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Illinois Beef Association is worried about new HSUS action guide for use in schools

4-13-10
Agri News Online
By MARALEE JOHNSON
Illinois Beef Association
Executive Vice President

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Who has been working tirelessly in the name of pet shelters to garner large sums of money and then use it on their own agenda?

Who has tentacles in other groups — Global Animal Partnership, etc. —to extend their agenda in a myriad of ways.

And who is now making it easy for young people to get involved in the anti-food animal movement?

You guessed it — HSUS. I've discussed before how effective they are by only telling part of the story, which has helped them ensnare millions of dollars.

Now, they have put together "Mission: Humane" Action Guide for middle and high schoolers to help them protect animals.

This is a step-by-step guide to organizing, promoting, fundraising, involving influencers and speaking out in your community and with Congress to affect change.

Here are a couple of ideas from their manual for schools: "Ask a natural food store manager to supply samples of vegetarian foods as well as household items and cosmetics that were not tested on animals. With this display, include information about factory farming and animal testing along with alternative products. Hopefully you'll encourage others to become compassionate about animals."

Or, ask your librarian to get animal-friendly books in the library, which they are only too happy to suggest on their website and then set up a display encouraging students to read them.

By the way, there are references on almost every page of HSUS' 37-page manual to go to their website for more helpful tidbits. It's definitely not the information I want exposed to young people who are already disconnected from food animal production.

Are you seeing how this is going? We used to see "self awareness" of social or environmental issues happen at college age and as a result some of the new enlightened turned to vegetarianism because of their newfound beliefs.

Now, with the "forced maturity" of our society the age to capture these young hearts and minds has rolled back to middle school and earlier.

The manual also suggests to pre-teens and teens how you can "make a difference — simply by how you choose your next meal!"

According to their stats, "Nearly 10 billion land animals are raised and killed for food each year…and they are not raised on Old MacDonald's Farm. They are crowded in massive facilities known as factory farms. But just like dogs and cats, chickens, pigs, turkeys and cows have their own personalities and feel joy and pain."

To these impressionable, HSUS teaches the 3 R's — Reduce, Refine and Replace. I think you can probably guess where this is headed.

They suggest eating 10 percent less meat animals per year in order for 10 billion more animals to live.

If you're hooked on meat, then perhaps if you refine your choices, it will be better for the animals — "know that all animal products are not equal when it comes to animal welfare. For example, the chicken, egg, turkey, and pork industries tend to be far more abusive to animals than the beef industry."

And finally to reduce animal suffering, they suggest kids replace animal protein with vegetarian options.

Why do I tell you this? Because I wouldn't be surprised if these action manuals and "good animal reading" were appearing in your school or schools near you.

If we stay quiet and hide our heads in the sand (don't ask for equal information to be taught/ read), then we are helping perpetuate the HSUS agenda.

If they achieve their agenda, then there will be less need for food animal, corn and soybean production in the U.S. And frankly, I prefer to eat American meat.

So check with your kids or check with schools in the area to see what they're teaching. Some schools have websites, so scan that information; you might be surprised to see some of their agendas.

IBA sponsors the Masters of Beef Advocacy. There are six courses online that you can take at your leisure.

It will give you lots of great information to use in setting the record straight, addressing the misinformation of HSUS and telling your beef story.

To learn more about this program, email Penny Bliler at pbliler@shelbywb.coop.

Daren Williams, NCBA, will be doing a graduation/training at ISU in Bloomington on May 1. We'd welcome your attendance. Please contact Penny.

Pork producers have Operation Mainstreet to proactively tell their story. Dairymen have a similar program.

If you're not involved with the beef industry, get involved with your specie specific program.

And if you are a grain farmer, we would welcome you to the MBA program. What you do will benefit both of us.

If it's to be, it's up to us!

P.S. Have a safe planting season, we're counting on you to feed Illinois livestock.