Animal Care is Still BIG NEWS

Even more than a decade ago, pork producers could see that the care and well-being of their animals was going to become an issue.  It’s one of the reasons they created the Pork Checkoff’s producer-led Animal Welfare Committee – to provide science-based information to people concerned with the welfare of animals.

The committee was created just five years after the federal Animal Welfare Act had been established to regulate the treatment of animals used for federally funded research.  The regulation included statutes for handling, care treatment and transport of animals in laboratory settings.  Animal rights groups have been pushing for farm regulations ever since.

It’s been 11 years since Margaret Ledger chaired the Animal Welfare Committee, but she can see now that its creation was prophetic.

“The committee’s efforts in the early ’90s were aimed at defining how to measure welfare,” said Ledger, an Iowa producer.  “The pork industry needed to anticipate the questions that people concerned with the welfare of animals would ask when animal agriculture became the target.” 

 Fast forward to 2006 and the battle has been joined, with animal agriculture a target of several well-funded groups.  Over a million people are claimed as members of just one of the animal rights organizations active in the United STastes.  Other organizations have international influence. 

Of major concern is the amount of money at the activists’ disposal.  The Humane Society of the United STastes (HSUS), to cite just one example, expects to work with an operating budget of over $90 million in 2006, about twice the total operating budget of the National Pork Board in 2006.

According to the ActivistCash.com Web site, the HSUS has assets calculated at over $113 million.  These monies are collected from American households who mistakenly confuse the HSUS with the local pet adoption center, the Web site notes. 

The Checkoff’s Animal Welfare Committee continues to address and promote good animal care, relying on scientifically sound principles.  Through producer-led initiatives, the industry has funded many research projects to study sow housing and its relationship to sow welfare, animal transport and the link to fatigued pigs, animal behavior and more. 

A major milestone was the development of the Swine Welfare Assurance ProgramSM, an educational and benchmarking tool pork producers can use on-farm to objectively assess swine welfare. 

The committee also has led industry efforts to understand consumer concerns with swine care and well-being and to help design a solution that is workable, credible and affordable for producers and their customers.

Activists TAKE ON Arizona’s Ballot

Animal activists were able to ban gestation stalls in Florida, and now they’re going after Arizona.  Activists have collected approximately 80,000 signatures in their quest to put the use of gestation stalls on the ballot of the upcoming November elections.  

At least 122,000 valid signatures are needed for the issue to become part of the ballot.  Arizona’s coalition of farmers and ranchers has taken action against the ballot through education and awareness programs asking Arizonians to refrain from signing the petition, or in the event that it goes through, to vote against the referendum.  For more details, go to www.AZfarmersranchers.org.