So in some recent conversations with some of my animal rights friends, the topic of animals needing to exhibit natural behavior like a dust bath, perching, etc., got me really wondering about that whole topic.

How many of us, as humans, exhibit what we would call “natural behavior”? Isn’t what we do molded by the restraints that society places on us? A humorist whose name escapes me at the moment, suggested once that left to his own devices, a man would drink beer, chase women, and one more action that I won’t go into here. But society has placed on us limitations for what they feel are morally and socially acceptable for a thriving community. In the same way that we aren’t allowed more than one spouse, aren’t allowed to murder, rape and pillage, societal values shape our lives and actions.

So if we need to allow animals to exhibit their natural behaviors, what does that mean for agriculture, and even more, what does that mean for the livestock in our care? While I’m making a few assumptions here, most people, imho, (in my humble opinion), see what they want to see in regards to animal care and behavior. It’s easy to see when you look at the videos posted by many animal rescue groups. A 400+ pound sow is taped lying on a bed of straw being petted by her caretaker, and has never shown them any signs of being aggressive.  Put that same sow in a group setting and she can get mean. Real mean.

Cows out on pasture are all calmly eating and they wouldn’t hurt a flea, but they have a fairly complex hierarchy, one that involves pushing the more timid cows away from the choicest feeds. The list goes on. The animal rights crowd sees the warm and fuzzy, but overlooks the more brutal part of animal behavior.

So what does that mean for us in animal Ag? It means an uphill climb. How do we show people with no connection to the farm, this side of the farm? I really don’t know, but making videos that are all happy and sunshine, while important, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Some of that is going to require that we put ourselves out there, let people see what we do, and in a move I can’t believe I’m saying, ask some of these animals rights folks to work with us to further their understanding of animal agriculture. And if you want to talk about unnatural behavior, well there you go.

I’m most likely going to become the next poster child for wasting time on the internet. I admit it, I’m not proud of that admission, but it’s recently come to my attention that there are consequences way beyond the lost time, due to the internet.

Farkle, Mafia Wars(level 233, I need a larger family), Bubble Shooters and list the goes on and on and on. Gaming has never been so easy to get access to and easy for the world to get access to. And I’m all for having fun, but when a game fills one’s mind with unrealistic expectations………………

This brings me to the topic of Farmville. For those of you not familiar with Farmville, you can farm virtually, but without all of the nasty realities that real farming brings. Crops are planted only to be harvested 4 to 48 hours later. The great white combine (hail) never shows up, there’s always enough rain and trees produce fruit that gets harvested pretty regularly, you just pick it. You get 15 to 40 coins for your trouble. Milk a cow, 6 coins. Shear a sheep, 40 coins. Harvest a pig, 28 coins for the truffles they find. Friends can stop in and help with your farm, (they get coins for helping) and your crops are saved. A little expecting sow (you know it is expecting because of the pink bow), gets lost and you send a note so their owner can come to rescue them. So what’s not to love?

Farmers are worried that Farmville paints an unrealistic picture of life on the farm. Duh, ya think? I mean no crop insurance, no death loss, no drought or floods.  Just harvest what the animals produce, and harvest your crops, no losses, no mess.

Animal rights folks don’t like it because the animals aren’t killed. Now that would be a game! And they are currently working on exactly that sort of version. Their view is, if you wish to eat meat, harvest it yourself.  But in the end, they wouldn’t be happy if it succeeds. It would be made abusive and done to further their ends.

But I found some stats on Farmville. Pretty interesting

Average player is a 43 year old woman, who makes +$50,000 per year. The average farmer, 57, male, making $35,500 per year.

500 million acres farmed on Farmville, 930 million farmed in the US.

60% of Farmville farms are run by women, compared to 13% of real farms.

60 million Farmville players, 2 million people involved in farming activities.

18 million players play every day, on average, a player spend 70 minutes a week playing.  60 million users X 70 minutes divided by 60 for a total playing time of 70 million hours per week .

Does everyone love Farmville? I recently joined a group on Facebook called, “If you send me another Farmville request, I will kill your animals and burn your crops”. I kind of like that group myself.

But my point is this. If people don’t know a farmer, they will go with what they do know. They know the details aren’t right, but due in part to willful ignorance, they will believe it should be this way. We need to tell our story.

So I’m done with Farmville. Time to check out my homestead on Frontierville.

Checkout more stats at http://mashable.com/2010/09/10/farmville-vs-real-farms-infographic/

One of the leading groups that are trying to give modern Ag a black eye is the Humane Society of the United States.  Do they get it right? No, not always, but their reason for existence is different than a lot of people seem to think. The HSUS was started in the fifties in order to give a unified voice to exploited animals and birds. They more recently gave up the right of their name use to whatever shelter wishes to use it. Their goals are bigger and loftier than your local pet shelter. They consult animal shelters and have a couple of large animal sanctuaries, and are ready and willing to lead the charge for improving the plight of whatever animals are being used and abused. This all seems like a needed and necessary service that they are providing right? So why on earth would I have a problem with any of that?

Okay, and now I’m going to a place that is going to get me hated on by those who feel that us in Ag are hating an organization that we don’t know. But here goes.

IMHO (in my humble opinion) a lot of their causes are selected and chased by the emotion they can drum up, and that makes dollars flow. There I said it. Let the hating begin.

