Chewing The Cud

Sent to me, courtesy of Drovers...

The American Farm Bureau Federation and Oklahoma State University recently surveyed more than 1,000 individuals across the United States to measure their opinions about farm-animal welfare. OSU economist F. Bailey Norwood notes several key lessons from the survey results. First, the public cares more about human welfare and farmers than they do farm animals. Respondents rated the financial well-being of U.S. farmers as twice as important as the well-being of farm animals, and poverty, health care and food safety as five times more important. In addition, consumers understand animal welfare is a result of their shopping decisions in addition to farmer decisions. They realize they have a choice of purchasing meat from traditional production or, if they prefer, paying for meat from alternative production systems.

According to Farm Bureau release, analysis of the survey results indicates respondents consider the suffering of one human to be equivalent to the suffering of 11,500 farm animals, and a majority of respondents believe producers should be compensated if forced to comply with higher farm-animal welfare standards. Results like these show that while activist groups make headlines, most mainstream consumers still understand and appreciate the role of animal agriculture in food production.

What do you guys think about this? I think this is positive news about the human element. We really do care about people, but let's not underestimate the power of the animal activists movement to abolish animal agriculture....