Please Be Aware

By Dennis Sun

In this region of the country, we don’t have a lot of interaction with animal activists, which is good. However, we need to realize they are out there, they have money, and they want rid of animal agriculture.

Consumers, as a whole, like their meat, but they also want to know where it came from, where it was processed and if it was treated humanely. As livestock producers, we should be OK with this, as long as they remain our consumers. 

As long as consumers are reasonable, we’re alright with it. What we don’t like is an animal activist telling us what we should do. We don’t want to listen to them, especially since they don’t even eat meat. They just want us out of business, and they don’t want anyone eating the products we raise.

I’m not sure if they like animals or not, they just want us out of business. So just be aware, they’re out there, and they are not our friends.

These activists promote plant-based foods and want animals to have names and rights, just like humans. Look what Walt Disney started.

Reading an article by Hannah Thompson-Weeman recently made me more aware of how organized they really are. 

Thompson-Weeman talked on a virtual conference held last September called the 2020 Taking Action for Animals Conference. The conference is hosted every other year by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), a group that wants to be our friend, but a group with a lot of dollars who want us out of business.  

As Thompson-Weeman says, “HSUS is a long-standing adversary of animal agriculture, with a history of pushing for both legislation and restaurant/retail/food service sourcing policies, which impacts our ability to efficiently raise animals for food. HSUS intentionally attempts to publicly position itself as focused on animal welfare or only opposed to ‘factory farming,’ though several of its top staff members formerly worked at more extreme organizations and have made their opposition to consuming animal products clear.”

She went on to say, “HSUS efforts to promote plant-based eating within the culinary space, with speakers claiming they have led more than 530 culinary events and trained 11,000 chefs and ‘worked directly with 641 programs to actively increase plant-based’ in the very near future. Ultimately, conference attendees were urged to get involved in the legislative process at the local level and beyond in order to help HSUS pass what it deems to be ‘animal friendly’ legislation.”

Thompson-Weeman wrote another article on how animal rights activists are targeting 4-H and FFA at county and state fairs to get attention for their message against animal agriculture. They plan to be disruptive and get the attention of the press. 

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are also involved in this movement. The activists believe 4-H and FFA, along with fairs and livestock auctions, are teaching young people to exchange their compassion for money.

The need of awareness of these groups, even in the low population regions, is huge. We shouldn’t let them and their money intimidate us, for we are not in the wrong. Just be aware.

We’re fortunate to have good checkoffs.