I was reading last week that H$U$ filed a complaint with the FTC against Rose Acre Farms (our great egg producer here in Indiana). It seems that H$U$ thinks that Rose Acre Farms is giving misleading claims about conditions at some of their farms. Rose Acres  K.Y. Hendrix says

“They’re claiming we falsely advertise on our website, but it boils down to this — we take care of our animals and our animals are performing to standards,” Hendrix said. “If we weren’t taking care of our chickens, our chickens wouldn’t be taking care of us.”

Of all the folks in the world who should not be talking about misleading statements is the worlds largest Animals Rights group. We often see references to how little the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) spends on shelters – less than 1/2 of 1% (.45% to be exact) of their annual budget.

HSUS finance records show that after you’ve made that [$19] monthly donation for a year, a grand total of $1.03 will reach a pet shelter.

Since math is not my strong suit, I got out my calculator:

$19/month X 12 months = $228

.45% of $228 = $1.03

How different the HSUS commercials would appear if they said “With your gift of just $19 a month, we’ll make sure almost 9 cents of that donation reaches a shelter somewhere every month…” It does seem to me that H$U$ makes many misleading statements in their advertising. Aprroximately 71% of the United States populace believes that H$U$ is an umbrella organization for our local shelters. Nothing could be farther from the truth,

If you really want to help Stop Cruelty to Animals in Indiana donate to your local Dog Adoption Shelter or a reputable Indiana Dog Rescue. Maybe if we all started to do that we wouldn't have to worry about being mislead anymore by the crazies at H$U$.

Oh, and before I forget "Where do we go to complain about Wayne and the H$U$ and their misleading statements?" Because in this particular case Wayne does need to get a little "egg" on his face.

Now the Animals Rights folks at HSUS are taking cues from their old friends at PETA.

The animal advocates groups’ queries could resonate with the increased scrutiny of food manufacturing processes.

 

But some question whether the activist groups’ tactics throw their credibility into question.

 

PETA's extreme practices are well-documented. They garnered extra press last August for distributing "Unhappy Meals" to children outside of a dozen or so McDonald's restaurants. The blood-stained meals included a sharp-toothed, knife-wielding version of Ronald McDonald and pictures of cut up chickens, among other things.

 

And there's a questionable continuum between PETA and HSUS. Matthew Prescott was head of corporate affairs at PETA before he joined HSUS as corporate outreach director for its Factory Farming Campaign in April 2009.

Prescott helped spearhead shareholder meeting interventions at PETA, and is now trying to gain more traction with the tactic under The Humane Society's less volatile reputation.

ICAW has repeatedly warned the good citizens of Indiana about the REAL agenda of HSUS "Animal Agriculture" and "Factory Farming". Now we wonder will Luca Pizza or Bazbeaux Pizza or Union Jacks be on the list for the local HSUS Directors. Please stop believing this all can not be true. This is the true reality of the Animals Rights movement.

As we always tell you keep in touch with your Indiana Legislators and let them know how you feel about all of this. As for us we are going to keep right on eating that great pizza from around our state.

On April 13th and 14th in Fort Wayne Indiana the Indiana Milk Professionals held their annual Indiana Milk Quality Conference. Mike Baumgarner from Ohio Farm Bureau was a featured speaker. We would like to quote Mike from his talk.

"Agriculture makes up less than 2 percent of the population," Mike Bumgarner, a vice president with Ohio Farm Bureau, told conference attendees. "You've got people who don't really understand production agriculture."

But the good news?

"Most consumers trust farmers," he said.

Bumgarner said people are influenced in their attitudes toward animals rights by several factors, which include culture, economics, religious and philosophical beliefs, scientific knowledge and aesthetics.

In addition, he said that dollar figures trump animals rights. For example, there is a cost associated with an animal being able to spread its wings or limbs and not be confined for life.

Many of the attitudes prevalent in the animals rights movement, Bumgarner said, are rooted in the ways Americans treat their pets.

"We love our pets!" he said, but there can be trouble when Americans equate pets with farm animals.

People think that "A dog is a cow and a cat is a pig," he said."

"As producers, we have taken care of animals for generations," he said. "But we don't get this word out."

Bumgarner urged farmers to go home and watch "Food, Inc.," a movie that portrays what its producers see as problems with modern agriculture. Many farmers feel vilified by the movie.

"Farming is being blamed for every problem known to mankind," he said.

Bumgarner concluded his presentation by claiming that the Humane Society of the United States, a prominent animals rights group, uses the tactic of dividing and conquering to influence policy. Hence, he told agriculture that it has to present a united front against such groups. He credits unity as a key factor in Ohio not giving in to HSUS.

We also would like to quote Wes Jamison, a public relations consultant and professor at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Wes spoke at the Indiana Milk Quality Conference as well.
Please pay careful attention to what he had to say.

"You produce for a consuming society that cannot and will not understand what you say," he told farmers. "People don't care about the farmers' story."

Jamison said that HSUS "chooses language that consumers will resonate with," and that it utilizes a strategy of "moral coalition building."

"It has nothing to do with science and economics," said Jamison. "The idea is to moralize the issues."

Jamison said that HSUS has a theologian on its staff, and it uses the appeal of religion to get its word out.

"It urges pastors to preach against animal agriculture," he said.

He even showed a videoclip of Houston megachurch pastor and televangelist Joel Osteen urging his parishioners and viewers not to eat pork, as it is "unclean."

Jamison outlined the core messages that HSUS uses, which include the individual worth of the animal, animal suffering, compassion, guilt and responsibility.

He told his audience that in actuality, animals are a source of protein. In other countries, people eat dog, and the reason why this is not done in the United States is due to cultural norms.

"There are different rules for pets and livestock," Jamison said. "Hypocrisy is approved."

Wes is a great guy but please know that he is facing lawsuits brought by HSUS the factory fundraisers of the Animals Rights groups.

You will notice an almost, I repeat almost defeated attitude by Wes. HSUS will not give up.

We want to quote Gary Haynes from the Indiana Board of Animal Health as well. Gary said:

"Indiana lawmakers have addressed the animal rights issue in recent years.

The Indiana General Assembly passed House Bill 1468 in 2009, which addresses cruelty of domestic animals. In 2010, the General Assembly passed House Bill 1099, which adopted rules for taking care of livestock and poultry."

Haynes warned that HSUS may try to circumvent such state laws, and appeal their case at the federal level with the knowledge that federal laws will trump state laws.

Be proud of what your Indiana Legislators have done the last two years but be very aware and very vigilant about the fact that this battle for our very existence is not over. Please stay in contact with all of YOUR legislators and let them know where YOU stand on these issues. If you don't, you and all of the members of the Indiana Council for Animal Welfare may not be able to eat those great Pork Tenderloins and Rib Eyes that we all so dearly love. No eggs, no milk or cheese, no fried chicken from your favorite Indiana restaurant.

We don't know about you but we would miss that very much.
 

 

 

ICAW wondered how long it would take to start seeing the fingerprints of Cass Sunstein on regulations or documents from any of the agencies under the OIRA! Please remember Mr. Sunstein is a huge Animals Rights fellow. Cass Sunstein… is an ‘animals rights’ attorney who acts on behalf of animals. “Are you an animal with a ‘beef’ against humans? You have the right to sue…” published in prevarication.net. If you don't believe that, please read a paper published in the Social Science Research Network by Mr. Sunstein titled "The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer".

