Join the Battle. Enter the fray. Get involved.

Megan is, like most young people today, very comfortable with technology. She blogs on several locations, and is involved several other social networking sites. Much of this battle is going to be fought online, and us old folks are showing up late to the party. But like I told someone a few years back, just because I’m a field rep for QLF does not mean I’m unable to learn something new.

Today’s social media is a crazy place that moves at the speed of light. Literally. FIber Optics, high speed connections,  blackberrys,  wireless. We are figuring out how to use this stuff for work, and our kids would have trouble functioning without it.

There are groups on the internet strictly for the exchange of ideas regarding groups like PETA, HSUS, even the Animal Liberation Front. Finding these groups can be a little trial and error, especially since some of the animal welfare groups, as well as some of the groups on the ag side, don’t always allow discenting views.  You can find them on facebook, twitter, etc.  The discussions can get a bit frustrating at times because the information isn’t always correct, anywhere from slightly to incredibly biased (both ways), and some folks aren’t always very nice. But the exchange can be addicting, fascinating and thought provoking.

So like I asked in the opening line, “want to join the fray?”.  Come on in, the water is fine, full of sharks maybe, but pretty fine. I’ve been joining in a few of the conversations, and while fun, sometimes it can get a little discouraging.

But for those of you still interested, here are a few of my tips.

Be respectful. While the temptation to call someone any idiot is always there, ( and you may want to)the anonymity of the internet never gives anyone the right to be disrespectful. This is especially true when our comments will be taken as a representation of the industry.

Have your facts ready and correct. Some sources come with biases, be aware of that and be ready give the facts that back your position. We need to be right as well as passionate, to counter the fact that we don’t really care about animals.

Understand that the phrase “Big Ag”, while vilified roundly, has come to mean most of us. We aren’t immune to what they are saying.

Be confident in the act that the practices we use on our farms are in fact treating animals with respect. Just because someone disagrees, it does not make us wrong.

Have fun. In the middle of Megan and my conservation, I got an application to join Peta and fill out a survey. LOL. (Laugh Out Loud) I asked Megan how she managed that. She said she didn’t, but I’m not sure she didn’t have a hand in it somehow.  I really should have joined.

One of the comments that I made to Megan that seemed to surprise her, was the fact that animal agriculture is being driven today by people who have never been on a farm. Her response went along the lines of,” How do we drive the care of animals?”  Megan has been upfront about being a vegetarian, and willing to be vocal about it, but my choice to eat meat was my choice. Not everyone is as accepting of our choice of eating meat or our given industry. We absolutely can expect them to get more vocal, more active and to refine their message.

And what will be their message? They obliviously care more than we do. Expect them to claim the high moral ground, and to drive a wedge between us in the industry about what animal care really means. The later has been happening for a number of years with groups like the I-29er’s for Quality of Life, and several groups that claim sustainable Ag is the only future. Farms that have grown larger to improve our quality of life as well as our efficiency are being vilified, by people in the industry as well as by the activist outside of Ag. When I started in the feed business, a dairy with 120 cows, 250 sows, or 1000 cattle was considered big. Not today. Nostalgia is wonderful but it will not feed an exploding population.

There is a great quote that really applies here, and I wish I knew where it originated. “Only a well fed person questions where their food comes from.” When food and affluence are plentiful, many people feel the need for a cause. In this country we have both, and the result is a cause that some are throwing themselves at with a religious fervor. I’ve heard said that more people have died as a result of religious disagreements than in the two world wars. After seeing some of the stuff online about animal rights, I can’t help but believe this to apply to our battle as well.

So who really cares for our animals? We do. There should never be any question left in anyone’s mind about that fact. We need to work on the PR part of that equation, and social media will be a part of that.

There are few web sites that are doing a great job of telling the Ag story and showing the world who really cares for the animals.

Amanda Nolz writes a blog for Beef Daily. Lots of great information and insights into agriculture.

Advocates for Agriculture, started by Troy and Stacy Hadrick, from western South Dakota

A Real Farm Girl. A YouTube video diary of a young lady from South Dakota, as she lives and works a on her family’s farm.   http://www.youtube.com/user/therealfarmgirl

Feedstuffs Foodlink. A venture of Feedstuffs magazine.

