Dear Editor, I just read your interview with Kay Johnson Smith, CEO for the Animal Ag Alliance, regarding her appearance in the National Geographic film called “Inside Secret America: Animal Undercover,” and I would like to share some insights about this.
I’ve been tracking and studying the animal-rights movement for several years. What happened – a biased outcome that highly favored the animal-rights view – came as absolutely no surprise. In fact, I fully anticipated it.All animal owners are under attack from these groups, some more subtly than others.
The problem is mainstream media and non-agricultural media that do not want to hear “our side,” let alone report it. It is time animal owners wake up and realize that the animal-rights movement is just one part of a much larger movement; it’s not about animal issues but rather people control issues.
Animals are used as an emotional weapon to enable them to pass laws and regulations that, little by little, take our freedoms and rights away.
Animal-rights personnel have infiltrated many positions that directly affect animal owners, such as the dietary and human nutrition, veterinary and legislative fields, and even the USDA.
National Geographic, even though it is not a government entity, has been infiltrated by these groups, as with many other private media, and molds and instills ideas into consumers.
Mainstream media thrives on reporting shocking “blood and guts” stories, and the act of humanely raising animals – something we dovirtually all the time – is far too boring to report and doesn’t sell well.The point is that we cannot beat them at their own game; we must become our own media.
Unlike the animal-rights groups that have access to millions of dollars and unlimited time on their hands, we don’t. So, we must plan on changing tacticsto counter them.
We need to go directly to the consumer – in stores and restaurants – by exposing the dollars and cents that animal-rights groups are costing them and exposing the lies perpetuated by these groups.
Colleen Michaels
Dairy farmer
New Matamoras, Ohio
Dear Editor,
George Mueller, in his letter to the editor in the Sept. 1 issue of Progressive Dairyman, writes:
“Low prices do serve a very valuable function. … Quite frankly, the message of low milk prices is that it may be time to grow corn and beans instead of milking cows.
It might be time to get out of a business that you are not very good at.It might be that your banker does not like your lack of profits and asks you to put off that expansion.It might be that fewer young folks are attracted into the dairy business.”
Mr. Mueller has thrown down his challenges to the rest of this country’s dairy farmers by saying, in essence, “I will be the last dairyman standing. I have more money to lose than you, and even though our existing national milk-producing infrastructure may be destroyed, along with the other 49,000 dairy farmers, I can survive.”
This wrong-headed cannibalistic attitude that Mr. Mueller has is exactly why the National Dairy Producers Organization (NDPO) was formed.
NDPO believes we need to preserve our existing national milk-producing infrastructure and as many of the remaining 49,000 dairy farmers that we can.
Quite frankly, Mr. Mueller, we are all pretty darn good at what we do and I seriously doubt that in the endyou will be the last dairyman standing. PD
Bob Krucker
Dairy farmer
NDPO board member
Jerome, Idaho
