DHIA/Records

I just got off the phone with a Richmond reporter who wanted some comment on that story line. He picked up the thread from USA Today, where I had seen it as well. The whole idea is catchy for those who don’t know much about dairy farming. Cows with names would obviously be happier. How would WE feel if we just a number? The whole thing is a pretty goofy idea to dairy farmers who know very well that it takes much more than a name to keep a cow well fed, healthy, comfortable, and productive. Besides, how much time can a busy dairy farmer afford to spend coming up with names if there are 250 cows to be milked two or three times a day? This topic isn’t a typical one for DHI Notes. I chose to use it because of two talks I have heard in the last couple of weeks about the need for farmers, particularly those who raise animals, to reclaim a high moral purpose in their life’s work. Dr. Wes Jamison of the University of Florida and Palm Beach Atlantic University made these presentations. He has some really good ideas about how to respond to those in society today – read PETA, Humane Society, et al - who want the public to question the morality of what livestock farmers do. He points out that a growing percentage of relatively wealthy, well-fed, maybe even bored Americans look on animals as equal in status to humans. They are vulnerable to the guilt trip that animals must die for them to eat meat. And God forbid that the meat come from a horse! Californians voted in November to ban egg crates, thus guaranteeing that egg production in California will occur somewhere else, where confinement is unrestrained. Dairy farmers threatened in some locations with regulations to leave calves with their mothers for 30 days. Goodness knows we can’t trust a dairy farmer. They don’t care enough about cows to give them names (see above)! Reality is that what dairy farmers do is morally good. Milk in the US is abundant, affordable, healthy, safe, and the single most nutritious human food item available on the planet. Yes, dairy animals are given numbers (or maybe not even that), confined, “exploited” to meet human need, but it is OK to do so. Animals die so that we can eat. That’s why we exist as a species with these highly energy intensive brains we carry around. Those of us in agriculture need to constantly assure our increasingly urban consumers that you can love a lap dog AND enjoy steak without the hangover of that guilt that “animal rights” impose on them.

DHI Notes...