Articles in this document:
Producers urged to speak out
Sending a Clear Signal to Animal Activists
Producers urged to speak out
Dairy, meat and poultry producers are urged to form food industry "force" before activists distort even more benefits of modern production practices.
By ROD SMITH
FEEDSTUFFS
March 26, 2007
FOOD producers who produce dairy, meat and poultry are facing a significant threat from animal activists opposed not only to certain production practices but to farm and food animal production, and although producers "are not losing, we are barely keeping up," according to Steve Kopperud.
Furthermore, he said if livestock and poultry producers continue on their current path, "we will lose, and it won't be a quiet death. A lot of you in this room won't be growing hogs."
This was the matter-of-fact, sober message Kopperud brought to pork producers at the National Pork Forum earlier this month -- a message that could have been brought to any meeting of producers or to any meeting of the segments of the food system.
Kopperud, senior vice president at Policy Directions Inc. in Washington, D.C., a food producer advocacy firm, noted that producers were challenged by animal activists in the 1980s and '90s but succeeded in putting aside attacks then because animal activism was a fractured, leaderless movement of some 150 groups.
Today, it has coalesced into a movement with direction and very well-funded strategies, he said, pointing specifically to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), and while PETA "does outrageous stuff," HSUS "is the real threat."
He said, "HSUS represents itself as a benign protector of cats and dogs that comes in behind PETA and says, 'We're not the crazies. We're the moderates.'"
However, the group's actions speak differently, he said, recalling how HSUS launched an anti-food animal production campaign in the early 1990s that has accelerated under new chief executive officer and president Wayne Pacelle, who has rapidly transformed HSUS into "the National Rifle Assn. of animal rights." The comparison is important, he said, because the rifle association is generally considered the most effective political action group in Washington.
He reported that HSUS has established a "C-4" group to do unlimited lobbying. (C-4s can lobby because they are not tax exempt, which means HSUS, with a budget that exceeds $125 million, now has a lobbying arm while not losing its own tax-exempt status.)
Kopperud said the animal rights agenda is clear: "no animal use for any purpose whatsoever. This must be understood. There is no middle ground."
Not only is the agenda clear, but it's aggressive and deliberate, he added, recalling that an animal activist recently told him, "I won't get the steak off your table in 10 years, but give me 15 years, and I will."
Selling producers
Kopperud suggested that producers are on a losing path because they have shied away from making sure consumers understand what's at stake in terms of an abundant and affordable dairy, meat and poultry supply.
Accordingly, producers are losing the perception war, he said, letting the animal activists position modern production as factory farming.
"We are far too focused on selling products, but if we don't start selling producers, we won't have products to sell," he said.
Producers need to make sure consumers know about how they care for their animals, how they care for the environment and how they produce safe food.
"It's the human factor -- men and women on the ground raising their animals and talking to consumers -- that will win the issue," Kopperud said. "If you're shy, you had better get over it."
Producers also need to begin putting together a coordinated, food industry-wide approach to the attacks on their farms, production practices and reputations, Kopperud said, bringing suppliers, packer/processors and restaurant and supermarket customers along with them to respond to the activist agenda. "No force can stop a coalesced food industry," he said.
He emphasized that his reference to producers means all producers -- beef, dairy, pork and poultry -- "going in there as one," rather than each production sector trying to be its own voice.
A unified food industry "can be very powerful," he said, "but if we are fragmented, we will get picked off one at a time."
Kopperud said this kind of unification can get producers out of the reactive mode and into proactive strategies. "We tend to wait for the barn to be on fire and say 'What do we do now?' We need to be getting our message to" consumers, policymakers and other important groups, he said.
Here's the point
IF approached by animal activists claiming that dairy cows, feedlot cattle, hogs and poultry are being mistreated in modern production systems, foodservice and dairy and meat case managers should question the activists' real agenda, which is the elimination of dairy, meat and poultry products from the food supply, i.e., vegetarianism, according to Feedstuffs FoodLink sources, including Steve Kopperud.
Managers should understand that producers care for their animals, employees and the communities in which they are located and that today's production systems are designed to provide the highest levels of animal welfare, environmental sustainability and workplace safety, as well as the most abundant, affordable and safest food supply in the world.
Where they do have questions -- and questions are welcome -- foodservice and supermarket managers should consult with suppliers and producers themselves in making decisions about the food products they put on menus, serve and sell. Normally, the activists' first goal is to decrease choice in a way that increases costs.