  You probably are wondering at this point why we bring all of this up. We were reading an article in Greenversations (The Official Blog Of The U.S Evironmental Protection Agency) "Living Without Meat" About the author: Nicole Reising is an intern at the Office of Children’s Health Protection. She is a sophomore studying non-profit management at Indiana University. Wow, a sophmore in one of our great Indiana colleges is officially writing on a U.S government blog about why we should not eat meat.

We truly wonder how this could have ever come about? Is the EPA now going to jump in the whole Factory Farming issue? We wonder if Ms. Reising ever gave thought to all of the farmers she potentially wants to put out of business? The real question is, "Would this type of article ever been published prior to Mr. Sunsteins tenure?" The editor of the blog does qualify that the opinions expressed on the blog are those of the authors.

But once again think about it, would this have been possible prior to Mr. Sunstein? We know that we here at the Indiana Council for Animal Welfare don't like to see our tax money spent this way! What do you think about it?

Well we are sure that our favorite Animals Rights factory fundraising group H$u$ is not going to be happy. On April 9th 2010 the McDonalds Board of Directors has recommended that shareholders vote "NO" against a proposal to require that 5 percent of the eggs purchased for the chain’s restaurants in the United States be the cage-free variety.Last year McDonald’s joined the Coalition for Sustainable Egg Supply, which is organizing a commercial-scale study led by Michigan State University and the University of California, Davis, to examine different housing options for egg-laying hens.

We are sure that our friends at Rose Acre Farms were glad to hear this news. We at ICAW believe the wisest thing anyone has done recently is to put their foot down and say "Let the Scientists tell us what to do." Those on the Animals Rights front have to be quite upset about this latest turn of events.

By the way read the home page of Rose Acre Farms website and you will see an article about them donating over "ONE MILLION" eggs to churches and foodbanks. Who on the other side of the fence is caring so well. So the next time you say to Rose Acre Farms Stop Cruelty to Animals please make sure and tell H$U$ to stop the cruelty to humans!!

Well Mr. Pacelle's at it again! H$U$ the United States largest Factory Fundraiser (they want to call it Factory Farming so let's call them how we see it) just can not seem to grasp the idea that they are not in control. H$U$ called a meeting at the downtown Marriott in Des Moine, Iowa Wednesday April 7,2010 to start their march towards trying to get the Iowa legislature to embrace a Prop. 2 style of bill for Iowans. Wayne is well on his way to running all of the farmers out of California, now he and his cronies at H$U$ want to do it in Iowa.

One of the most interesting aspects of this meeting was it was a closed door "Expose" on the poultry business in Iowa. How can you have a meeting of this magnitude and lock out all of the journalists? You can read the news article for yourself to validate the last point. Evidently Mr. Pacelle just can't stand it when someone just might have something to say back to him when he does his sneak attacks.

Iowa is our countries largest egg laying state which produces approximately 1.25 Billion eggs a month. Interesting number that 1.25 Billion, if the United States would of needed to inoculate our whole population with the H1N1 vaccine Iowa could have been able to produce the necessary amount of eggs to get the vaccine in "One Month" (approximately 3 eggs per vaccine).  Mr. Pacelle always tells us how much he is worried about the animals but it doesn't seem he is to worried about us.

In the second half of the title of this article it says "and aren't we glad". Why we are so glad is the fact that our friends from Rose Acre Farms in Seymour, Indiana who own some of the farms in question were there to try and rebutt Mr. Pacelle's allegations, but were not even allowed in the door. We have come to know the folks at Rose Acre Farms and know them to be upstanding, forthright Hoosiers. Maybe Mr. Pacelle did not want to let them in because Indiana has already helped to put a stop to this foolishness about supposed Factory Farming when the Indiana legislature overwhelmingly passed into law this year HB1099 the Standards for Livestock and Poultry Care act.

Mr. Pacelle says he wants to Stop Cruelty to Animals in regards to poultry, yet he doesn't seem to want to read anything about the results of cage-free egg laying. When are these animals rights folks at the factory fund raising H$US going to be honest with our country and just come out and tell us that they want us all to be vegans whether "We" want to or not. Hopefully the executives of Rose Acre Farms get the opportunity to talk to Mr. Pacelle face to face. Here at the Indiana Council for Animal Welfare we certainly hope so. Yet, it won't surprise us if it doesn't happen because Mr. Pacelle just might walk away with a little "EGG" on his face.

A proposal in the U.S. House would take production agriculture standards out of the hands of professionals and turn them over to bureaucrats. That’s what I find worrisome about new animal welfare legislation by two U.S. representatives California. The Bill is HR 4733 The Prevention of Farm Cruelty Act. The Bill was introduced earlier this month by Reps. Diane Watson and Elton Gallegly, both from California. If passed, the bill would prohibit the government from purchasing animal products that are not "humanely" produced for school lunch and other federal programs.

So who defines "Humane?" That's the real problem! the bill would mandate arbitrary humane animal production standards. By arbitrary, we mean standards developed without input from veterinarians or animal producers. Now we (all of us) have real problems. The legislation—which resembles doctrine espoused by the animals rights activists of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and other animals rights groups—is based on the presumption that farm animals are not routinely treated humanely. In Indiana when we were accused by the animals rights folks of being the "Bad Guys" we litterally got HB 1099 passed unanimously in both houses of the legislature and signed into law.

As a defense, agriculture points to painstaking animal welfare standards—proper veterinary care, fresh water, clean animal feed, etc. from birth to harvest—which have been developed through years of research by scientists and producers for every species of livestock. Those standards by and large have been developed to maintain healthy animals. And we can argue until the cows come home that healthy livestock are happy livestock. But reactive thinking isn’t cutting it anymore. The industry needs to get get ahead of this issue.

We are never going to satisfy PETA and HSUS, and shouldn’t even try. But we can throw a barrier between them and the American consumer. We think "ethical standards of care" for livestock is the answer? We especially think that your local farmer,veterinarian and locall researchers should set those standards. Start running through your mind some of the people that you see or hear everyday in national news who know absolutely nothing about these issues and telling us here in Indiana "We know better than you" how to stop cruelty to animals and what you should eat.

As for us here at the Indiana Council for Animal Welfare we keep having faith in our local farmers and the Indiana Board of Animal Health (BOAH) under the guidance of Dr. Bret Marsh to set the care standards for Indiana livestock. As for the federal level, we still trust the USDA as well.

Please contact your Congressman or Woman and US Senators and let them know what you really think before it's too late!!

After another busy legislative session, we at ICAW have had a chance to take a breath and form some ideas for the upcoming elections and future legislative sessions. When HB1258 died in committee and HB1099 passed resoundingly and becomes law January 1, 2011. ICAW truly understood that this battle with the Animals Rights folks is far from over. Will it be someone new going after Indiana Dog Breeders or someone else with some kind of different attack on quote "Factory Farming"?

We have truly realized we can not sit back and think that nothing else will happen. Too many other states around us are going through their own battle for survival when it comes to pet ownership or the myriad of other livestock issues. Pay attention to Ohio, it could of been Indiana.  There is much talk that the Animals Rights folks are going straight to the top and are going to force their agenda even more at the Federal level.

