Ron Eade, The Ottawa Citizen, 2006.09.06

A distressed mother sent me a plea for help the other day after discovering her 22-year-old daughter on the Internet, reading radical websites posted by animal rights activists.

As you may expect, the vitriolic hyberbole convinced her daughter to immediately stop eating meat. She, in turn, tried to convert her mother.

This misplaced sense of moral rectitude is largely due to a tsunami of misinformation that has overwhelmed our pop culture in matters concerning food. (No surprise, really, considering that a scant two per cent of Canadians today are farmers compared to more than half the population a century ago.)

In short, many consumers have only a vague idea about how the food they eat gets into the butcher shop or supermarket.

They identify chicken by a brand name that comes hermetically sealed in shrink wrap. They believe organic is automatically better, and anything else is toxic. They dismiss genetically modified crops as “frankenfoods” despite no evidence to support the hysteria. They think farm animals are routinely mistreated, and that chemicals used in agriculture are evil with no possible benefit.

While many today harbour idyllic notions about the wonderful old ways, complete with black-and-white images of Dorothy skipping across a dusty barnyard in Kansas somewhere, the reality is the old ways were not necessarily the best ways. In the old days, farming was backbreaking and dangerous work producing poor and undependable yields that could not support today’s urban society.

In 1900 a typical farmer produced enough food to feed only 10 people, and 50 cents of every dollar earned was spent on food. Today’s farmer can feed 120 people, and food costs have fallen to just 12.5 cents of every dollar earned.

“I would like to console my daughter but I don’t have real information,” the reader said.

“She has decided to become a vegetarian. That’s her personal decision and that’s OK, I just want her to make the decision with more information.”

Well, help is on the way.

For the record, I do not quibble with those who choose to become vegetarian — as long as they don’t set out to inflict their ways on anyone else. (Truth is, most of us probably eat too much meat anyway.)

But I am alarmed by those who would foist radical views on impressionable minds with no effort to share fair, reasoned and balanced information.

I immediately directed our reader to the Ontario Farm Animal Council, which represents 40,000 Ontario farm families, for its side of the story.

Its goal is to provide information about farm animals and to show how animals really are treated and raised in Ontario. The organization is also interested in animal welfare and responsible farm animal care.

But note this basic distinction: While the animal council believes humans have a right to use animals, it also believes we have a responsibility to treat animals humanely.

By contrast, extreme animal rights activists don’t believe humans have a right to use animals for food, clothing, entertainment or medical research, period.

The farm animal council has just published a glossy 36-page booklet called The Real Dirt on Farming, where producers answer questions posed by an information-hungry, and often confused, public. Since its release in April, two printings of 15,000 copies each have been sold out and a third printing is scheduled later this month.

“The majority of questions we get are from people who are somewhat interested in where their food comes from and are just looking for information,” says Kelly Daynard, program manager at the Ontario Farm Animal council in Guelph.

“We get all kinds of requests, whether it’s kids doing a school project or someone who has happened to come across one of those fairly confusing websites.

“Our goal is to answer questions. With less than three per cent of Canadians living on farms, there’s bound to be a lot of questions.”

Parents who are concerned their children may not be getting a balanced view would do well to get a copy of this booklet, so they could at least consider the other side of the story. Then, maybe, people can make informed choices.

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Posted by Admin on July 19th, 2009 :: Filed under Canada, Consumers, Education and public awareness, Family vs factory farming, Media
Tags :: activists, animal rights, Canada, Farmers, food, misconceptions, Ontario, Vegetarian
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