However, producers should make sure they are communicating the message about the benefits of modern agriculture to their customers and consumers. Producers need to sell who they are and what they do just as much as they sell what they produce.
This message can be carried to consumers, policymakers and others by establishing a food industry-wide organization -- producers, suppliers, packers/processors and restaurant and supermarket managers -- that speaks with one voice. A model would be pork producers' "Operation Main Street."
feedstuffs.com
Sending a Clear Signal to Animal Activists
By Pork news staff (Wednesday, March 28, 2007)
“The fact of the matter is that there are extremist individuals and groups that will go through great lengths to put you out of business,” said Ricardo Solano, Jr., in his keynote address at the Animal Agriculture Alliance’s Stakeholders Summit in Arlington, Va. “The recent passage of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act sends a clear signal to animal-rights extremists that if their activities cross the line, the federal government will not stand idly by.”
He explained that recent amendments to the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992 are designed explicitly for acts like intimidation, stalking and harassment that activists apply with the intend of shutting down farms, ranches, researchers and others who use and care for animals. While serving in the Terrorism Unit at the U.S. Attorney’s office, Solano successfully tried one of the early cases under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, which charged an animal-rights extremist group and six of its leaders with terrorizing an animal-testing laboratory as well as several pharmaceutical, financial and insurance companies that did business with it.
“First Amendment rights end when people cross the line from protest to threatening and intimidating others in the hope of getting them to stop their business or quit their jobs,” he said. Solano made special emphasis to ensure that the audience understood that AETA also explicitly illegalized what is often referred to as tertiary party targeting, in which extremists intimidate businesses such as banks or suppliers, into not doing business with the activists' real target.
“The acts committed by extremists groups to intimidate and cause fear in order to close down our nation’s farms and ranches is inexcusable,” said Kay Johnson, Alliance executive vice president. “Our data shows that acts of animal-rights terrorism on food-chain businesses in the United States increased in 2006. It is our sincere hope that federal law enforcement will use the power that AETA provides to bring these people who are so radical as to feel justified in threatening America’s farmers and ranchers, who are law-abiding, tax-paying, job-providing citizens.”
Source: Animal Agriculture Alliance
porkmag.com
Producers urged to speak out
Sending a Clear Signal to Animal Activists
Producers urged to speak out
Dairy, meat and poultry producers are urged to form food industry "force" before activists distort even more benefits of modern production practices.
By ROD SMITH
FEEDSTUFFS
March 26, 2007
FOOD producers who produce dairy, meat and poultry are facing a significant threat from animal activists opposed not only to certain production practices but to farm and food animal production, and although producers "are not losing, we are barely keeping up," according to Steve Kopperud.
Furthermore, he said if livestock and poultry producers continue on their current path, "we will lose, and it won't be a quiet death. A lot of you in this room won't be growing hogs."
This was the matter-of-fact, sober message Kopperud brought to pork producers at the National Pork Forum earlier this month -- a message that could have been brought to any meeting of producers or to any meeting of the segments of the food system.
Kopperud, senior vice president at Policy Directions Inc. in Washington, D.C., a food producer advocacy firm, noted that producers were challenged by animal activists in the 1980s and '90s but succeeded in putting aside attacks then because animal activism was a fractured, leaderless movement of some 150 groups.
Today, it has coalesced into a movement with direction and very well-funded strategies, he said, pointing specifically to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), and while PETA "does outrageous stuff," HSUS "is the real threat."
He said, "HSUS represents itself as a benign protector of cats and dogs that comes in behind PETA and says, 'We're not the crazies. We're the moderates.'"
However, the group's actions speak differently, he said, recalling how HSUS launched an anti-food animal production campaign in the early 1990s that has accelerated under new chief executive officer and president Wayne Pacelle, who has rapidly transformed HSUS into "the National Rifle Assn. of animal rights." The comparison is important, he said, because the rifle association is generally considered the most effective political action group in Washington.
He reported that HSUS has established a "C-4" group to do unlimited lobbying. (C-4s can lobby because they are not tax exempt, which means HSUS, with a budget that exceeds $125 million, now has a lobbying arm while not losing its own tax-exempt status.)
Kopperud said the animal rights agenda is clear: "no animal use for any purpose whatsoever. This must be understood. There is no middle ground."
Not only is the agenda clear, but it's aggressive and deliberate, he added, recalling that an animal activist recently told him, "I won't get the steak off your table in 10 years, but give me 15 years, and I will."
