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.

---

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

---

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.

---

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

---

Luisa D’Amato, Waterloo Region Record, July 12, 2008

The hogs are just a few minutes away from death.

High-pitched screams pierce the warm air at Conestoga Meat Packers, a pork processing plant near Breslau.

Men with plastic paddles push the dusty animals, each as heavy as a football player, toward a covered, metal passageway.

---

Posted by Admin on July 22nd, 2009 :: Filed under Canada, Meat/slaughter plants, Pork
Tags :: Farmers, food, meat, pigs, Pork

---

By Mannix Porterfield, THE REGISTER-HERALD (BECKLEY, W.V.)
Aug 16/06

FAIRLEA, W.Va.— Go back in time, say a century or so, even before the iron horse made its debut, and fetch a poultry farmer, pluck him off his Currier and Ives setting, then escort him into a modern chicken barn.

---

Posted by Admin on July 21st, 2009 :: Filed under Innovation and technology, Poultry
Tags :: animal care, education, Farmers, food, Poultry

---

OTTAWA, Aug. 22 /CNW Telbec/ – Working in one of the country’s most dynamic agriculture industries, Canada’s egg farmers have had little time to rest. Just ask Laurent Souligny, 64, a proud egg farmer and chairman of the national egg farmers’ organization, Egg Farmers of Canada (EFC).

---

Posted by Admin on July 21st, 2009 :: Filed under Animal health, Canada, Poultry
Tags :: agriculture, animal care, Biosecurity, Canada, eggs, Farmers, food, Housing, misconceptions, Poultry

---

BY CRYSTAL MACKAY, ONTARIO FARM ANIMAL COUNCIL, London Free Press, 2006.04.22; Letter to the Editor

Regarding the letter, Meat products harmful to the environment (April 20):

I’d like to do something crazy and write in favour of something, which seems to be out of vogue these days. Eating meat is actually good for the environment and makes ecological sense.

---

Posted by Admin on July 21st, 2009 :: Filed under Letters to the Editor, Vegetarian
Tags :: environment, Farmers, food, meat, Vegetarian

---

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.

---

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

---

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.

---

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

---

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.)

---

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

---

By KIM HARLESS, February 26, 2007, Farmers Advance (OHIO)

The public has many misconceptions about the modern food system. Many of those misconceptions have been developed by authors with fine intentions, but a serious lack of understanding.

Unfortunately, once a so-called “fact” is in print, it is often repeated endlessly and used to build other “facts.”

---

Posted by Admin on July 19th, 2009 :: Filed under Beef cattle, Education and public awareness, Vegetarian
Tags :: agriculture, animal rights, beef, Farmers, food, misconceptions

---