HSUS has what they call their "Humane Scorecard". Starting this year we at ICAW are going to create our own scorecard for Indiana elected officials. It truly is time to let the elected officials of our great state of Indiana know that there is another side of this equation and always will be. We need to let everyone of them know at the ballot box how we feel about past voting records for or against.

We will be publishing a document in the near future featuring a simple thumbs up or thumbs down opinion of our elected officials. We are compiling some ideas for future legislation as well. We whole heartedly ask for your input on both of these topics. Please e-mail us at info@icaw.org with any of your thoughts or ideas about these issues.

We want to take a moment and thank all of the people who thought they had no voice in this battle for our rights, for never giving up. Remember, all of us together can and will Stop Cruelty to Animals and protect our own human rights as well.

Well they are at it again says American Farm Bureau policy analyst Kelli Ludlum. who warned Farm Bureau Leaders in Washington of an animal care agenda that potentially ties into agricultural policy, food policy, and even obesity. Ludlum warned.

"There are a number of animal rights groups out there that really seek to limit producers ability to be proper stewards of their livestock," Ludlum told FarmWeek. "Fighting those off at both the federal and state levels is going to be something were going to continue to deal with for some time to come."

ICAW has talked with so many farmers in Indiana about the Animals Rights issues that seem to be permeating our state these past years. How can so many people in our great state just not realize where their food comes from "Farmers." When you start talking to the average, everyday consumer they really do not want to know where that package of pork chops came from or how did that bucket of chicken come about at the local fast food restaurant. The Indiana Council for Animal Welfare does, it comes from our great farmers.

Moving from controlled indoor production, raises concerns about the producers environmental compliance at a time of already heavy regulation, Leaders warned Capitol Hill lawmakers. Illinois farmer Edwin Livengood stressed "we already raise our animals humanely," and maintained that if animals are forced outdoors, "our production is going to go way down" and ultimately, "costs are going to go up."

Our Indiana farmers are so proud of their jobs, history and necessity for our survival we should be humbled by their example. All of our farmers want to Stop Cruelty to Animals and fight to preserve their heritage. So the next time you are sitting down and eating, a chicken sandwich or turkey dinner at Thanksgiving, a hamburger at the neighborhood cookout or a T-bone steak or even a ham dinner at Easter dinner,  because it is a afforadable, just remember without that farmer what would you do then! So today we ask you the next time you see an Indiana Farmer "HUG EM".

Whenever the Animals Rights folks start suing someone we have always wondered who actually paid for those lawsuits. We are going to point out some interesting information for you to think about.The 1980 Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) was enacted to help the little guy, not to fund the big guy. Now it seems that is really not the case. When Congress passed EAJA in 1980, it was supposed to "help individuals, small businesses and nonprofits with limited means seek judicial redress against the federal government".

We would like to quote Rep. Rob Bishop (Utah) one of the sponsors of H.R. 4717 a bill to bring oversight and full public disclosure of payments made under the 1980 Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), "For too long, taxpayers have unwittingly served as the financiers of the environmental litigation industry. Without improved oversight, EAJA will continue to be abused by organizations that have made a cottage industry out of suing the federal government in an effort to advance their radical political agendas".

The bill, H.R. 4717, would "reinstate and consolidate tracking and reporting requirements under the Department of Justice and would require DOJ to publish an online, searchable database of EAJA payments that is open to the public. It would also authorize an audit of the last 15 years when EAJA operated with absolutely no oversight," We can't wait to see the hurt and anguish that the Animals Rights folks will display if and when this bill should get passed. Millions of tax dollars (37 Million Dollars) have gone to big groups like Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and The Humane Society of the United States.The Indiana Council for Animal Welfare will be paying close attention to the status of this bill as it progresses through its journey into being signed into law for all of us the tax paying citizens of Indiana and this great country.

"Because the government has neglected to provide oversight, EAJA has become a breeding ground for abuse by radical environmental groups," NCBA president Steve Foglesong said in a statement. "The fact that millions of dollars in taxpayer funds have been awarded with virtually no accounting of who received the payments is unacceptable."

So the next time you eat a great Indiana steak from an Indiana farmer pray that no one from the Animals Rights side sues to take that privilege from you, because YOUR tax dollars just might be helping them to take that privilege from you!

We were so glad to see Anthony Rust co-owner of Rose Acre Farms in Seymour, Indiana write an editorial in the Indiana Prairie Farmer about HSUS. Mr. Rust points out many problems with the HSUS agenda. ICAW is so proud of all the farmers speaking up about HSUS trying to put them out of business over "Factory Farming" issues. Rose Acre Farms to our knowledge is the largest poultry operation in Indiana.

We always find it amazing how out of state Animals Rights folks seem to know how we here in Indiana should attend to our own business. Mr. Rust even talks about different ideas for raising their chickens. He even mentions about trying to go cage free again and what the results were and I quote:

"We tried it ourselves again just to be sure. We found the same thing. We lost twice as many chickens in a loose housing system compared to our normal cage system. Turning chickens loose results in more dead chickens."

Mr. Rust goes on to talk about the Enhanced Cage System but it seems he is resigned to the fact that HSUS would never agree to it. We have to surmise that compromise does not seem to be in the vocabulary of the animals rights folks. What scientific evidence does HSUS have that none of these farmers seem to have. We applaud Mr. Rust for speaking out and are proud to join him in this battle for our rights.

One of our constituents in Indiana are the Indiana Pet Stores. Rep. Linda Lawson and Rep. John Barnes Bill HB 1258 will have a hearing in room 156C at the statehouse today at 3:30 PM. Please read the following message and please help us to help you protect our rights.


There will be a hearing on HB1258 (The Pet Store Bill) tomorrow @ 3:30PM in 156C at the Statehouse. We need people to call and attend the hearing..

If you have a minute, please call (prior to 1 p.m. tomorrow, Wednesday 1/20) the following legislators and politely say:

 

"Hello, I would like to encourage Rep __________________ to not vote in favor of House Bill 1258, Representative Lawson'sand Representative Barnes pet store and animal fighting bill. Thank You."

 

House Courts & Criminal Code Committee:

Chair - Rep Pierce - 317-232-9647

Rep Dvorak - 317-234-9290

Rep Dembowski - 317-232-9676

Rep Porter - 317-232-9634

Rep Smith - 317-234-9016

Rep Tincher - 317-232-9999

Rep Koch - 317-232-9793

Rep Clements - 317-234-3827

Rep Foley - 317-232-9815

Rep Steuerwald - 317-232-9677

Speaker of The House Pat Bauer   Phone: 1-800-382-9842  E-Mail: h6@in.gov

Representative Linda Lawson    Phone: !-800-382-9842  E-Mail  h1@in.gov

Representative John Barnes      Phone: 1-800-382-9842  E-Mail  h89@in.gov

Please call, e-mail and write all of the above to express your displeasure with HB1258. Whether youare a Commercial Dog Breeder or a Indiana Dog Rescue or have even been accused of being in Factory Farming. We are all in this together and the assaults just keep coming. Remember YOU might be next.