Selling producers
Kopperud suggested that producers are on a losing path because they have shied away from making sure consumers understand what's at stake in terms of an abundant and affordable dairy, meat and poultry supply.
Accordingly, producers are losing the perception war, he said, letting the animal activists position modern production as factory farming.
"We are far too focused on selling products, but if we don't start selling producers, we won't have products to sell," he said.
Producers need to make sure consumers know about how they care for their animals, how they care for the environment and how they produce safe food.
"It's the human factor -- men and women on the ground raising their animals and talking to consumers -- that will win the issue," Kopperud said. "If you're shy, you had better get over it."
Producers also need to begin putting together a coordinated, food industry-wide approach to the attacks on their farms, production practices and reputations, Kopperud said, bringing suppliers, packer/processors and restaurant and supermarket customers along with them to respond to the activist agenda. "No force can stop a coalesced food industry," he said.
He emphasized that his reference to producers means all producers -- beef, dairy, pork and poultry -- "going in there as one," rather than each production sector trying to be its own voice.
A unified food industry "can be very powerful," he said, "but if we are fragmented, we will get picked off one at a time."
Kopperud said this kind of unification can get producers out of the reactive mode and into proactive strategies. "We tend to wait for the barn to be on fire and say 'What do we do now?' We need to be getting our message to" consumers, policymakers and other important groups, he said.
Here's the point
IF approached by animal activists claiming that dairy cows, feedlot cattle, hogs and poultry are being mistreated in modern production systems, foodservice and dairy and meat case managers should question the activists' real agenda, which is the elimination of dairy, meat and poultry products from the food supply, i.e., vegetarianism, according to Feedstuffs FoodLink sources, including Steve Kopperud.
Managers should understand that producers care for their animals, employees and the communities in which they are located and that today's production systems are designed to provide the highest levels of animal welfare, environmental sustainability and workplace safety, as well as the most abundant, affordable and safest food supply in the world.
Where they do have questions -- and questions are welcome -- foodservice and supermarket managers should consult with suppliers and producers themselves in making decisions about the food products they put on menus, serve and sell. Normally, the activists' first goal is to decrease choice in a way that increases costs.
However, producers should make sure they are communicating the message about the benefits of modern agriculture to their customers and consumers. Producers need to sell who they are and what they do just as much as they sell what they produce.
This message can be carried to consumers, policymakers and others by establishing a food industry-wide organization -- producers, suppliers, packers/processors and restaurant and supermarket managers -- that speaks with one voice. A model would be pork producers' "Operation Main Street."
feedstuffs.com
Sending a Clear Signal to Animal Activists
By Pork news staff (Wednesday, March 28, 2007)
“The fact of the matter is that there are extremist individuals and groups that will go through great lengths to put you out of business,” said Ricardo Solano, Jr., in his keynote address at the Animal Agriculture Alliance’s Stakeholders Summit in Arlington, Va. “The recent passage of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act sends a clear signal to animal-rights extremists that if their activities cross the line, the federal government will not stand idly by.”
He explained that recent amendments to the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992 are designed explicitly for acts like intimidation, stalking and harassment that activists apply with the intend of shutting down farms, ranches, researchers and others who use and care for animals. While serving in the Terrorism Unit at the U.S. Attorney’s office, Solano successfully tried one of the early cases under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, which charged an animal-rights extremist group and six of its leaders with terrorizing an animal-testing laboratory as well as several pharmaceutical, financial and insurance companies that did business with it.
“First Amendment rights end when people cross the line from protest to threatening and intimidating others in the hope of getting them to stop their business or quit their jobs,” he said. Solano made special emphasis to ensure that the audience understood that AETA also explicitly illegalized what is often referred to as tertiary party targeting, in which extremists intimidate businesses such as banks or suppliers, into not doing business with the activists' real target.
“The acts committed by extremists groups to intimidate and cause fear in order to close down our nation’s farms and ranches is inexcusable,” said Kay Johnson, Alliance executive vice president. “Our data shows that acts of animal-rights terrorism on food-chain businesses in the United States increased in 2006. It is our sincere hope that federal law enforcement will use the power that AETA provides to bring these people who are so radical as to feel justified in threatening America’s farmers and ranchers, who are law-abiding, tax-paying, job-providing citizens.”
Source: Animal Agriculture Alliance
porkmag.com