So why would I make such a statement? When I look at the causes that HSUS campaigns on there is a great trend, imho, to support and defend those that have at their core an animal that is warm fuzzy and universally loved. I mean, who doesn’t love horses, cows, little piglets or watching a chicken pecking at scratch in the yard. The causes that have followed these are horse slaughter, tail docking, gestation stalls, and battery cages. I haven’t seen them launch a campaign to reduce the number of rats killed in New York City, a cock roach freedom campaign in Orlando or a bat cave protection plan in New Mexico. Hmm.  The battles being waged are interesting in that the HSUS doesn’t have on staff anyone that is trained in animal behavior, but they appear to be excellent in judging human reactions and emotion. Now in their defense, they do pay some consulting fees, so ostensibly that is where they are going for input. But I don’t know that. In fact most of what I know about the HSUS is from fund raising and from the white sheets that they publish.

I’ve just recently became aware that HSUS is working with a really limited number of farmers to improve animal welfare. Interestingly enough, a couple of people involved in the Ag industry in my area got uninvited from one of their meetings. Call me crazy, but wouldn’t it make sense to try to help producers make those changes that they would like to see, educate producers, and tell the Ag community what they are about?

Maybe there’s more money in doing it the way they are doing it today.

But I’m not quite finished with this rant.

Now I go for the whole enchilada, time to tick off a whole other bunch of people. And these folks are heavily pro-ag. But I’m not getting any smarter. I told some teenagers this summer that I have but two goals in life. One, to learn something new each day.  Two, to live long enough to not die stupid. This many not be evidence of the later but here goes.

For those of you who don’t know who HumaneWatch is I’ll try to address that first.  Humanewatch is a group started by the group Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF).  HW was started with the purpose of calling attention to the fact that they felt the HSUS wasn’t living up to their name and simply using it as a fund raising tool to fight animal agriculture. They decided to call to attention the fact that the HSUS only uses a tiny portion of their funds to actually care for animals. Most of the funds raised are used for raising more funds or for lobbying efforts. All or none of which may be right. I’m not sure. But there is one thing I am pretty sure of.

These guys aren’t the ones we want telling our story. Are they good guys? I don’t know, but their reputation has preceded them into this battle. What I didn’t mention earlier was the fact that among the other battles these guys have waged is a battle against MADD (mothers against drunk drivers) at the request of the alcohol and tobacco industry. The goal of which was to argue that there was no need for a .08 blood alcohol level, and then subsequently one of them got picked up for a DUI. They’ve taken on the Center for Disease Control, Center for Science in the Public Interest, and the Physician Committee for Responsible Medicine. While each of these organizations might have an agenda in each of topics that they promoted, and they may have been in the wrong, however the fight has made the CCF incredibly unpopular is many circles. So much so, that they have become the focal point in the debate that they are trying to have with the HSUS. In a world where anyone can be source watched and discredited for affiliation with big Ag, or big business the debate in a large part has become all about them.

Are we so unpopular, so indefensible, that we have to resort to this sort of an attack dog organization to take on our perceived enemies? Good heavens, I hope not….

So why do I write an article that puts both of these groups in a negative light? For a couple reasons. Whenever we look for information, we need to be aware of the biases that the sources bring to the table. Most of the information that I quoted above, came from these two organizations or their partners talking about each other.  One of my pet peeves is every source getting run through a watchdog group called sourcewatch, and being immediately dismissed if there are any ties to big business. For most of the sources out there, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

But if those of us in Ag are showing every facet of what we do to people that aren’t involved, we are telling our own story. We need to take control of that message. Make it our message, and take it to the public, recognizing some of our biases, but trying to use something like defend, condemn, and debate.

Yep, we need to make the message our message.

One of the biggest problems both the Ag industry and the animal rights’ groups deal with is a lack of trust. They don’t think we have an ounce of compassion, and our side feels they will go to any lengths to make us look bad. Let’s face it, we don’t trust each other to do the right things, and that starts where our core beliefs are based from. But when neither side will give on things like the use of animals for food, what do we do?

Well, for starters, we can take a look at our own industry and critically think about the decisions that we make. Now I’ve discussed some of these before so I won’t go back over all of them, but NO NEEDLESS SUFFERING.  Enough said.

But the one that I’d like to address here is our trusting of the anti-ag folks. Unfortunately it isn’t always in our best interest to be all that trusting.   They say that when we deny access to facilities we must be hiding something.  We, as an industry, have been burned by radicals from the other side who fully feel the ends justify the means. I know we need to start a dialogue with these folks, but to what extent? Do you, like me, feel that you distrust them and while they might love animals, they don’t feel as warm and fuzzy about us in Ag?

I found a bit of an answer to that in an unlikely place, Popular Science, in their August edition, page 58. Within an article called “Science Confirms the Obvious “is a smaller article called”Environmentalists Can Be Smug Jerks”. It asked the question, if going green translates into “more redeeming behavior overall”. Subjects were exposed to green products, and were found to be more charitable, a halo effect. But when someone purchased one of these products, it seemed to be a license for hypocrisy. After a purchase they were more likely to lie or steal.  It would seem that buying green gives people a sense of moral capital (aka a superiority complex).  Does this kind of attitude sound familiar?  I touched a bit on this in the blog “who cares”.

Now admittedly I’m making the stretch to apply this same thinking to animal rights.  But it’s a parallel that looks to me, to fit. But why the attitude? In a recent  discussion with an animal rescue proponent, I got put down, talked down to and more or less beat up for supporting Ag, even though they had no idea where I stood on any ag issue. I know they say they love animals, but they don’t always treat their fellow man very well. We shouldn’t be making the same mistake. Treat them with the respect that all people deserve, but cover ourselves where the trust issue is concerned.