The Humane Society of the United States is finding out producers and consumers don't like being deceived. Farmers and ranchers have used social media to tell the anti-animal agriculture organization "we're mad as heck and not going to take it anymore!"In a post earlier this week, I shared the progress being made in sharing the truth about the HSUS. Well, the efforts to expose this wolf in sheep's clothes continue to take on a life of their own.
Led by the efforts of HumaneWatch, corporations are beginning to understand how their HSUS donation is spent, and it's not used to save Fluffy. Yesterday, Hill Pet Nutrition announced by e-mail the company has stopped supporting the HSUS.
Find out if companies and brands you love support the HSUS, and tell them the truth about this organization. According to HumaneWatch, Oreck is the next corporation being targeted. Contact them via customer service or FaceBook.
Advocacy is important, but also be sure to support these companies for their decisions. Drink Yellow Tail wine, give Fluffy some Science Diet pet food and fill up your vehicles with Pilot Travel Center gasoline.
Producers and consumers certainly don't like to be deceived. We especially don't like to be deceived by big corporations hiding behind a non-profit front. Farmers don't like to be run by big-ag. They don't like to be forced into a corner by Tyson and Monsanto. And yet here is your article actually trying to promote the HumaneWatch/CCF/Monsanto and Tyson front group. What a joke!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments. I hesitate allowing anonymous comments, but I don't want to discourage interaction. It'd be great to know who you are if you come back. To my best knowledge, you are right if you dig into where Center for Consumer Freedom donations come from, but I think it is a stretch to say these corporations are bullying family farms. Simply because a company is a corporation doesn't make it a bully. Tyson Fresh Meats and Monsanto aren't without faults (are any of us?), but the positives probably outweigh the negatives. Keep up the challenging comments!
ReplyDeleteHi Lance,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your reply and for allowing my comment to be posted. I am interested in dialogue as well, I feel like we can all benefit from that and I know that I definitely have a lot to learn about this industry (preferably from real farmers, not front groups like HumaneWatch).
I don't know if it's a stretch to say that the corporations are bullying family farms or not. I've certainly heard arguments for both sides. I don't know how you feel about the film Food, Inc., but that was the first time it had been brought to my attention. Then I started seeing push back from family farmers more frequently. Here is one example, a YouTube video of real farmers speaking out against big-ag (mostly Monsanto):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1axAqJGEXI
Now what I really want is to be an informed consumer and support the people that have supplied our country with food for since the inception of our nation. I will happily pay a little extra for beef that I know was raised humanely, fed a good diet and was cared for by a small family farm. I don't want beef that was living knee-deep in manure, pumped full of antibiotics and killed inhumanely. As a consumer, I don't want to support the big companies when they are suffocating the family farmers. I don't like that the top four beef packers control more than 80% of the market. I don't like that the number of slaughter houses have dropped dramatically in the last 3-4 decades. I prefer to support real people, real farmers, real butchers, not suits that make 10x what is even ethical.
"Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people"-Henry Kissinger
Also, if you'd like to learn more about HumaneWatch and who operates it, look into this website put together by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW):
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bermanexposed.org/
HumaneWatch is the link at the bottom, but on that page you can see all of the organizations that the CCF attacks while posing under different aliases.
Bianca, thanks for coming back! Our comments might get longer than the article, but I want to touch on a few things, and we’ll plow more ground in time.
ReplyDeleteFirst, Food, Inc., is on my watch list of movies. I'll definitely be watching it and posting my take soon. A friend has already suggested I watch it and do a quick write up.
The debate about small farms and factory farmers is tough. Who defines a small or family farm? My dad built our family's farm from nothing but blood, sweat and tears in the 1980s. Today, we have 150 cattle (nearly 4 times the national average) and 3,000 acres of cropland. We buy calves from area ranchers and feed the calves with the crops we raise. It’s a model that Kansas farmers have been using since the late 1800s.
The feed includes corn based on technology from corporations like Monsanto, and I can tell you first hand. We are able to raise higher quality crops using less fuel and fertilizer while creating less soil erosion than ever before. Today, Monsanto is working on crops that even use less water. They invest millions of dollars in research to develop these genetics. Those crops should be controlled under patent so companies can recover their investment. Have they made some mistakes? I am sure they have, but I bet Microsoft and Apple have made similar mistakes. Yet, I still use their computer products.
The cattle we raise are truly beautiful and healthy, but sometimes we get three inches of rain or a foot of snow in a matter of hours. Cattle live out in the elements, and it gets muddy. We have to keep the animals close to our farm yard to feed them and provide some shelter, and livestock bunch up in cold weather regardless of where they are. Even when we only had 40 head it got muddy. During bad weather, we work for hours to provide straw bedding and clean space for cattle to lie, and the larger feedlots in our area work nearly around the clock doing the same thing. A comfortable animal is a happier and healthier animal, and that’s what we need. Each year our cattle are healthier and produce higher quality meat. I know because we raised our own animals as 4-H projects and local buyers pay us top dollar for the calves. As for our other calves, they go to feedlots that eventually sell to a bigger packing plant.