  Who would have ever thought we would have a "Factory Farming" issue in Indianapolis. Ingrid Newkirk of PETA is up to her old tricks again. Indianapolis has signed an agreement with Kentucky Fried Chicken to put their logo on Indianapolis fire extinguishers. PETA has found out about this and is now offering to give $7500.00 to the city "for the right to wrap city fire trucks in colorful ads encouraging residents to boycott KFC," the group announced this week. The proposed PETA ad shows a defeathered and scalded chicken alongside the tagline "Chickens Are Burned To Death At KFC - BOYCOTT CRUELTY." Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman stated "Our money is as good as KFC'S. The difference is that our money doesn't come from animal abuse."

  ICAW knows what a ludicrous statement that is. We would like to share a website with our readers that explains why we feel that way, PETA Kills Animals, We believe most of the Animals Rights people probably don't know what all PETA actually does with their time and money, this website should help you to better understand.

  We would like to share with you the actual letter that was sent to Mayor Greg Ballard.

The Honorable Greg Ballard
Mayor
Indianapolis, Indiana

Dear Mayor Ballard,

We at PETA heard that KFC is paying to advertise on your fire hydrants. We know that times are tough, but instead of promoting a cruel and unhealthy product, we'd like to counteract the ads with one of our own. We will donate an equal $7,500 to your fire department if you will wrap your fire trucks with our Kentucky Fried Cruelty ad (see attached). PETA's ads will offset your budget woes as well as extinguish KFC's efforts to sell its cruel products to Indianapolis residents.

Chickens killed for KFC's fast-food outlets grow up in filthy, extremely crowded sheds, mired in their own waste with no room even to spread their wings. They are drugged and bred to grow so large so quickly that their young bones often become crippled under the weight of their massive upper bodies. At the slaughterhouse, the birds often suffer broken wings and legs when they are dumped from trucks--they are handled as if they were bricks, not living beings made of flesh and blood. Then their legs are slammed into metal shackles--usually resulting in more broken bones--and they have their throats cut while they are still conscious. Many birds are scalded to death when they enter the defeathering tanks.

Members of KFC's own animal welfare advisory board have resigned in disgust at KFC's failure to stop the worst abuses of chickens raised and killed for its restaurants. PETA's ads would ask residents to boycott KFC until they make basic animal welfare improvements.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Tracy Reiman
Executive Vice President

 

   We certainly hope that our readers and the residents of Indianapolis and Marion county, Indiana who love their fried chicken would contact the Mayor's Office to request that the city of Indianapolis does not sign this agreement with PETA. We at ICAW have always told you that the Animals Rights folk's agenda has always been about livestock issues (What we actually eat). This just might be one of the things that point this out to you. Let's all get together and really stop cruelty to animals and make everyone truly understand what PETA is actually about.

The members of the Indiana Council for Animal Welfare pay attention to animal rights and factory farming issues on a daily basis. It seems that the Animals Rights folks are mad in Ohio. Ohio resoundingly passed a ballot initiative to create a Farmers Council. The opposition has said this is only the beginning. It seems that what the good folks in Ohio want is not good enough for the outside interest groups.

We wonder when the animals rights folks here in Indiana will decide it is time to go after our farmers. It seems that a lot of people these days think you can stop cruelty to animals if there aren't any farmers left. So please enjoy that prime rib, ham or turkey this year at Christmas - it might be your last.

Please help us at the Indiana Council for Animal Welfare to fight for your rights to eat what you want!

I was reading a newspaper the other day and came across an article with opinion that animal lovers should stop sending money to zealots. I wanted to give you a couple of quotes from this article. One veterinarian pointed out that these groups are clawing their way through legal and legislative channels toward giving pets individual rights rather than leaving them designated as the property of their owners. The vet said that, among other problems, this would have huge repercussions to the costs of veterinary care and liability. "Can you imagine the costs of routine pet procedures if we have to run unnecessary tests and insure ourselves for protection against possible multimillion-dollar lawsuits?" the veterinarian asked.

Another comment came from a woman who works with a small-town animal welfare organization that does the dirty work of caring for the epidemic of lost, abused or unwanted pets. She thanked me for pointing out that these local nonprofit animal rescue groups, including the local Humane Societies that have no connection with the Humane Society of the United States, are always scrapping for money to do their work.

“I used to donate (to HSUS), years ago, but all the money seemed to go to mailings with another free key chain and a request for more money,” she wrote. “I was never sure that my donation was helping homeless animals. I now only donate locally, like to the Spokane Humane Society, or to our organization, where 100 percent of funds are spent on vet care.”

When the citizens of Indiana attack ICAW for our beliefs about Commercial Dog Breeders or how to Stop Cruelty to Animals, they really should sit down and do their homework. Calling the good family farmers in our state a term like Factory Farming makes me wonder if they have ever been on one of those farms.

Let's take Indiana University, Purdue University or the other many colleges and universities in Indiana, and think about the following statements.

Medical and veterinary students cannot learn the complexities of hemorrhage on a computer model. Period.

Scientists who are trying to find cures for diseases and test surgical procedures and devices are having their lives threatened by the moral fascists.

“I’d rather see (animals) euthanized than go to a research facility,” said Minnesota Animal Rights Coalition president Charlotte Cozzetto.

It's truly time we sat down and stop the name calling whether it be Amish Puppy Mills or Indiana Puppy Mills and figure out what we as Hoosiers can really do to help the animals of our State of Indiana.

Anyone who has known me for a while knows that I like my BBQ.  I've been searching for 20 years for that proverbial "Pit Master." With the animals rights folks telling me that I should be a vegetarian, I am now having a bit of a dilemma. What do I tell my friends who own BBQ restaurants? Should I tell them that they are really misguided in their belief that there is nothing better than smoked meat, or do I tell them they really should be smoking tofu and veggies?

It is very interesting that in our society today, no one wants to know where the package of pork chops came from or that gallon of milk. "How did it get here?" With the advent of the H1N1 virus, everyone is paying attention to vaccines. Remind yourself every time you get a vaccine shot that it takes three eggs for every one vaccine that we produce.

Have you ever asked yourself, "Did I get this vaccine because of Factory Farming?" Personally I am grateful for everything that I do get from farmers, especially the farmers here in Indiana. I cannot imagine what it would be like not to have local farmers. No one ever seems to remember that all of the livestock farmers need the upstream or downstream support from the other farmers in their community. Just what impact would that have on all of our lives?

I really don't want to think about that possibility. So the next time you bite into that juicy burger or that wonderful steak, ask yourself "How do we survive without farmers?". We have 304,059,724 people in the United States. How would we feed them all? Our animals rights friends have never really considered that the best that I can tell. So I guess it really is an Omnivores Dilemma.

Just an update on Cass Sunstein the next head of the OIRA. Mr. Sunstein definitely has a background when it comes to Animals Rights or Factory Farming. Please read the following update.

One Step Closer to a PETA White House

Yesterday, the Senate voted 63-35 to invoke cloture on the nomination of animal rights activist Cass Sunstein to be the nation’s new “regulatory czar,” which means the Senate can proceed with a vote to confirm him. The vote will likely occur before the end of the night. Obviously troubling is Sunstein’s apparent devotion to Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation (and the philosopher whom radical PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk calls her life’s inspiration). Singer is infamous for his belief that it’s permissible to kill newborn children since they’re supposedly no more special than a dog.