So are we as tough to defend as the bunch of whack jobs that we get portrayed as? Sometimes we might, and today I find that disheartening.   We get painted into corners by people who wish us gone from the planet, that’s rough enough, but what really is their agenda? In some cases it is tough to tell. But never fear, they care about animals.

But do they understand animals?

Mike Rowe, Dirty Jobs Mike Roe, recently posted a video on YouTube about questioning what you’ve been told. He tells of a job, early on in the show, where he needed to castrate a lamb. With his teeth. It went against everything that he’d been told by the HSUS, PETA and the SPCA, but in fact, he discovered it was the least painful and most humane way to do the job. The video on YouTube is pretty entertaining, and well as educational. A link is provided below. Thanks Ann.

But what other things might Ag opposition be getting wrong. Let’s talk about sow gestation crates for a bit. HSUS vilifies factory farms for the practice, and even uses it in their fund raising video. So have we ever discussed why we do it? Well there are several reasons, and to really understand them you need to spend time with sows. Has anyone fed sows in a group setting? I did in my younger days, and inevitably the big sows got bigger, and the small ones went hungry. The fact that they have been reported to have the intelligence of a three year old, didn’t make them any nicer to each other. In fact they tended to be brutal. Individual crates allow keepers to feed them without fear of them injuring themselves or each other. Ever try to handle a 400 pound sow? Safety for the people handling them is important as well. But the opposition looks at them through human eyes and values and says we are wrong.

Have you heard about the animals being cut up while still alive at the processing plant? Or watched the videos? Wonder why that happens? Well, as the story was told to me some years ago, a group of animal rights activists got the hog industry to use an electrical stun on hogs. Not enough to kill them but enough to render them unconscious. In fact, only enough so that they would revive after just a few minutes. If not perfectly placed, this amount would indeed allow an animal to revive too soon. But the industry can’t use enough to do the job right every time, so here we are.

Chickens and turkeys are killed by having their heads removed. No pain killers are used because the administration would hurt more than the act that causes of their death. But because they aren’t part of the Humane Slaughter Act, something must be wrong with it. Did you know that the guillotine was developed by the French as a painless method of execution? At least they got that right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-udsIV4Hmc

My friend Megan believes animals have the same right to a long life that we do. She understands the circle of life, but believes that as people we have options that the rest of nature doesn’t.  A lion doesn’t have a choice in whether or not to take the life of an animal to eat, but we do. She has made the choice not to.

I respect her right to make that choice. Totally respect it. And I can appreciate how someone could come to that conclusion, but it’s a point that we disagree on. I don’t agree that people and animals were created as equals, or that over time, we’ve evolved into equals.  And I don’t think any less of Megan for her stand on this subject. That’s probably the thing I’ve most come away with through this whole discussion. This mutual respect for opposing ideas and we seem to come across less and less these days.

As a part of learning more about social networking, via places like facebook, twitter, wordpress, etc, I’ve found a lot of intolerance on both side of the animal debate. And some of the folks on our side of the debate scare me easily as much as the people on the fringe of the other side. It is easy to write off the extreme animal right faction when they go right to the “stupid redneck hick” putdowns, but we can easily miss a lot of really neat people but ignoring this whole group because of the wack jobs.

But to the question of  souls. I asked Megan if she thought animals had souls. Her answer was yes, they have souls, as well as the ability to think, feel pain or express emotions. “Just because animals aren’t as intelligent as humans , does not mean that they are soulless. So if a soul is defined by the presence of life love, and emotions, which is as well as I can define it, then yes, animals most certainly have souls.”

I’m not sure how to argue with that point. But I know it made me think. It even made me do a little research that surprised me a little bit. I had always (mistakenly) thought death and the eating of animals happened right after Adam and Eve got kicked out of the Garden of Eden. I was off by a couple of generations. Nine generations I think. The permission to use animals as food happens curiously enough, when Noah leaves the ark. Not what I thought, but pretty interesting.  Genesis 9:3,”Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, now I give you everything.” So eating meat wasn’t a direct result of the fall. Hmmmm…….

One of the cool things about the conversation that Megan and I have been having, is we haven’t tried to “fix” each other. Our ideas and opinions have been respected, questioned, supported and questioned again. And I think I can speak for Megan when I say we’ve both learned a few things.