(Martha Rosenberg)
Grandin is the author of Animals Make Us Human and Animals in Translation and is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University. She is known for interpreting how the world looks to animals because of the altered perspective caused by her autism. She is considered the Ralph Nader of the packing house.
Since she made these remarks, things have gotten worse for the world of factory farming. Inhumane practices have been exposed by activists, Congress is considering a measure that would threaten the existence of much current animal production, and large poultry farms face a lawsuit in Oklahoma courts, among other challenges.
In September the public saw videos of baby chicks ground up alive at Hy-Line hatchery and laying hens pancaked and mummified at a Dunkin Donut’s supplier. And how was your omelet?
The one-two punch inspired the egg industry to launch a damage control campaign called The Good Egg which toadies to kids by sponsoring a whole season of Sesame Street and an egg testimonial from the Cookie Monster. The egg is given a halo over its “head” and the campaign is leavened with charity appeals and Facebook and Twitter gambits.
And earlier this year HBO’s Death on a Family Farm brought “euthanasia” of sows by hanging them from forklifts on the Wiles Hog Farm in Creston, Ohio into America’s living rooms.
The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, pending in both the House and the Senate, threatens the very heart of factory farming and animal pharma—not just because animals eat less and grow faster on daily antibiotic regimens but because without them disease from filth and crowding might kill the animals. The FDA reports that U.S. hatcheries even inject antibiotics directly into eggs, rather than “by the approved method of administering the drug to day-old chicks.”
Without antibiotics, disease from filth and crowding might kill the animals.
Big Meat is so afraid of antibiotic-free farming it got its lapdog, the American Veterinary Medical Association, to dispute the Pew commission report the bill is based on, saying it romanticized small farmers while “vilifying” large operations and scared the public about antibiotics, which could “compromise” affordability. Not human or animal health, but affordability.
Meanwhile the poultry industry is sweating a suit brought by Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson that charges Tyson and Cargill and nine other companies with polluting the Illinois River watershed, hoping it won’t become, well, a watershed case.
Animal welfare propositions are popping up on state ballots like California Prop 2, which bans confining of farm animals and received more votes than Obama in November.
Nor are ag lobbyists doing cartwheels over Cass Sunstein, Obama’s new Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, given his previous animal welfare statements.
Still, no one in the ag community wanted to hear Grandin’s opinion, given in an interview in the August 10 agribusiness weekly Feedstuffs, that they are the PR problem.
Your operations need to be clean enough to show “to your wedding guests” Grandin says. You have done a “lousy, lousy, lousy job” at fixing the “bad stuff” and making sure the public knows it, she told industry executives.
Hog producers need to address the “growth promotants” and “leg conformation” problems which cause the immobility that has led to forklift euthanasia.
The industry’s most “uncaring producers” need to vacate their seats on “committees that establish welfare guidelines.”
And all of you need to start streaming videos from hen and hog houses, said Grandin, to show the public what really goes on.
Like our critics, who’ve caused us all the trouble, many gulped? Yes.
Martha Rosenberg is a writer and cartoonist living in Evanston, Illinois.
