Voters in Ohio passed “Issue 2” on Tuesday, an effort by livestock interests in the state to head-off further action by the Humane Society of the United States. HSUS has been successful in Florida, Arizona, California and other states in getting ballot initiatives to outlaw
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the use of gestation crates for sows, calf crates and battery cages for chickens. The Ohio measure creates a livestock care standards board but some question if the action will work and other states are watching. HSUS has already stated they do not think the measure goes far enough and will continue to seek a ballot initiative in Ohio.
Kevin Murphy has Food Chain Communications and works with food companies to help them get their message to consumers. He says if the Ohio measure is part of a larger, overall plan for agriculture, great! But if it is just a single, stop-gap effort, “The pursuer is not going away.” He says the ethical care of animals is a question that is continually going to be raised and “agriculture, as a whole, has got to come together, form a strategy and it has to be long-term.”
Murphy says farmers still have a great image with the American consumer and that is something agriculture needs to build upon. For starters, get back to calling them farmers, stop using words like producer, stop using words like industry. “Industry invokes an image of a nameless, faceless entity.” He says that is why opponents use those words. One of the biggest examples of words that create a negative image is “factory farm”; Murphy says even if you don’t like larger farms, people in agriculture should never use that term to describe them. Agriculture as a whole needs to look at this and ask themselves, “Is this the type of image we want to portray?” Whatever the size of the operation, farmers need to be able to explain to consumers “Why we are doing it…and you have to have a story beyond efficiency.”
AUDIO: Kevin Murphy talks about the image of animal agriculture 10:00
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