Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Walsh Refuses Accurate Info About Beef Production

TIME Publishes Biased View of Beef Industry
An attempt by the NCBA to educate TIME magazine reporter seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
By: Compiled by staff
Published: Aug 24, 2009

The cover story of the Aug. 31 edition of TIME is entitled "The Real Cost of Cheap Food." In the article reporter Bryan Walsh painted modern beef production with an unflattering brush of a wide range of claims. He included common myths of over-reliance on corn and antibiotics, poor farm animal living conditions, and how meat is leading to obesity.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association was contacted by Walsh last week asking what the cost of raising a 1200 pound steer from birth to slaughter in a conventional production method. NCBA Executive Director of Communications Daren Williams was concerned, knowing that Walsh had written a piece last September that was very biased and slanted against the food industry and beef industry. In that article Walsh accused livestock production of causing global warming and that eating meat increased the risk of heart disease as well as several other blanket statements that could not and are not substantiated by science.

"I had some immediate concerns obviously whether or not Bryan Walsh was interested in writing a fair and balanced piece on modern food production," Williams said. "At that time I put him in touch with and insisted really that he speak with a number of experts and actual producers." Read More

Bryan Walsh’s article in TIME magazine was a ridiculous compilation of nearly every inaccurate stereotype about modern agriculture. The lack of effort to write an article in which both sides were presented and the reader allowed to decide was glaring to say the least. Even with the ability to talk to people in the industry and see for himself how things work, he chose the lazy way out. If farmers and ranchers put as much effort into their work as Walsh did, we’d all be hungry and naked right now.

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