On the Fox News Channel yesterday, CCF’s Director of Research sat down with Glenn Beck for a chat about Sunstein’s philosophy and what it could mean for America’s food producers—and everyone else whose work judiciously uses animals. Building off of last week’s discussion with Beck about how Sunstein could abuse the Endangered Species Act to put cattlemen out of business, we told Beck’s audience of millions how Sunstein can write his animal rights philosophy into law:

Watch the whole segment here

Reprinted from The Center for Consumer Freedom
http://www.consumerfreedom.com

I get accused of trying to scare people about different things going on with animals rights. It might happen again. I am reprinting an article from the Kalamazoo Gazette. I want you to read what is going on in Michigan about factory farming. The same thing is happening in Ohio as we speak. Is Indiana next? please read the following article and let us know what you think.

Agribusiness, animal-rights groups negotiate on farm-animal legislation

by Freddy Hunt | Kalamazoo Gazette

Friday August 28, 2009, 9:08 AM

LANSING -- Michigan agribusiness leaders are discussing compromises to pending state legislation dealing with standards for farm animals in an effort to avoid a ballot initiative from animal-rights advocates.

Michigan swine and poultry industry leaders met with the Humane Society of the United States Thursday to discuss changes to Michigan House bills 5127 and 5128, which were introduced to the house last month.

The two bills, which would codify current farm animal industry standards, are being opposed by the animal-activist group because they fail to address animal-confinement issues.

The ballot initiative being pursued by the Humane Society of the United states would be identical to one passed in California last year, providing caged animals with more space to stand up, lie down, turn around freely and fully extend their limbs.

Farmers and agribusiness leaders say that such provisions would drive up production costs and result in a loss of business for Michigan producers.

"Our industry is such that it is very capital-intensive and any drastic change may not seem like much to the public or to the Humane Society," said Tim Vande Bunte, president of Martin-based Konos Inc., the third largest egg producer in the state.

Vande Bunte said Thursday's meeting continued a dialogue between a handful of agribusiness leaders and their representatives and Peter Ruddell, a lobbyist for the Humane Society of the United States.

The methods of farming being targeted by the possible ballot initiative include the use of sow gestation crates, veal crates and hen battery cages.

Vande Bunte said making a switch to cage-free chicken farming would be costly, but so would a ballot initiative for the Humane Society of the United States.

"I think we're all going to consider what the best option would be to go," he said in regard to making compromises.

Ruddell declined to comment.

The price of moving from a battery cage system to a cage-free system would increase production costs for egg farmers between 12 and 27 percent, based on a California study prepared for the Humane Society of United States. The cost to consumers was estimated to increase by 1 cent per egg.

"Theoretically speaking, someone could come in from Indiana and say, 'Hey, I will sell you eggs for 12 cents a dozen less,'" Vande Bunte said. "The question is, would they buy from that guy or would they buy from us?"

Jill Fritz, the Michigan state director for the Humane Society of the United States, said allowing the industry to set its own standards for animal welfare is not a good idea.

According to the proposed legislation, the state Department of Agriculture and the Commission of Agriculture would be in charge of enforcing and setting the animal-welfare standards at the recommendation of a 12-member animal care advisory council. Three of the seats would be filled by representatives from the food processing, restaurant and retail food industries.

"We were hard-pressed to figure out what authority those (three) individuals may have in determining animal welfare," Fritz said.

Vande Bunte said farmers have the best intentions for their animals.

Some of the crates, although they may seem cruel, have their purposes, he said. Keeping hens in cages prevents the spread of disease, cuts back on wasted feed and keeps the hens from attacking each other.

Contact Freddy Hunt at fhunt@kalamazoogazette.com or (269)388-8576.

  We thought about this article a long time after we read it. What could we do to help a Puppy Mill Rescue? Are all the animals raised here going to shelters? We promise in the next few weeks to start supplying you with some numbers that should make you think long and hard about the donations that you do or don't receive. Please take the time to read the following article reprinted with permission from Jim Hughes of The Kennel Spotlight. Please comment on what you think should be done to actually help local shelters.

HUMANE SOCIETIES  GOOD OR BAD?

By Jim Hughes

If you had it in your power to destroy the entire Humane Movement in the United States, wouldyou do it? If you received a Presidential appointment as the Humane Movement Czar of thecountry, what would you do to help the animals that you’ve been appointed to oversee? Wouldyou allow the existing non-compliant, below standard, unscrupulous breeders to continue to existand produce puppies, or pigs, or chickens? Can we live in our own little world, oblivious toanimal suffering? How should we differentiate between essential suffering and non- essential suffering? As Czar, would you put a stop to cosmetic companies using animals to test their products on? Would you put a stop to medical research? How about horse racing, or rodeos, or factory farming? What would you do to bring some sense into this picture?

Well, be careful when you read this. Sit down, put down that hot coffee, open your mind and letout the evil thoughts that you have formulated over years of abuse from the current crop of selfappointed,righteously opinionated, know-nothing, money grubbing idiots that are now leading these misguided do-gooders. These misguided do-gooders have been subjected to many years of brainwashing from those who have come to realize that being at the forefront of these humane organizations is a very profitable position to be in. Well, I am going to say it!! In fact, I am going to put it in print!!!

THE LOCAL HUMANE SOCIETIES AIN’T ALL BAD!!!!

These people who operate and work in these local shelters have a big heart. They cry real tearswhen they feel they have rescued an abused animal. The problem is their take on abuse. Whatdefines abuse? When does common sense tell us that some abuse, even our definition of abuse, isnecessary for the good of all mankind? We need medical experiments to help cure the diseases that ravage mankind. But do we need to blind 100 rabbits to make sure our wives’ mascara is safe? We need factory farming to keep our food prices affordable, but do we need to subject our chickens and pigs to living spaces that allow just inches of room to move about in for all of their lives? The Animal Rights people need to realize that the Timber Wolf came from the same ancestors as little Fluffy, your Toy Poodle.


We have domesticated the canine until we have overridden his natural, bred in, abilities and desires. Today, your poodle wants to lick you todeath while the wolf will be delighted to chew you to death. CANINES ARE NATURAL PREDATORS!! They eat other animals. Every time your pet gets the opportunity to run in a packwith the neighborhood dogs, he will go to enjoy the company of his own kind. And many times these playful romps end up with the death of an unlucky cat, chicken, other dog or maybe a child.The natural primeval instinct of the canine is not to sit on your lap, he is not at all unhappy to not be petted and played with all day. If he is still a Timber Wolf, you will probably lose that petting hand.

We need local shelters to take in abused animals of all kinds. Go to any shelter in the country andyou will see that 99 percent of the animals they care for are dogs and cats. Could any employer in the country get away with this kind of prejudice?


I will acknowledge that we have people who are either too stupid or too mean to be allowed to care for any living thing that can feel pain andsuffering. We need Animal Control to pick up unwanted animals from our city streets. We needlocal shelters to care for injured, sick or abused animals, but we need these people educated properly to rightly define what actually constitutes abuse. In reality, what we have is a bunch of bleeding hearts, being brain-washed from highly paid professional mind twisters at PETA andH$U$, who are in turn, spreading these vicious attitudes to their shelter volunteers.We are our own worst enemies. We have allowed this miscarriage of false information to bespread into our newsrooms and our legislative bodies for over forty years. We have never been willing to spend the money on public relations to combat these false impressions. We look for loopholes to avoid being licensed.


