Livestock Stewards Should Decide Welfare Standards

Column: Farmers responsible stewards of livestock
By Bill Bruins

At some point, we as farmers lost ownership of the issue of animal care, and now it’s time we get it back.

Providing good care to the animals on our farms is a second sense within us, because we each have lifetimes of experience doing so. Any good farmer knows that good care also equals profitability. That’s why for years we as farmers have been financing meaningful scientific research through our commodity associations to benefit animals’ behavioral and psychological needs.

Yet, today we find ourselves in a situation where unscrupulous activists want to tell us how to care for our animals. Their extremist mindset and fundraising goals blind them to what research (or common sense) says is actually best for animals.

How did we get to this point? Read More

Mr. Bruins is absolutely right when he states that we need to retake our ownership of the livestock care issue. If we allow people from the HSUS, whose only interaction with farm animals is when there is a photo opportunity to be had, to determine standards of care rather than those of us with generations of experience, the welfare level of livestock will undoubtedly suffer. These groups continue to make their tired argument on an emotional level in order to keep moving towards their ultimate goal of an animal-free society. My six year old son knows more about livestock than all of the upper management at the HSUS combined. He understands the need to keep them protected, fed a nutritious diet and that life involves death. We need to remember that nothing less than the safety and security of our food supply is at stake.

Prop 2 A National Issue

State veal, livestock producers eye California proposition
Initiative designed to prevent cruelty
By Nathan Phelps nphelps@greenbaypressgazette.com

It's half a country away, but veal and other livestock producers in Wisconsin will watch what happens with a California ballot item Tuesday.

Voters in California will take up Proposition 2, a ballot initiative designed to "prohibit cruel confinement of farm animals in a manner that does not allow them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs."

"Both proponents and opponents agree this measure is going to have national reverberations," said Paul Shapio, a spokesman with the Humane Society of the United States, which is backing the ballot initiative. "These ballot measures provide the most modest reforms on an industry that for so long … has been able to treat animals however it likes."

Those in the livestock ag sector say the wellbeing of their animals is a crucial part of their operation.

"When it comes right down to it, if (farmers) didn't have healthy and content animals, they wouldn't be in business," said Casey Langan, a spokesman with the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation. Read More

Today we will find out if California will vote their producers out of the state in favor of imported food. This article shows that this isn’t just a California problem, but rather HSUS is going to be taking this effort to a national level. They have a goal of abolishing animal agriculture and this is another step towards that effort.