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Farmers may be losing battle with animal rights activists Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Agri News staff writer
ST. PAUL -- Science and economics won't defeat activists, a Dordt College professor says.
Wes Jamison, an associate agriculture professor at the Sioux Center, Iowa, college, said the animal rights activism movement seeks to end animal agriculture as it's known.
The movement is winning, Jamison said, and will continue to do so unless agriculture establishes the moral and scientific high ground.
Jamison spoke at last week's Agri-Growth Council meeting in St. Paul.
When the animal rights movement emerged in the 1980s, it was out for headlines, he said. Fur coats were spray painted red. People ran naked through the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Their formula for success was to exploit the vacuum between the perception and the use of animals. In modern society, there is a vacuum between animal use and public knowledge, he said.
In the 1990s, the movement tested language to see what elicited a negative response. It learned to win locally by getting on local zoning boards and constant editorializing. It divided animal use groups with single-issue activism.
Their power is greatest at the local level where the power of animal agriculture is diffuse, Jamison said. They have more members, more civic support and are more organized and more intense.
For now, the movement is thwarted, but persistent at the federal level. Animal use groups are sensitized, but unfocused, he said. The goal of the animal rights movement is passage of the Federal Animal Welfare Act.
That's animal agriculture's Alamo, Jamison said. If it passes, confinement agriculture will cease.
The classical response of agriculture to convene a panel and pour money on the problem won't work to fix this one. They're winning in the court of public opinion because of pre-existing social conditions. Agriculture is an island in an urban sea, Jamison said.
Urban residents view animals as companions and increasingly as members of the family. No longer are animals experienced in an agrarian way.
Humans are projecting human qualities onto animals, he said, showing a photograph of a dog dressed in human clothes. Parents who've read Babe or Bambi to their children have infected their offspring with the virus of animal rights, he said.
Animal agriculture can't eliminate the vacuum, nor can it change the social forces, Jamison said. If animal agriculture hopes to win it must establish the moral high ground and tell people about it relentlessly. "Why should you be allowed by society to do what you do?" Jamison asked. "If you can't answer, society will increasingly seek to limit what you do." |
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