Animal Ag Alliance To Yellow Tail: Please Reconsider
02/12/2010 11:05AM

In an effort to assist Yellow Tail Wines in determining its best opportunity to help animals, the Animal Agriculture Alliance has written a letter this week to the company’s owner, Cassella Wines. Yellow Tail Wines announced last week their intent to donate $100,000 to the Humane Society of the United States.

Yellow Tail’s announcement has generated considerable controversy among livestock producers and a backlash against the wine company. “The uproar over the last week has shown that you will undoubtedly lose a significant segment of your American customer base if you continue with your pledge of support for HSUS,” the letter says.

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Posted by OFAC on February 16th, 2010 :: Filed under Activism, Consumers, Letters to the Editor, Vegan, Vegetarian
Tags :: activists, animal rights, Consumers, HSUS, misconceptions, Vegetarian

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January 6, 2010 – Happy New Year to the readers of this blog. This article was printed in the Toronto Star over the holiday season and we think this columnist got the issue exactly right. Farm animals aren’t pets and they definitely aren’t 4-legged people. And, with only 1 in every 46 Canadians now actively farming, there is a huge disconnect between farmers and consumers. Enjoy the read – OFAC

The annoying tendency to anthropomorphize animals is likely from our lost connection to rural life

by Connie Woodcock, Out There

Toronto Sun, December 20, 2009

When I was a little girl, I fell in love with a series of books about a pig named Freddy and his barnyard friends on the Bean farm in New York State.

I read every one of the 26 books available in my library over and over. I can remember peering at a New York road map in search of fictional Centerboro, the town supposedly nearest Freddy and his friends.

Written between the 1920s and 1950s, the Freddy books disappeared for a while but they were republished a few years ago and there’s even an association called The Friends of Freddy with its own website. I’ve bought several Freddy reprints and reread them still.

I mention this because much as I loved Freddy, Mrs, Wiggins the cow, Hank the horse with rheumatism in his hind leg, and Charles the henpecked rooster, we all grow up and realize there’s no such thing as a talking animal. At least, most of us do.

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Posted by OFAC on January 6th, 2010 :: Filed under Activism, Canada, Consumers, Education and public awareness, Farm life, Sustainability of the family farm
Tags :: activists, animal care, animal welfare, Canada, Consumers, Farmers, misconceptions, PETA

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Lilian Schaer
Owen Sound Sun Times
October 19 2009

I ‘ve started noticing a bit of a trend in popular media — the bashing of farmers, especially those who grow crops we all depend on.

These horrible people — or so the theme goes — are ruining the environment by producing large volumes of corn and soybeans and they’re making us fat to boot.

There are two sides to every story and the farmer’s is rarely heard or included in the barrage of popular media and consumer criticism about agriculture. So let me debunk a few of these myths.

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Posted by OFAC on October 21st, 2009 :: Filed under Canada, Consumers, Education and public awareness, Media
Tags :: Canada, Consumers, Farmers, food, Media, misconceptions

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Steve Buist, Hamilton Spectator, 2008.06.07

I left the Great Lakes packing plant on May 12 with four boxes of meat piled onto the back seat of my car. Piggy — my pig, the pig I had helped raise and care for — was packed inside those boxes.

Six months of his life, six months of my life, all reduced to four cardboard boxes on my back seat.

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Posted by Admin on July 23rd, 2009 :: Filed under Canada, Consumers, Farm life, Pork
Tags :: Consumers, Farmers, Media, Ontario, pigs, Pork

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Luisa D’Amato, Waterloo Region Record, 02 Aug 2008

It’s Sandi’s turn to be milked.

She stands patiently in the barn, her pale-pink udder bulging between her long legs, as dairy farmer Terry Lebold wipes her teats with antibacterial solution and attaches four suction cups to them.

Within five minutes, about 20 litres of milk has been vacuumed out of her, the white liquid whirling through transparent plastic tubes. Lebold touches her hind flank lightly, disconnects the machine and quickly dips her teats in a reddish iodine solution to prevent infection.

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Posted by Admin on July 22nd, 2009 :: Filed under Canada, Dairy cattle, Farm life, Veal
Tags :: agriculture, Canada, Consumers, dairy cattle, Farmers, food, milk, Ontario

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BY TOBI COHEN, OTTAWA SUN, 2003.06.22

Pulling up to Luc and Louise Secours’ Bainsville farm one would never guess it was home to as many as 6,000 piglets at any given time.
It’s located on a large chunk of property a kilometre or so east of their
family farm home which stands perched atop a small hill next door to their chicken coop along Concession 2 in tiny South Glengarry town.

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Posted by Admin on July 21st, 2009 :: Filed under Animal health, Consumers, Family vs factory farming, Housing, Innovation and technology, Pork, Regulations
Tags :: activists, agriculture, Consumers, environment, Farmers, misconceptions, Ontario, pigs, Pork

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Crystal Mackay, Ontario Farm Animal Council, Guelph; The Hamilton Spectator, 2007.01.17; Letter to the Editor

Re: ‘Paralyzed by choice at the egg cooler’ (Opinion, Jan. 12)

We’re fortunate to live in a country with so many food choices, in a world where many have little food at all. But many of the statements in the article on eggs need some perspective from farmers.

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Posted by Admin on July 21st, 2009 :: Filed under Family vs factory farming, Housing, Letters to the Editor, Poultry
Tags :: activists, animal care, Consumers, eggs, Farmers, food, Poultry

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Source:Farmscape for February 5, 2009 (Episode 3095)

A Washington based communications strategist is encouraging livestock producers to harness some of the same strategies used by animal rights activists to get their message out.

Production agriculture has increasingly become the target of animals rights activists who have been extremely successful in bringing about legislative restrictions on livestock producers.

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Posted by Admin on July 21st, 2009 :: Filed under Consumers, Education and public awareness
Tags :: activists, agriculture, Consumers, education, Farmers, Media, misconceptions

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Green Acres comes to the Western Fair as some kids see a cow for the first time.

BY APRIL ROBINSON, SPECIAL TO SUN MEDIA, London Free Press, 2007.09.15

A black cow — a prized Limousin heifer — rests in a pen beside a raffle table at the Western Fair. “Win $1200 or Freezer Beef,” a sign reads.

The sight caught 23-year-old Lilla Pferschy of London by surprise.

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Posted by Admin on July 19th, 2009 :: Filed under Consumers, Education and public awareness
Tags :: cattle, Consumers, education, Farmers, food

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Farmers, ranchers urged to help public understand care

By Mitch Lies, Capital Press, December 18, 2008

LINCOLN CITY, Ore. – Educating the public about agriculture – while worthy – no longer is adequate, according to an American Farm Bureau Federation executive.

Mace Thornton, deputy director of public relations for the AFBF, on Dec. 9 told participants at the 76th Annual Oregon Farm Bureau Convention that the Bureau has started a program encouraging producers to interact with the public – particularly on the topic of animal agriculture.

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Posted by Admin on July 19th, 2009 :: Filed under Consumers, Education and public awareness
Tags :: activists, animal welfare, animals, Consumers, education

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