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It would be easy to write off these comments about the Puppy Mill proposition and the Humane Society as simply the usual rightwing irrationality:
Egg farming is now facing extinction because vegan activists and terrorists are determined to abolish animal agriculture in our country.
–Missourians for Animal Care
If the HSUS gets Prop B passed in Missouri, “they will come after livestock…’and shut agriculture down.“
–State rep. Brian Munzlinger
“HSUS has decimated the egg industry forcing chicken farmers out of business … HSUS eliminated the pork industry. (Wondering why pork prices are going sky high?) They’ve also crippled numerous other agribusinesses – dragging connected industries down with them.”
–Tea Party member Joseph Wurzelbacher
But instead of just hooting derisively at these nutjobs, you might do well to understand the economic motivation for their drivel, because money always drives right wing politics. Joe the Plumber, with his grandiose claim that HSUS is “using the referendum process to slowly, systematically eliminate food production in the United States”, is more than just a bozo with an end-of-the-world Ouija board; he’s part of agribusiness’s campaign to block any interference with its stranglehold on agriculture. Joe is referring to ballot initiatives that passed in Florida and California. A 2002 Florida vote banned pork producers from keeping pregnant sows in gestation crates–in other words, penned up so tight that they couldn’t move. The 2008 California Proposition 2 banned “the confinement of farm animals in a manner that does not allow them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs.”
The profits of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in those states suffered, and CAFO owners became indignant that the meddling Humane Society had gotten citizens boohooing over a few ill treated pigs, for god’s sake. Big ag also resents maudlin tree huggers for whining that CAFOs pollute and then refuse to pay for the damage. The Missouri Sierra Club, for example, yammers about McDonald County having plants operated by Tyson, Simmons and MoArk, with CAFOs for all three corporations. Every water body in that county is on the impaired water bodies list. And, not content with moaning about cruelty to animals and damage to the environment, activists complain that CAFOs harm human health with the hormones and antibiotics that they pump into those animals. Ask any exec at Tyson, and he’ll tell you that those namby-pambies are always harping about the wrong stuff.
Well. Cargill, Con-Agra, Purina, Monsanto, Nabisco, Kellogg, Nestle–the whole multi-billion dollar food/feed/distribution industry–aren’t about to let a few marginal, relatively impotent sentimentalists bellyache loud enough to interfere with their hegemony. So here’s the plan: be a victim and instill fear. (Stick with traditional Republican values.) Act as if li’l ole HSUS and PETA (with its anti-fly-swatting ideology) could cripple American agriculture. Pretend they want to starve everybody.
Say what?!
I know, but that’s their story, and you know how tenacious Republicans are about sticking to an insane assertion until it finally takes hold.
Case in point: I sat at the state Senate hearing last spring about the proposed puppy mill reform and heard every member of the ag committee–including Democrats Wes Shoemyer and Frank Barnitz–vent about urban interference in rural matters. They bemoaned what a tough time they’re having, as farmers, making ends meet. Would that be because CAFOs are driving them out of business? It would. But they don’t seem to notice that.
By the way, there’s no indication that the Humane Society intends to target CAFOs in this state. Hell, it probably won’t even get a toehold on cruelty to puppies. The Republican legislature is laying plans to override the voters’ will. Rightwing paranoia that the puppy mills are an opening salvo against all agriculture in the state makes no more sense than their claims, in 1998, that banning cockfighting would end all hunting and fishing. But hey, who remembers that silly claim anymore? That fight is ancient history.
We’re in the now. And right now, regulating puppy mills in Missouri will starve all Americans. And don’t you forget it.
…”slippery slope” arguments always seem to work quite well for the usual suspects:
Alliance for Truthiness: dumbing down Proposition B
Alliance for Truthiness: dumbing down Proposition B, part 2
And The Daily Show covered the opponents of Proposition B because, well, satire is dead: No One Could Have Predicted That The Daily Show Would Mock Prop B Opponents
Not that Prop B has anything to do with human food production but perhaps it should. I am a consumer of protein products (meat, fish, eggs, etc.), but I prefer my animal food subjects to be treated decently so that they can be calm, comfortable, and happy while living. If they are stressed out and supermedicated, the quality of nourishment that we humans get from them is inferior if not detrimental to our health. Check out the taste difference from free range chicken eggs and eggs produced by tormented wire sitters. Have you never heard that deer who are hunted by being run to the ground have the taste of their meat spoiled by the physiological condition (adrenaline rush)induced by running in fear. I think that’s why hunters sit in trees and wait for the deer to walk up calmly. Frankly I’d rather pay a bit more for good quality food produced humanely and also anyone is better off obtaining a pet puppy from a conscientious breeder of good quality, well cared for puppies than taking a chance on a poorly started, cheaply cared for
puppy-mill product.
Corpublicans are setting the stage for repeal or defunding of the new cruelty prevention act by having folks write letters to the editor in local papers all over the state. The talking points are always the same, so it’s obvious they are getting their script from the Farm Bureau or some other special interest group.
Watch for those letters and refute the crazy charges they make. Better yet, write one congratulating MO voters on evolving to the point where they can care enough about how puppies and mommy dogs are treated that they are happy to support more rigorous inspections. When the nasty breeders quit, the good ones will make more profit and we’ll have fewer sick dogs left by the side of the road because the owners no longer wanted to pay the vet bills for them. Sick dogs are not good business.
The coalition that worked for passage of Prop B has not gone away. They are preparing for the fight to repeal it.
Watch for notices from them and don’t let the heartless jerks in MO legislature undo what took a lot of work on our part.
Ironically, it’s the tea partiers who claim that the govt isn’t listening to the American people who are now claiming that those of us who voted yes on Prop B didn’t know what we were doing. Arghhh………….
Isn’t it odd that the very people running mom and pop farms out of business are big Ag yet the argument the Repubs drag out is that Prop B will cost jobs. Huh? No, Big Ag drove family farms out of business and now they are using them as cover to fight against the only people standing up to them in mistreating animals.
This is a classic case of Big Ag’s 3 card monty keeping rural voters from realizing who REALLY cost them jobs and their farms.
But don’t let the Repubs off the hook. They are supporting the continued torture of puppies and heartache of people who buy sick puppies to advance their own selfish aims. Shame on them!