I toured one of those packing plants once, and I think anyone would be proud of our meat system if they visited. They are some of the cleanest and most safety cautious facilities I have ever seen. The tour guide wouldn’t even take us through where they were making hamburger due to food safety protocol. We could watch from the door, but they didn’t want us bringing in foreign pathogens. Packing concentration is something I don’t like to see, but those companies do a great job in an industry that is tough to find a profit in.
Lastly, I have never met Richard Berman or his team at the Center for Consumer Freedom. The site you point to is interesting, but right now, I don’t have time to research all your information. I know one thing for certain -- the Humane Society of the United States is in no way, shape or form a credible source for information on American agriculture. I want every consumer to know that they are a fraudulent organization that uses emotion to steer action. Read my post about Mike Rowe, and the blog article posted on his site. Groups like HSUS specialize in deceiving consumers. HumaneWatch is bringing this to light, and I simply wanted to applaud them for the work.
I’m glad you are concerned about your food, and Bianca, it sounds like you are doing your homework. Keep visiting my site, and continue to provide comments. Maybe we can generate a shorter dialogue in the future. I think we each want the same thing, and I am sorry if I haven’t addressed all your points. I’ll get there in time, but this blog is only two weeks old. Thanks! - Lance
Thanks for such great information. I really appreciate the in-depth reply and I'm happy this is public so others can learn as well. I've been talking with three farmers on Facebook (poultry, cattle and hog - so I'm getting it all covered!) and have learned a lot from them as well. They all have an appreciation for my quest for knowledge as a consumer and, like you, have been kind and informative. :)
ReplyDeleteThat is a good point about "small" or "family" farms. Where does small end and large begin or family end and factory begin. What I personally do not want to support are Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). I have made that decision based on many things, from news articles and undercover investigations, to reviewing and understanding standards set forth by organizations who promote humane farming methods, such as Certified Humane, American Humane Certified and Animal Welfare Approved.
While I do trust that you and the other cattle farmer I've been talking to are wonderful with your cows (she has told me stories about when the heifers are calving and how she is there with them non-stop, ensuring their comfort and safety), I'm not able to come by and visit your farm and get to know you and understand your practices. I think it would make all of the difference in the world for concerned consumers to be able to see what you do first hand. Then maybe we wouldn't only be getting the "bad" news that is always so prevalent on TV. But since that is often unfeasible for whatever reason, we have to rely on those affiliations that require standards that we agree with.
Oh, Monsanto... where do I begin? All I can say is if you haven't thoroughly looked into this company that you are supporting (either financially by purchasing their seeds and herbicides or politically by supporting and promoting their "non-profit" front group), it is in your best interest to do so. To say they have made "some mistakes" is an understatement. They were ranked the #1 least ethical company in the world by a Swiss research firm (Covalence) earlier this year. Just do a little bit of research and keep an open mind. I'll post links below.
About the HSUS, we'll I've never felt deceived by them. But then again, I like to do my research before I dump money into a company. (Although I am not financially contributing to them right now because I've been laid-off for over a year.) I know that they are not a shelter organization. I understand that they lobby and I keep up on their issues. I'm not saying that I 100% agree with everything that they are doing, but I do feel that the good they do for causes that I believe in far outweigh the bad. Everyone should take their role as a consumer or supporter very seriously, whether it is for the HSUS, the CCF/HumaneWatch or a company like Monsanto. We owe it to ourselves to know what we are supporting, otherwise we are just pawns in a never-ending political game riddled with hidden agendas and corruption.
Thank you again for the dialogue and for allowing so much of your blog space to be taken up with this. I'll check out some of your other posts and subscribe to your blog just as soon as I figure out how to do that! :)
Links to explore:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto
http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm (check out the government connections listed on the right sidebar)
http://freedocumentaries.org/int.php?filmID=300 (click on "watch film now" for a free full-length documentary - streamed, not downloaded)
http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Monsanto-Roundup-Glyphosate.htm (A large database of articles, reports and information related to Monsanto)
Lance,
ReplyDeleteThanks for getting this great site going. Just found out about it from HumaneWatch's Facebook page.
We raise about 20 or so head, all on grass and I look after them twice a day at least. I keep learning from them every year - like they would rather stay out at night on a thick bed of hay or under some trees than go into a stuffy barn. They still are surrounded by mud, but it's their choice.
And we're moving our calving to March-Jun so the calves have an easier time of it. (Interestingly, that's the best time to sell them as yearlings the next year...)
I've been studying up on high-density managed grazing and this looks to be the best way to improve the soil as well as bringing costs down to almost nothing. The beef has more flavor and when you direct market through local processors, there's less stress on the cattle, so it stays tender.
Anyway, thanks again for such a great site.