HSUS: Try to Understand … before it’s too late
By SALLY SCHUFF
Feedstuffs
Issue Date: September 15, 2008 | Issue 38 | Volume 80
HERE is a challenge for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS): Try to understand the purpose of animal agriculture before you are blamed for a major mistake.
Animal agriculture is not about torturing animals in factory farms, nor poisoning the environment, nor obesity. Animal agriculture is all about providing high-quality human nutrition not only to the well-heeled and picky eaters in developed countries but also to those whose economic reality is defined by the deficit in high-protein foods for the young, the old and the ill.
Meat, milk, eggs, poultry and fish are high-quality, protein-rich foods that contain the essential amino acids required for human development. They hardly qualify as social evils.
When animal agriculture is attacked, as it clearly is by HSUS, there is a danger that it could be damaged or destroyed — or discouraged, at the very least.
Considering global population growth, HSUS might want to think twice before risking the blame for promoting a future protein shortage.
Last week, Danielle Nierenberg, billed as an animal agriculture and climate change specialist for HSUS, bluntly restated the group’s agenda.
Her remarks came in Washington, D.C., at a Hudson Institute discussion of a new peer-reviewed paper showing that the use of bovine growth hormone reduces the dairy industry’s carbon footprint by reducing the number of animals and inputs needed to produce milk.
Unimpressed, Nierenberg said, “But animal agriculture contributes to a wide range of other social ills, including harming public health — the increase in diseases.”
She continued, “There are numerous studies showing that Escherichia coli and avian influenza increase in factory farm conditions.”
However, when Hudson Institute director of research on global food issues Alex Avery challenged her to cite her sources, Nierenberg was unable to do so.
Nierenberg’s attack was revealing. While there was some accuracy in her allegations that rural communities “are often negatively impacted … by odor, manure and flies from these operations,” she then launched into the patently ridiculous, saying, “Animal welfare … is almost completely ignored in these operations.”
She went on to charge large-scale operations as “filthy” and disease ridden.
In a heated exchange with Avery, Nierenberg said, “My perspective is one that is critical of industrial animal agriculture, mostly the largest of the large-scale operations. I am not critical of small- and medium-sized dairy, chicken and pig farmers who have worked very hard in this country to raise animals.”
What Nierenberg missed, and what HSUS always misses, is that the size of the operation is not the issue. What matters is management.
People manage animals; they manage animal health and well-being, environmental remediation, public health concerns and community acceptance. The excellence of an animal operation is governed by how good the people are — not how big the operation is.
There are many examples of good management in all sizes of operations, but if management is equally good, the large operations benefit from greater efficiencies simply because of lower unit costs.
There are also occasional bad actors in all sizes of operations, and no one defends them.
It would really be helpful if HSUS could understand this.
Maybe HSUS could lower its voice and understand that animal agriculture is not an evil industry, nor is it stuck in the status quo. It is an industry that openly seeks and adopts production improvements.
Most importantly, it is an industry that produces a product essential to human nutrition, and frankly, it could use all the well-intentioned help it could get.
Whatever its motives, HSUS needs to be concerned about what its current attack agenda will mean to the future of animal agriculture. If that agenda brings on a global shortage of high-quality, protein-rich foods, then the blame will fall squarely on HSUS and its allies.