We are angry with the thought of being inspected. Our registries need to inspect our kennels, not the government. If we had self-policed ourselves backin the late 60’s, the federal government would not have felt the need to license us later. Now thestates feel the need to license us because there are many breeders selling through the internet thatwant to avoid being inspected. Almost every call I get from a breeder informing me that theyhave been raided has come from an unlicensed breeder. If I get the opportunity to see some of these kennels when I am asked, “What should I do to get ready to get a license?”, I reply, “Do you know a good bulldozer operator?” Before internet, most puppies were sold through brokers,which necessitated the need for a license and therefore inspections, and we did not have all thispressure from the H$U$. We will not collectively clean up our industry, so it is going to be forcedupon us. We are winning some of our battles, but this war is being waged by a group of fanatics who aren’t going to go away. We must learn to compromise with them, re-educate their false assumptions, and willingly accept government oversight in order to survive.


We must accept our responsibilities to properly care for our animal wards.Do our animals care if we paint the kennels? No, but your legislators do. Do our animals really care if they get 24 hour attention from us as long as their basic needs of food, water, shelter, andveterinary care are met? No, unless we brainwash them into thinking that they need our ‘roundthe clock’ attention. Does a 15-20 pound Raccoon that has been injured, lying along side the roadneed our help? You bet! Are you going to give it to him? Not me, you think I’m crazy? That’s when I call the Humane Society! I let professional people with professional equipment care for that Raccoon. And if we are a breeder, that because of illness or other personal tragedy, we need help for our animals, we should be able to call the H.S. for help without the fear of losing ouranimals.

There are good people that work on a volunteer basis in our local animal shelters and all theywant to do is help the unfortunate. If their minds had not been so poisoned by the professional impression twisters against anyone who even thinks about breeding a dog, we could all work together to make a better world for all animals. The 150 million dollars that goes to the H$U$ and the 27 million dollars that goes to PETA could be given to the local shelters. The money we have to spend to defend ourselves against these Humaniac minds and their kooky ideas could go to help local shelters. We could work together.

I think maybe I have found the best article about farming practices in todays world that I have ever found. As I have told you before the Indiana Council for Animal Welfare will always stay at the forefront of todays news. Whether it be Factory Farming, Indiana Puppy Breeders or Puppy Mill Rescue.  Please read the following article and give us your feedback.

The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals

By Blake Hurst Thursday, July 30, 2009

Farming has always been messy and painful, and bloody and dirty. It still is. This is something the critics of industrial farming never seem to understand.

I’m dozing, as I often do on airplanes, but the guy behind me has been broadcasting nonstop for nearly three hours. I finally admit defeat and start some serious eavesdropping. He’s talking about food, damning farming, particularly livestock farming, compensating for his lack of knowledge with volume.

I’m so tired of people who wouldn’t visit a doctor who used a stethoscope instead of an MRI demanding that farmers like me use 1930s technology to raise food. Farming has always been messy and painful, and bloody and dirty. It still is.

But now we have to listen to self-appointed experts on airplanes frightening their seatmates about the profession I have practiced for more than 30 years. I’d had enough. I turned around and politely told the lecturer that he ought not believe everything he reads. He quieted and asked me what kind of farming I do. I told him, and when he asked if I used organic farming, I said no, and left it at that. I didn’t answer with the first thought that came to mind, which is simply this: I deal in the real world, not superstitions, and unless the consumer absolutely forces my hand, I am about as likely to adopt organic methods as the Wall Street Journal is to publish their next edition by setting the type by hand.

Young turkeys aren't smart enough to come in out of the rain, and will stand outside in a downpour, with beaks open and eyes skyward, until they drown.

He was a businessman, and I’m sure spends his days with spreadsheets, projections, and marketing studies. He hasn’t used a slide rule in his career and wouldn’t make projections with tea leaves or soothsayers. He does not blame witchcraft for a bad quarter, or expect the factory that makes his product to use steam power instead of electricity, or horses and wagons to deliver his products instead of trucks and trains. But he expects me to farm like my grandfather, and not incidentally, I suppose, to live like him as well. He thinks farmers are too stupid to farm sustainably, too cruel to treat their animals well, and too careless to worry about their communities, their health, and their families. I would not presume to criticize his car, or the size of his house, or the way he runs his business. But he is an expert about me, on the strength of one book, and is sharing that expertise with captive audiences every time he gets the chance. Enough, enough, enough.

Industrial Farming and Its Critics

Critics of “industrial farming” spend most of their time concerned with the processes by which food is raised. This is because the results of organic production are so, well, troublesome. With the subtraction of every “unnatural” additive, molds, fungus, and bugs increase. Since it is difficult to sell a religion with so many readily quantifiable bad results, the trusty family farmer has to be thrown into the breach, saving the whole organic movement by his saintly presence, chewing on his straw, plodding along, at one with his environment, his community, his neighborhood. Except that some of the largest farms in the country are organic—and are giant organizations dependent upon lots of hired stoop labor doing the most backbreaking of tasks in order to save the sensitive conscience of my fellow passenger the merest whiff of pesticide contamination. They do not spend much time talking about that at the Whole Foods store.

The most delicious irony is this: the parts of farming that are the most “industrial” are the most likely to be owned by the kind of family farmers that elicit such a positive response from the consumer. Corn farms are almost all owned and managed by small family farmers. But corn farmers salivate at the thought of one more biotech breakthrough, use vast amounts of energy to increase production, and raise large quantities of an indistinguishable commodity to sell to huge corporations that turn that corn into thousands of industrial products.

The biggest environmental harm I’ve done as a farmer is the topsoil (and nutrients) I used to send down the Missouri River to the Gulf of Mexico before we began to practice no-till farming, made possible only by the use of herbicides.

Most livestock is produced by family farms, and even the poultry industry, with its contracts and vertical integration, relies on family farms to contract for the production of the birds. Despite the obvious change in scale over time, family farms, like ours, still meet around the kitchen table, send their kids to the same small schools, sit in the same church pew, and belong to the same civic organizations our parents and grandparents did. We may be industrial by some definition, but not our own. Reality is messier than it appears in the book my tormentor was reading, and farming more complicated than a simple morality play.

On the desk in front of me are a dozen books, all hugely critical of present-day farming. Farmers are often given a pass in these books, painted as either naïve tools of corporate greed, or economic nullities forced into their present circumstances by the unrelenting forces of the twin grindstones of corporate greed and unfeeling markets. To the farmer on the ground, though, a farmer blessed with free choice and hard won experience, the moral choices aren’t quite so easy. Biotech crops actually cut the use of chemicals, and increase food safety. Are people who refuse to use them my moral superiors? Herbicides cut the need for tillage, which decreases soil erosion by millions of tons. The biggest environmental harm I have done as a farmer is the topsoil (and nutrients) I used to send down the Missouri River to the Gulf of Mexico before we began to practice no-till farming, made possible only by the use of herbicides. The combination of herbicides and genetically modified seed has made my farm more sustainable, not less, and actually reduces the pollution I send down the river.  

Finally, consumers benefit from cheap food. If you think they don’t, just remember the headlines after food prices began increasing in 2007 and 2008, including the study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations announcing that 50 million additional people are now hungry because of increasing food prices. Only “industrial farming” can possibly meet the demands of an increasing population and increased demand for food as a result of growing incomes.

