s necessary and doable in the remaining weeks of this session.

There’s been a lot of low-key grumbling for the past 18 months over President Obama’s failure to fill the ag slot on the White House Domestic Policy Council staff, a job mandated by Congress.  For most in conventional agriculture, the President’s seeming indifference to filling the slot is seen as the most obvious symbol of how low agriculture ranks on this Administration’s priority list — unless your definition of agriculture is organic, small, local and holistic.

Lazarus moves to the White House on Monday, July 12. He’s technically a detailee, meaning USDA continues to pay his salary, but in his new gig, he operates as the senior policy advisor to the President for rural affairs and agriculture. While Vilsack may have a friend and former trusted advisor in that slot, the job reports directly to Melody Barnes, director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Well-respected for being intelligent, analytical, quick on the uptake and pragmatic in his policy work, Lazarus went from a total unknown in the backroom of Sen. Richard Durbin’s (D, IL) office, to Durbin’s ag legislative assistant when the Senator was elevated to majority whip. Almost immediately, Lazarus handled the melamine in dog food issue and the resulting law, but won his stripes as the chief staff architect for Durbin’s bipartisan comprehensive food safety bill, S. 510, a bill enjoying producer, food industry and consumer support, an almost impossible hat trick in this town.

He went on to the number two slot on Obama’s rural outreach campaign team, moved to the Obama transition team after the election, and was one of the first staffers to join Vilsack when he got the nod to be secretary. In his role as special assistant and senior advisor, Lazarus has been the food safety go-to guy in the “office of the secretary” — we’re not allowed to call Room 201 “the cage” any more — and has been the lead Vilsack staffer on Obama’s interagency Food Safety Working Group.

Lazarus has tough shoes to fill, being the first Obama appointee in the ag advisor slot.  During the eight years of the Bush Administration, former USDA Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner, a long-time Capitol Hill and Washington veteran, held the job of special assistant to the president for food, ag and trade. When Conner went to USDA, he was followed by Mike Sommers, former personal office chief of staff for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R, OH), and now Boehner’s number two man in the GOP leader’s office. The last of the Bush special assistants was Hunter Moorhead, a long-time lieutenant to former Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Sen. Thad Cochran (R, MS).  All three knew agriculture from farm to fork.

Lazarus will do just fine. As the Farm Bill discussions ramp up, he’s going to be a very popular guy, particularly if this President keeps talking about local marketing networks and broadband access rather than keeping farmers solvent.

Since the surprising announcement late last week that Ohio farmers and ranchers cut a deal with the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) over the future of various production practices in Ohio to avoid a costly and bitter ballot battle come November, my inbox has been stuffed with emails, most of which can be summed up in five words: “Is this a good thing?”

I’ve pondered the question for the last few days, not wanting to knee jerk in my response to the why’s and wherefore’s of the Ohio deal, but it basically comes down to this: It all depends on whether you live in Ohio or not. However, the overall implications of the Ohio deal are manifest and can’t be ignored.

As a politician of sorts, I’ve learned there are basic truths to any political battle, essentially three truisms which can’t be ignored: All politics is local; all politics is the art of the possible, and a compromise is something defined by general ambivalence on both sides once the deal is done.

There are several factors I assume as an educated observer on the outside looking in at the Ohio deal. On the local politics front, the fact Gov. Ted Strickland’s office was intimately involved in the deal-making speaks volumes. Obviously Strickland, facing a dicey reelection bid this November, retained the same strategy he did in 2009 when he endorsed the Ohio Farm Bureau’s Livestock Standards Board referendum question, that being, keep an ugly, emotional animal rights issue off the ballot. Why? Because such issues tend to draw single-minded voters, those who are often deaf and blind to other candidates’ messages, folks who are determined to beat back the question and who then reflexively pull that voting booth lever for the folks who support their fervor.

So, Strickland wanted the animal rights question as far from this fall’s ballot as possible, having learned one victory does not win the war and that he’d seriously underestimated the tenacity and ego of the animal rights movement. I’m not even going to second guess the good aggies of Ohio because I only guess at the industry factors in play when looking at November, as in “Can we afford another battle?,” and I have no clue what the implications of saying “no” to the governor and his allies or the deal might have been.

My gut analysis is that when it comes to what was politically possible in Ohio, neither the farmers nor HSUS had a lock on the outcome of a fall ballot issue. Are voters tired of the issue? Would they remain loyal to the farmers? What would it cost? The farmers are still paying the emotional, political and financial bills from the last statewide ballot campaign, and maintaining the level of support they had in 2009 is tough. HSUS had serious problems gathering enough signatures and had been beaten soundly in the state just a year before. Another political adage: When you’ve got the votes, you don’t compromise.

So who “won?” This is where the ambivalence of compromise kicks in. On points, I give it to the aggies, but not by much. The so-called restrictions are based on developments already on track in Ohio or soon to be. Veal stalls banned by 20017? The American Veal Assn. (AVA) announced that deadline three years ago. No new gestation stall permits after the end of the year, and all gestation stalls gone by 2025? You do the math on installations by year’s end, and let me know where we’ll all be in 15 years. No new caged layer permits? Ohio is already the second largest egg producer, and there’s no phase-out deadline on cages, so the only ones who care are those who were looking to 2011 to maybe expand their cage production. “Downer” transport? Already in place by industry practice and USDA regulation.

