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Editor’s 2-cents

By Staff | Dec 18, 2009

Br-r-r-r-other it’s been cold lately. I know it’s winter in Iowa, but we really didn’t get a chance to gradually get used to the cold temps, we just got plunged into them – cold turkey, as it were.

It makes me wonder if those members of PETA, HSUS or CCI are appreciative of farmers with animals in confinement buildings on days like these.

I appreciate the CAFOs.

For some reason, these animal activist groups seem to think that housing livestock in confinements is an automatic bad thing. But if they would stop to think that those animals are in a year-round comfortable temperature, regardless if it’s minus-10 outside or 90 above.

When its warm outside, confinements can open vents and let in fresh air, but also can be closed tight in winter. They are well ventilated.

To the untrained eye, I suppose animals appear to be crowded, but they aren’t really. For instance, as pigs continue to grow, their numbers are thinned and moved to other pens so they aren’t crowded. Crowding causes stress, while stress slows growth and causes health problems.

The vast majority of Iowa livestock producers have the welfare of their animals and the impact they have on the land foremost in mind. Yes, there are a few stinkers, but they are in the vast minority.

I wish these groups would just stop to think through their biases. They should know their ranks have a few stinkers as well those who will release confined animals into the wild, when those animals have not skills in surviving out there; or those that would shoot holes into propane tanks.

Based on what I have read on their social media sites, the primary bias of animal rights members is that they are vegetarians and think the rest of the world would be better off if it were the same.

It’s like a religion with them. They are the same people, I’m sure, that would be severely offended if a Christian or Muslim would approach them saying, “I have this faith, and it would be better for you to have the same faith, so I will legislate new laws to force you into being like me. It’s for your own good and the world will be a better place.”

You think they’d go along with that? I don’t think these groups’ members would buy into that.

Yet they are doing the same thing with agriculture seeking new laws that would eventually force livestock agriculture into extinction, saying the world would be better off if we would be like them.

And I just can’t buy into that.

Have a good week.