The distance between the farmer and what he grows has certainly increased, but, believe me, if we weren't closely connected, we wouldn't still be farming.

So the stakes in this argument are even higher. Farmers can raise food in different ways if that is what the market wants. It is important, though, that even people riding in airplanes know that there are environmental and food safety costs to whatever kind of farming we choose.

Pigs in a Pen

In his book Dominion, author Mathew Scully calls “factory farming” an “obvious moral evil so sickening and horrendous it would leave us ashen.” Scully, a speechwriter for the second President Bush, can hardly be called a man of the left. Just to make sure the point is not lost, he quotes the conservative historian Paul Johnson a page later:

The rise of factory farming, whereby food producers cannot remain competitive except by subjecting animals to unspeakable deprivation, has hastened this process. The human spirit revolts at what we have been doing.

Arizona and Florida have outlawed pig gestation crates, and California recently passed, overwhelmingly, a ballot initiative doing the same. There is no doubt that Scully and Johnson have the wind at their backs, and confinement raising of livestock may well be outlawed everywhere. And only a person so callous as to have a spirit that cannot be revolted, or so hardened to any kind of morality that he could countenance an obvious moral evil, could say a word in defense of caging animals during their production. In the quote above, Paul Johnson is forecasting a move toward vegetarianism. But if we assume, at least for the present, that most of us will continue to eat meat, let me dive in where most fear to tread.

Lynn Niemann was a neighbor of my family’s, a farmer with a vision. He began raising turkeys on a field near his house around 1956. They were, I suppose, what we would now call “free range” turkeys. Turkeys raised in a natural manner, with no roof over their heads, just gamboling around in the pasture, as God surely intended. Free to eat grasshoppers, and grass, and scratch for grubs and worms. And also free to serve as prey for weasels, who kill turkeys by slitting their necks and practicing exsanguination. Weasels were a problem, but not as much a threat as one of our typically violent early summer thunderstorms. It seems that turkeys, at least young ones, are not smart enough to come in out of the rain, and will stand outside in a downpour, with beaks open and eyes skyward, until they drown. One night Niemann lost 4,000 turkeys to drowning, along with his dream, and his farm.

Food production will have a claim on fossil fuels long after we've learned how to use renewables and nuclear power to handle many of our other energy needs.

Now, turkeys are raised in large open sheds. Chickens and turkeys raised for meat are not grown in cages. As the critics of "industrial farming" like to point out, the sheds get quite crowded by the time Thanksgiving rolls around and the turkeys are fully grown. And yes, the birds are bedded in sawdust, so the turkeys do walk around in their own waste. Although the turkeys don't seem to mind, this quite clearly disgusts the various authors I've read whom have actually visited a turkey farm. But none of those authors, whose descriptions of the horrors of modern poultry production have a certain sameness, were there when Neimann picked up those 4,000 dead turkeys. Sheds are expensive, and it was easier to raise turkeys in open, inexpensive pastures. But that type of production really was hard on the turkeys. Protected from the weather and predators, today's turkeys may not be aware that they are a part of a morally reprehensible system.

Like most young people in my part of the world, I was a 4-H member. Raising cattle and hogs, showing them at the county fair, and then sending to slaughter those animals that we had spent the summer feeding, washing, and training. We would then tour the packing house, where our friend was hung on a rail, with his loin eye measured and his carcass evaluated. We farm kids got an early start on dulling our moral sensibilities. I'm still proud of my win in the Atchison County Carcass competition of 1969, as it is the only trophy I have ever received. We raised the hogs in a shed, or farrowing (birthing) house. On one side were eight crates of the kind that the good citizens of California have outlawed. On the other were the kind of wooden pens that our critics would have us use, where the sow could turn around, lie down, and presumably act in a natural way. Which included lying down on my 4-H project, killing several piglets, and forcing me to clean up the mess when I did my chores before school. The crates protect the piglets from their mothers. Farmers do not cage their hogs because of sadism, but because dead pigs are a drag on the profit margin, and because being crushed by your mother really is an awful way to go. As is being eaten by your mother, which I've seen sows do to newborn pigs as well.

I warned you that farming is still dirty and bloody, and I wasn't kidding. So let's talk about manure. It is an article of faith amongst the agri-intellectuals that we no longer use manure as fertilizer. To quote Dr. Michael Fox in his book Eating with a Conscience, "The animal waste is not going back to the land from which he animal feed originated." Or Bill McKibben, in his book Deep Economy, writing about modern livestock production: "But this concentrates the waste in one place, where instead of being useful fertilizer to spread on crop fields it becomes a toxic threat."  

In my inbox is an email from our farm's neighbor, who raises thousands of hogs in close proximity to our farm, and several of my family member's houses as well. The email outlines the amount and chemical analysis of the manure that will be spread on our fields this fall, manure that will replace dozens of tons of commercial fertilizer. The manure is captured underneath the hog houses in cement pits, and is knifed into the soil after the crops are harvested. At no time is it exposed to erosion, and it is an extremely valuable resource, one which farmers use to its fullest extent, just as they have since agriculture began.

Pollan thinks farmers use commercial fertilizer because it's easier, and because it's cheap. Pollan is right. But those are perfectly defensible reasons.

In the southern part of Missouri, there is an extensive poultry industry in areas of the state where the soil is poor. The farmers there spread the poultry litter on pasture, and the advent of poultry barns made cattle production possible in areas that used to be waste ground. The "industrial" poultry houses are owned by family farmers, who have then used the byproducts to produce beef in areas where cattle couldn't survive before. McKibben is certain that the contracts these farmers sign with companies like Tyson are unfair, and the farmers might agree. But they like those cows, so there is a waiting list for new chicken barns. In some areas, there is indeed more manure than available cropland. But the trend in the industry, thankfully, is toward a dispersion of animals and manure, as the value of the manure increases, and the cost of transporting the manure becomes prohibitive.   

We Can’t Change Nature

The largest producer of pigs in the United States has promised to gradually end the use of hog crates. The Humane Society promises to take their initiative drive to outlaw farrowing crates and poultry cages to more states. Many of the counties in my own state of Missouri have chosen to outlaw the the building of confinement facilities. Barack Obama has been harshly critical of animal agriculture. We are clearly in the process of deciding that we will not continue to raise animals the way we do now. Because other countries may not share our sensibilities, we'll have to withdraw or amend free trade agreements to keep any semblance of a livestock industry.

We can do that, and we may be a better society for it, but we can't change nature. Pigs will be allowed to "return to their mire," as Kipling had it, but they'll also be crushed and eaten by their mothers. Chickens will provide lunch to any number of predators, and some number of chickens will die as flocks establish their pecking order.  

In recent years, the cost of producing pork dropped as farmers increased feed efficiency (the amount of feed needed to produce a pound of pork) by 20 percent. Free-range chickens and pigs will increase the price of food, using more energy and water to produce the extra grain required for the same amount of meat, and some people will go hungry. It is also instructive that the first company to move away from farrowing crates is the largest producer of pigs. Changing the way we raise animals will not necessarily change the scale of the companies involved in the industry. If we are about to require more expensive ways of producing food, the largest and most well-capitalized farms will have the least trouble adapting.

