HSUS wins in MO

[justme]

I'm in shock that Prop B passed here in Missouri.  Clearly won in the cities here in MO.  What a tragic day for Agriculture.  I raise a couple litters of pups every year so its hitting close to home.  I'm all for humane care of animals, but this will not stop the bad and illegal breeders.  Scary to think what they will hit next.  Odd...the city folks that voted this in, are the same ones buying the pups at pet stores that purchase there pups from these so called "puppy mills".

 

[AG TEACHER]

I know it sucks!!!! I am not sure of what the details are in your state bill that just passed BUT I believe  the reality is they can pass all the legislation they want to but enforcement costs money and man power and  I think those 2 things will be the Achilles Heel of bills like that... Unless the economy really comes back people are not going to be willing to pay for that.... where puppies and kittens come from and how big chicken cages are  won't be that important when they are worrying about the electric bill or if they can afford meat or is it peanut butter again for supper.

 

[kanshow]

I think this is terrible.  I really thought people had more sense than this.    Like Ag Teacher said.. maybe there won't be funding for to enforce it. 

 

[luv2show21]

If you look at the map, it's 100% the non-rural areas that don't understand:

http://www.sos.mo.gov/enrMaps/20101102/ballot_Issue_map.asp?eid=300&oTypeID=25

Next time, the ag community will have to really focus on making the "city-folk" understand what is going on.  They don't understand what is so bad about "taking care of puppies."

 

[justme]

I for one was shocked that there was nobody at the American Royal educating the public on this or at Kemper Arena. 

 

[Rocky Hill Simmental]

I'm very disappointed that it passed as well. It's scary to think what the HSUS is plotting for us here in Missouri next! We need to get out and educate the people of St. Louis and Kansas City (and the bootheel apparently) before the HSUS comes up their next big plan!

 

[jamesgang892]

I'm very disappointed that it passed as well. It's scary to think what the HSUS is plotting for us here in Missouri next! We need to get out and educate the people of St. Louis and Kansas City (and the bootheel apparently) before the HSUS comes up their next big plan!

I will second this!!!!!!

 

[garybob]

I'm very disappointed that it passed as well. It's scary to think what the HSUS is plotting for us here in Missouri next! We need to get out and educate the people of St. Louis and Kansas City (and the bootheel apparently) before the HSUS comes up their next big plan!

Springfield, too. :-\

GB

 

[knabe]

we used to educate our kids by "daddy goes out back and brings in steak".

now he makes tofu.

 

[Show Heifer]

I guess some are "just too busy" to be bothered by those little annoying animal rights people right? I mean really, they are flat crazy, who would listen to them? WE know better, doesn't everyone else? Why educate the public?  (Yes, I am being very sarcastic)

Many, even on this very board, pays no attention or gives any credit to such groups.... I guess maybe this will be the loud alarm that is called the SNOOZE BUTTON that many have pushed so many times?  WAKE UP (it is already too late)

 

[justme]

I heard thru the "dog breeding grapevine" today that there are appeals or something like that coming (ok I may not have the terminology right).  They aren't going down without a fight.  Sadly, there were no ads that I seen down in KC about voting no on Prop B.  Sad sad days ahead for us.

 

[DL]

Why animal rightists beat agriculture in Missouri

http://www.truthinfood.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=84

Written by Mike Smith   

Editor's Note: This morning, animal agriculture busies itself armchair quarterbacking the defeat yesterday at the hands of the animal-rights group Humane Society of the United States. What lessons can farm-animal producers take from this mandated imposition of "common sense welfare standards" on Missouri's dog breeders, lessons they'll need when (not if) HSUS returns for another easy score in its wider agenda to end the free use of animals to satisfy human desires?

At Food-Chain Communications, we have been deeply involved in this issue for years, and we believe the way forward is clear. Despite agriculture's best intentions, regardless of agribusiness' best science, no matter how unified farmers and their associations are in messaging, we believe an overly comfortable reliance on scientific animal-welfare guidelines, animal-welfare audits and animal-production standards failed agriculture yesterday in Missouri. And it will fail in the days to come. There's a better way forward, as Truth in Food Editor Mike Smith outlines in this reprint from the November issue of Missouri Beef Cattleman.

The Food Morality Movement
How will you answer the one, simple question we’re all going to face: Is this right?
A pig farmer here in Missouri believes last year he accidentally exposed his operation to the disease PRRS – a reproductive syndrome as devastating to pig farms as BVD can be to a cow/calf herd – when his workers rescuing pigs from an overturned potbelly brought the survivors onto the farm for first-aid and temporary housing. In tracking through the contaminated trailer and back into the biosecure farm, they likely infected the unit, ultimately costing him more than $3 million. Why did this experienced, intelligent manager give his blessing to something so obviously perilous to the bottom line – even the family farm’s very survival?

“What else could we do?” he told me, matter-of-fact. “For the animals’ sakes it was the only right thing to do.”

