Browbeating Legislators

The squeaky wheel gets oiled. If you continue to refuse to accept current conditions, if you maintain a vigil of complaining, sometimes you can get things done that would not ordinarily get done. I have an office where I sit in the Idaho Farm Bureau. Outside in the parking lot from time to time there are cars parked with license plates like 3A or 6B and then some symbol for the Idaho legislature. It turns out that legislators who have strong ties to Idaho agriculture park their cars in our parking lot because it is right next to the Statehouse where lobbying and legislation occur. Well apparently, zipping around the Statehouse are three bills attempting to change or amend our cruelty to animal laws and somehow our ag-gag laws are being dragged into the mix.

Last week, you heard Animal Agriculture Alliance spokesperson Hannah Thompson talking about the dis-information that floats around out there: "There are a lot of groups out there that put out a lot of misinformation about the industry because they know consumers are disconnected from the food supply, they don't have a lot of exposure to it or first-hand knowledge. So these activists whose and the goal is to turn people away from eating meat, to end the animal agriculture industry are willing to use a lot of different tactics in doing that. These undercover videos we see is one tactic they are using. They either take incidents out of context, they take industry practices that they may not be familiar with and put dark lighting and ominous music to make them look like something that they are not. In very rare cases there are instances of abuse but rather than turn them in immediately, they wait for weeks or months so that they can hit the news cycle just right and get a lot of attention for their cause. Unfortunately they are not really about protecting animals or animal care, they are about damaging and eventually ending the industry.