Oprah tackles livestock treatment; ag industry assesses impact

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

Although it was widely aired on CTV, Winfrey’s show on Tuesday about the topic didn’t start the phone ringing at the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.  “You’re the first one that’s contacted us regarding that show in particular,” said spokesperson Alison Cross. It was the same response at the Ontario Farm Animal Council although executive director Crystal Mackay said several people brought the episode to her attention before it aired.
 
Lack of caller feedback aside, both Cross and Mackay agree the episode is likely to have an impact.

“Something like Oprah has such a huge following,” said Mackay, who watched the episode. “It definitely increases profile and awareness (of livestock treatment) but it’s really tough to measure how much.” When she checked Winfrey’s website Tuesday evening, there were 600 postings about the issue. Some writers claimed the episode convinced them to alter consumption habits, she said.

Titled “How we treat the animals we eat,” the episode explored the treatment of layer hens, sows and veal calves. Controlling how these animals are housed is the focus of proposed legislation in California called Proposition 2, Standards for Confining Farm Animals. State residents will vote on it during the country’s Nov. 4 national election.

It’s not the first state to tackle the issue: in recent years Florida, Oregon, Arizona and Colorado have banned either pig gestation stalls or veal crates – and in some instances both. The European Union is  phasing out poultry battery cages by 2012.

The California legislation would require producers to give the animals enough room to turn around, lie down, stand up and fully extend their limbs. Producers would have until 2015 to comply. “This is just about basic decency,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, who argued on the show that people have an ethical obligation to allow livestock these freedoms.

If passed, the legislation would end egg production in California because of the expense involved in complying, warned Julie Buckner, a spokesperson for Californians for Safe Food, a group that’s opposing the legislation. "And in all likelihood, eggs will come from outside the U.S.—Mexico, even overseas as far as China."

The episode contrasted several different types of operations: an intensive layer farm with a free range organic egg farm; a large-scale pig farm with 500-sow organic pig farm; and contributed footage of a substandard veal farm with a beef cow-calf farm that allocates a third of its annual calf production to veal.

Carolynne Griffith was not able to view the episode but the chair of Egg Farmers of Ontario wonders just how much the show will affect consumer opinion. “A lot of consumers are not too worried about where their food comes from as long as it’s cheap,” she said.

Of greater concern is that Proposition 2 made California’s election ballot. “That’s huge,” she said.

Griffith bristled at any suggestion that current layer hen housing approaches are cruel.

She noted research shows the cages lower the risk of disease for birds and people, and offer producers a way to control the birds’ diet. Operations in Ontario are smaller than their U.S. counterparts (the average Ontario operation is 22,500 birds; in the United States it takes 100,000 birds to be counted as a producer), have long participated in an industry-wide tracing system, and, by the end of 2008, must maintain a national on-farm food safety protocol.

“Farmers never want to put their livelihood or the health of their animals in jeopardy,” she said.

Mackay said Proposition 2 raises an important lesson for Canadians. “Do we wait and ignore the issues and basically allow it to get to legislation to tell us how to farm or do we provide enough choices openly ourselves with industry standards, codes of practice, on farm animal care assessments with third-party auditors?”

“I think if consumers feel they have enough choices they’d rather not see legislation,” she said. BF