Beef production, animal agriculture and American farming are today engaged in a great national quest to discover the “common messaging” and “strategic communication position” and “accountability metrics” that can sell skittish consumers on believing we’re healthy, sustainable and trustworthy. From stamps and seals certifying our science and integrity, to actors and college kids speaking to video cameras from the back of a horse or the seat of a plastic tractor, it’s assuming every form from cliché to plain weird.
But I fear agriculture’s missing the best answer – and about to waste a whole bunch of money chasing it – by neglecting the one, simple question consumers want to hear you answer.

The New Morality of Food

What’s difficult for traditional agriculture to see these days is that you have become a symbol. The modern, profit-driven farming you represent has become useful metaphor to argue bigger questions of society, politics, culture and religion. Contaminated hens eggs and overfat schoolkids have become but easy shorthand, solid stepping stones into boggier moral territory like wealth inequality and balancing parental freedom vs. institutional authority. Meanwhile, agriculture keeps answering its critics by arguing pathogen loads and juvenile caloric balance, completely missing the point. It’s as if we insisted on talking about the marbling in the beef while our critics are attacking the packaging it comes in. We have to shift our thinking to begin understanding what our critics really object to before we can develop a meaningful answer, let alone craft the message and pick the messengers.

At Food-Chain Communications, a Missouri company devoted to helping everybody up and down the food chain better understand what each stakeholder does (and doesn’t), we brought together a panel of scholars – traditional and non-traditional – to hash out some of these questions. Here’s some of what we learned:

· Every food chain decision is now going to be viewed through a moral prism. That requires a moral defense. Yesterday’s seemingly innocent question of animal handling or crop rotation will tomorrow be gauged by its perceived impact on social justice, community integrity, individual freedom (human and non-human), sensitivity to culture diversity and environmental footprint. “Good food” is no longer defined only by nutrition and cleanliness, but by its moral goodness…or evil.

· Their mission is to divide. Small farm vs. factory farm, grass-fed vs. grain-fed, Christian vs. atheist, supermarket vs. farmers market – the Devil divides, no matter his form. Until everyone in agriculture can articulate what is ethically right in the tools you select to feed the world, you risk falling back on defenses that rely only upon pointing out what’s wrong with the other guy. Ultimately, it will diminish us all.

· Farmers must reclaim their authority based not on science and economics, but on their ethics and morality. When did we grow so hesitant to talk about the moral purity of American agriculture, a purity that finds symbol in the white of the 4-H flag which I – and likely you – grew up pledging ourselves to? Who among our critics even dares use that kind of value-laden language anymore? Yet the farmer’s virtue remains his greatest defense. U.S. farmers enjoy a long ancestral ethical heritage, from Jefferson’s Yeoman Farmer to the unsung World War II farmer-hero who fed a desolated world on the mend.
'
We need a new agricultural apologia. Agriculture needs an apologetics in the classic sense – not of being sorry, but of being morally defensible. Not only must we find our way back to farming’s pure moral heritage, but we must openly embrace it, celebrate it, without fear, and without succumbing to the temptation to couch it in the more comfortable clothing of economics, science, utility and practicality. Do we really believe consumers will be relieved to hear our scientific welfare audits prove loading ramps are angled at 20 degrees rather than 30? Or that only 2.9 percent of our feeders limp off the trailer bleeding, panting or calving rather than an unacceptable 3 percent? Accusations of moral wrong can only be defeated (not appeased) by defenses of moral right. It’s another lesson I learned in 4-H so many years ago: What matters is not what we know, it’s what we believe.

It goes deeper than simple messaging and PR strategizing. It has to be rooted in an intelligent study of ethics and grounded in a felt understanding — like the Missouri pig farmer who chose to do the right thing at high cost—of what’s right in what you do.
When you can answer that one simple question consumers want to ask — Is this right? — you won’t have to talk about it. They’ll do it for us.

 

[chambero]

I think this is terrible.  I really thought people had more sense than this.     Like Ag Teacher said.. maybe there won't be funding for to enforce it.   

They can find more than enough citizens willing to keep an eye out that can report perceived violations.  They don't need paid government employees to enforce this.

That's the scary part.

 

[luv2show21]

http://www.cattlenetwork.com/NLA_Mon.aspx?oid=1282387&tid=Archive

Prop B - The Fight Ain’t Over
11/12/2010 11:19AM
Missouri Proposition B, also known as the “puppy mill” bill, passed by a narrow margin last week of 51.6% to 48.4%. The measure lost in 101 of the 114 Missouri counties. Sponsored largely by the Washington, D.C.-based Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Prop B seeks to burden licensed dog breeders (who already operate within restrictive state laws) with more regulation that could put them out of business. It does nothing to address unlicensed dog breeders, and agriculture groups fear it is a foot-in-the-door of potential “domestic animal” regulation, which can also include livestock.

Missouri, however, is not done fighting. Some Republican lawmakers are seeking to overturn this vote with their legislative power. As a state law, the measure is subject to amendments, changes or outright repeal by the legislature.