The Omnivores’ Delusions

Michael Pollan, in an 8,000-word essay in the New York Times Magazine, took the expected swipes at animal agriculture. But his truly radical prescriptions had to do with raising of crops. Pollan, who seemed to be aware of the nitrogen problem in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma, left nuance behind, as well as the laws of chemistry, in his recommendations. The nitrogen problem is this: without nitrogen, we do not have life. Until we learned to produce nitrogen from natural gas early in the last century, the only way to get nitrogen was through nitrogen produced by plants called legumes, or from small amounts of nitrogen that are produced by lightning strikes. The amount of life the earth could support was limited by the amount of nitrogen available for crop production.

In his book, Pollan quotes geographer Vaclav Smil to the effect that 40 percent of the people alive today would not be alive without the ability to artificially synthesize nitrogen. But in his directive on food policy, Pollan damns agriculture's dependence on fossil fuels, and urges the president to encourage agriculture to move away from expensive and declining supplies of natural gas toward the unlimited sunshine that supported life, and agriculture, as recently as the 1940s. Now, why didn't I think of that?

Well, I did. I've raised clover and alfalfa for the nitrogen they produce, and half the time my land is planted to soybeans, another nitrogen producing legume. Pollan writes as if all of his ideas are new, but my father tells of agriculture extension meetings in the late 1950s entitled "Clover and Corn, the Road to Profitability."  Farmers know that organic farming was the default position of agriculture for thousands of years, years when hunger was just around the corner for even advanced societies. I use all the animal manure available to me, and do everything I can to reduce the amount of commercial fertilizers I use. When corn genetically modified to use nitrogen more efficiently enters the market, as it soon will, I will use it as well. But none of those things will completely replace commercial fertilizer.

Norman Borlaug, founder of the green revolution, estimates that the amount of nitrogen available naturally would only support a worldwide population of 4 billion souls or so. He further remarks that we would need another 5 billion cows to produce enough manure to fertilize our present crops with "natural" fertilizer. That would play havoc with global warming. And cows do not produce nitrogen from the air, but only from the forages they eat, so to produce more manure we will have to plant more forages. Most of the critics of industrial farming maintain the contradictory positions that we should increase the use of manure as a fertilizer, and decrease our consumption of meat. Pollan would solve the problem with cover crops, planted after the corn crop is harvested, and with mandatory composting. Pollan should talk to some actual farmers before he presumes to advise a president.

Pollan tells of flying over the upper Midwest in the winter, and seeing the black, fallow soil. I suppose one sees what one wants to see, but we have not had the kind of tillage implement on our farm that would produce black soil in nearly 20 years. Pollan would provide our nitrogen by planting those black fields to nitrogen-producing cover crops after the cash crops are harvested. This is a fine plan, one that farmers have known about for generations. And sometimes it would even work. But not last year, as we finished harvest in November in a freezing rain. It is hard to think of a legume that would have done its thing between then and corn planting time. Plants do not grow very well in freezing weather, a fact that would evidently surprise Pollan.

And even if we could have gotten a legume established last fall, it would not have fixed any nitrogen before planting time. We used to plant corn in late May, plowing down our green manure and killing the first flush of weeds. But that meant the corn would enter its crucial growing period during the hottest, driest parts of the summer, and that soil erosion would be increased because the land was bare during drenching spring rains. Now we plant in early April, best utilizing our spring rains, and ensuring that pollination occurs before the dog days of August.

A few other problems come to mind. The last time I planted a cover crop, the clover provided a perfect habitat in early spring for bugs, bugs that I had to kill with an insecticide. We do not normally apply insecticides, but we did that year. Of course, you can provide nitrogen with legumes by using a longer crop rotation, growing clover one year and corn the next. But that uses twice as much water to produce a corn crop, and takes twice as much land to produce the same number of bushels. We are producing twice the food we did in 1960 on less land, and commercial nitrogen is one of the main reasons why. It may be that we decide we would rather spend land and water than energy, but Pollan never mentions that we are faced with that choice.

His other grand idea is mandatory household composting, with the compost delivered to farmers free of charge. Why not? Compost is a valuable soil amendment, and if somebody else is paying to deliver it to my farm, then bring it on. But it will not do much to solve the nitrogen problem. Household compost has somewhere between 1 and 5 percent nitrogen, and not all that nitrogen is available to crops the first year. Presently, we are applying about 150 pounds of nitrogen per acre to corn, and crediting about 40 pounds per acre from the preceding years soybean crop. Let's assume a 5 percent nitrogen rate, or about 100 pounds of nitrogen per ton of compost. That would require 3,000 pounds of compost per acre. Or about 150,000 tons for the corn raised in our county. The average truck carries about 20 tons. Picture 7,500 trucks traveling from New York City to our small county here in the Midwest, delivering compost. Five million truckloads to fertilize the country's corn crop. Now, that would be a carbon footprint!

Pollan thinks farmers use commercial fertilizer because it is easier, and because it is cheap. Pollan is right. But those are perfectly defensible reasons. Nitrogen quadrupled in price over the last several years, and farmers are still using it, albeit more cautiously. We are using GPS monitors on all of our equipment to ensure that we do not use too much, and our production of corn per pound of nitrogen is rapidly increasing. On our farm, we have increased yields about 50 percent during my career, while applying about the same amount of nitrogen we did when I began farming. That fortunate trend will increase even faster with the advent of new GMO hybrids. But as much as Pollan might desire it, even President Obama cannot reshuffle the chemical deck that nature has dealt. Energy may well get much more expensive, and peak oil production may have been reached. But food production will have a claim on fossil fuels long after we have learned how to use renewables and nuclear power to handle many of our other energy needs.

Farming and Connectedness

Much of farming is more "industrial," more technical, and more complex than it used to be. Farmers farm more acres, and are less close to the ground and their animals than they were in the past. Almost all critics of industrial agriculture bemoan this loss of closeness, this "connectedness," to use author Rod Dreher's term. It is a given in most of the writing about agriculture that the knowledge and experience of the organic farmer is what makes him so unique and so important. The "industrial farmer," on the other hand, is a mere pawn of Cargill, backed into his ignorant way of life by forces too large, too far from the farm, and too powerful to resist. Concern about this alienation, both between farmers and the land, and between consumers and their food supply, is what drives much of the literature about agriculture.

The distance between the farmer and what he grows has certainly increased, but, believe me, if we weren't closely connected, we wouldn't still be farming. It's important to our critics that they emphasize this alienation, because they have to ignore the "industrial" farmer's experience and knowledge to say the things they do about farming.

But farmers have reasons for their actions, and society should listen to them as we embark upon this reappraisal of our agricultural system. I use chemicals and diesel fuel to accomplish the tasks my grandfather used to do with sweat, and I use a computer instead of a lined notebook and a pencil, but I'm still farming the same land he did 80 years ago, and the fund of knowledge that our family has accumulated about our small part of Missouri is valuable. And everything I know and I have learned tells me this: we have to farm "industrially" to feed the world, and by using those "industrial" tools sensibly, we can accomplish that task and leave my grandchildren a prosperous and productive farm, while protecting the land, water, and air around us.  

Blake Hurst is a farmer in Missouri. In a few days he will spend the next six weeks on a combine.