12/08/06 Animal Terrorism

Animal Terrorism. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Everyday, the news is full of stories relating to the war on terrorism and support for our troops on foreign soils. But there is a relatively new form of terrorism that is attacking us on our own turf. Phillip Lobo is the Communication Director with the Animal Agriculture Alliance describes animal terrorism. LOBO: A process called tertiary party targeting, basically where the extremist, instead of attacking the exact target itself they attack the business that do business with it both the customers and suppliers. So the banks, the insurance companies, the people that supply maybe feed or whatever to that enterprise are then targeted and say "oh you shouldn't do business with them and if you do them we're going to do bad stuff to you" and it's terrorism, intimidation and coercion. Recently the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act was passed by the House of Representatives and was design to close loopholes in the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992. Lobo hopes to see the act signed by the President. LOBO: The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act Stops that process. It passed the Senate by unanimous consent in late September and just recently passed the House of Representatives by a very strong margin and we anticipate it being signed by the President and going into law very soon. Lobo says that many people just don't understand how agriculture fits into the restaurant and grocery chain. They want a certain product at a certain price and never consider how it is produced. Bottom line according to Lobo is education. LOBO: We need to get out and certainly in cases like Arizona we need to get out and speak with our customers about what our practices are and that we are committed to good animal welfare and the good animal welfare provides win-win solutions for the animals and for the producers and actually benefits the flow through to the final consumer because animal welfare is tied to a good product in the meat case. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.