HSUS gets to lobby for cockfighting penalties, so-called “puppy mill” regs, and a ban on exotic pet ownership. But I can tell you with 99% surety the goal of HSUS in this negotiation had less to do with production practices and everything to do with saving face, and hopefully, leveraging the credibility of being an official player at the table. HSUS is feeling the acute sting of attacks from non-ag interests that point out in not-so-subtle fashion it is not a hands-on animal care group, but rather a very wealthy political lobby. This does not sit well, generally, with check-writing donors looking for real fixes to real local problems, not campaign rhetoric.

In his “Humane Nation” column posted late this week, HSUS President Wayne Pacelle kicked into serious lemonade-making mode once handed the lemons in Ohio. He calls the Ohio deal a “landmark” outcome for the animal rights movement – “It is in my mind, an agreement…(that is) the single biggest animal welfare package I’ve seen in our movement.”

He also reveals an political epiphany; we are blessed by the emergence of St. Wayne of Pacelle. He is, all of a sudden, extolling the virtue of Strickland’s “interest” in seeing a deal cut, but then rambles on about “no political winners or losers…everybody was a winner” because the battle royal in November was avoided. “(We) began to see each other as sincerely minded people,” Pacelle says, but also acknowledges that as a movement “if we do not sit down with our adversaries… we will never succeed.” Bless you, Wayne, for your enlightenment.

HSUS encounters with state aggies over time – initial or final – are hallmarked by ultimatums, so well described by one farm leader as an “our-way-or-the-highway” kind of “discussion.” Let us never forget, HSUS religiously believes it holds a patent on true compassion and sensitivity. The following are the realities of the “deal:”

Bad news for Gov. Strickland – HSUS ain’t going away any time soon. “It (the deal) represents a pathway forward for much stronger animal welfare in a state that has lagged badly on this set of issues. All parties also recognize that it is not the end of the discussion, but the beginning.”

Bad news for folks who believe HSUS will operative objectively. “At times, we must pursue such campaigns when lawmakers or industry slam the door in our face and reject the common good.”

And does HSUS think better of us for being “sincerely-minded people?” “Ultimately, we will need them (farmers and ranchers) to view animals in a more sensitive way if we are going to achieve our goals.”

Understand, HSUS operates on its own definitions of what is acceptable, when honest disagreement equals door slamming, and what, ultimately, constitutes viewing food production is “in a more sensitive way,” For HSUS, it all comes down to “achieving our goals.”

As the farmer said, you cut through all the palaver, it’s still “our way or the highway.”

I heard yet again this week that another food group in DC is trying to gin up financial support for a “pro-ag” consumer campaign. The “ask?” A pot load of money up front to “do the necessary consumer research,” and a commitment of up to $30 million a year — yes, you read that correctly — to keep priming the ag promotion pump.

I suppose it was inevitable a cottage industry of consultants, media companies, communications firms and the like would spring up around the collective food and agricultural angst over animal rights and other anti-technology forces arrayed against us. I’m hoping folks are smart enough or conservative enough in their spending not to fall for anyone who says they’ve got the silver bullet for this challenge and all you have to do is write a big ol’ check to make the issue go away.

The good news: We’ve got more energy and more attention being paid to those folks who demand we return to 1930s farming and ranching than in my memory. Further, every check-off group, every processing organization worth its salt and every food company has more than enough research — all saying the same thing — than we need to develop a game plan to beat the buggers back.

The bad news: We’re running in circles, talking to ourselves about how bad everything is/will be. We’re still hamstrung by silly commodity rivalries, association competitions and our own egos. We’re not using the tools we’ve already paid for and coordinating our messaging to consumers, DC and local politicians and other folks who can significantly mess with our livelihoods if left ignorant.  Back in the 1990s, what I just described was the weakness of the activists; today’s it’s our problem.

I’ve seen most of the consumer research done over the last 20 years to tell you it all pretty much says the same thing: Consumers deserve and demand sufficient openness and information — not the nitty gritty details of day-to-day production, but relevant information — about food production, animal care and ethical behavior to be reassured that the trust they have for folk down on the farm is justified.

This does not take a new massive, multi-million education program. It takes the creative side of our industry to take the dollars we pay them and come up with clever, catchy ways of reminding consumers there are real live, breathing, caring, professional people who produce their food. This is called putting a face on the process, not just the product.

The California dairy industry is doing it — honest-to-gosh dairy farmers talking to consumers about where milk and other dairy products come from, and the ethics of the folks who husband the animals. Ohio farmers and ranchers are doing it. Just go to the Ohio Farm Bureau’s website.

The beauty here? The message is the same, but it’s being multiplied by different messengers with their own spin. A single loud message about “love the farmer” will not have the impact as multiple consistent messages from multiple sources.

The answer to the “consumer education” challenge is not to throw millions of new, hard-to-come-by dollars at it with new and short-term advertising programs, but to take the tools we already have, including current check-off product promotion/advertising programs, and rejigger them to give the producer and his/her family consistent equal billing with the product. This does not mean ignoring product sales; this means enhancing product sales through creating a relationship between the consumer and the producer.

No one sympathizes with a big corporation, but folks in the city definitely sympathize with their cousins in the country. 

The key to rebuilding consumer trust and confidence is to reintroduce the city folks to the rural folks. We let them get away from us; it’s time to bring them back.