I spoke with David Martosko, director of research for the Center of Consumer Freedom who offers some post-Prop B strategies for the animal industry of Missouri, which is also a roadmap for other states that may face similar propositions by HSUS. “I think the most important post-election education campaign has to be directed at the public, through the pet shelters that are going to absorb more than 100,000 ‘surplus’ dogs a year from now when Prop B comes into force,” Martosko says. “It’s not too late to make Missourians realize that they bought a pig in a poke. Laws can be repealed. But you’re going to have to generate sufficient (honest) outrage in order to see that happen.”

Martosko says a good place to start would be to sponsor advertising for a few high-profile Missouri pet shelters so the public hears the message that local humane societies are about to be overrun—and that HSUS, which spent $2.18 million creating a new problem, isn’t going to pony up enough money to deal with the consequences.

For states that are a target of HSUS, Martosko advises people to first not underestimate HSUS’s capacity to lie. “In Missouri, you had HSUS’s spokesperson in a radio interview accusing a veterinarian of being married to a puppy-mill operator,” he says. “It turned out that he was single.”

Secondly, don’t discount the value of third-party groups as message-carriers—especially when they can help you target a specific demographic where you’re lacking. “It’s important to let yourself share the messaging with allies (even those you may not always agree with).” It was heartening in Missouri to see livestock producers, veterinarians, dog breeders, horse owners and others come together against Prop B.

And lastly, says Martosko, understand that HSUS is always going to play the role of the aggressor in these campaigns, which means that it expects to moves the ball, set the pace of the action, and “own” the playing field. But you don’t have to let that happen, he says. “Trust in the fact that you have a good story to tell, and tell it loudly. Remember—most of the time agriculture is on the side of the angels. So the more the public discusses the issue (and even argues about it), the more likely it will be for the truth to percolate to the surface. In short, controversy is good. Public drop-down, drag-out fights are even better. If nothing else, realize that you have nothing to lose because you’re facing an opponent who will do anything—ethical or not—to win.”

There was some criticism that HSUS jumped into the fray early and that agriculture lagged behind in coordinating an united front in Missouri. Martosko says in cases like this, time is literally more valuable than money. “The best-case scenario is for agriculture to make HSUS’ Wayne Pacelle’s first impression for him,”suggests Martosko. A mini-campaign in Kansas City and St. Louis about what HSUS really is (a richer PETA) would have inoculated tens of thousands of voters—but only if it was carried out in May or June. Back then, the campaign was entirely winnable but no one in Missouri seemed to know it.”

Waiting until September and October is a recipe for disaster, he adds. “By that point in time, HSUS already owns the airwaves and you’re stuck playing defense. That’s what happened in Missouri. The only practical way to win these things is to play offense instead. That requires early action. It also has the virtue of being less expensive, since media costs a lot less to buy 6 months before an election than in the home-stretch.”

Other states better wake up and be prepared. Martosko believes Wayne Pacelle’s November 21 “town hall” meeting in Lincoln, Neb. is probably a prelude to a 2012 ballot campaign of some kind (visit the HSUS calendar). “Watch where he chooses to lay strategic groundwork with heavily staged dog-and-pony shows. Events like those are designed to generate media good-will exposure long before he needs a compliant base of reporters, but if he’s building the foundation you can bet he’s going to try to build something on top of it,” Martosko says.

Animal Agriculture Alliance’s Kay Johnson Smith says other states, in particular those that allow for the ballot initiative process, need to be proactive now and not wait until a similar initiative to Prop B has been introduced in their state. Twenty-four states allow for the initiative process, but regardless, it’s important to make decision makers aware of the dangers of this type of initiative or legislation.

Johnson’s recommendations for other states include:
a) Find out if your state does allow ballot initiatives. “If so, understand the rules, such as what number of signatures are required, what percentage of votes are necessary, and talk with your legislature about possible changes to the statutes could be made to protect agriculture’s interests,” Johnson says.
b) Join or form a state agricultural coalition and get active in working together now – before an initiative is proposed. Look for non-traditional allies.
c) Talk with your legislators now about the dangers of any initiative which sets an arbitrary limit on the number of animals an owner can own – like Prop B. Also help them understand that today, it’s the number of dogs a legitimate dog breeder can own; tomorrow, it will be cattle or chickens or pigs. Assigning an arbitrary number, like 50 in the case of Prop B, hurts good businesses and does nothing to eliminate those that are sub-standard.

“The ballot initiatives regarding dogs are just the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent for HSUS which uses this type of campaign to raise money, build a database of potential supporters and strengthen its presence in the state,” Johnson says. “Its next campaign is likely one that would make legitimate farmers and ranchers, using the best practices known to-date, illegal – all because the activist group rejects the right of consumers to eat meat, milk and eggs.”

For more information on HSUS, visit www.humanewatch.org

Geni Wren
Editor, Bovine Veterinarian Magazine