animal welfare

Should farmers be embarrassed to talk about money?

/ dairymilkmaid / 4 Comments

A very thought-provoking piece by Terry Etherton deserves some discussion in dairy circles, I think.

Is it considered a little shabby for dairy farmers to be concerned with profit? Certainly, animal activists are quick to label farmers as greedy at the expense of their animals and the environment. Their web sites and advertisements paint “profit” and “money” as very dirty words indeed.

In contrast, Terry Etherton makes the point very well that:

“My perspective is that sustainable should first be viewed through the ‘lens’ of economic sustainability. Farms are businesses. If they don’t make money they close…pretty simple.”

“However, sustainable gets used in a myriad of confusing ways. For example, some in society talk about sustainable in the context of this being the ‘best’ food production practice to embrace. I am sure many readers have seen the marketing message: organic food production is more sustainable than other agricultural production practices and, therefore, better.”

Mr Etherton is right and Australian dairy farms are even more precariously balanced than their US counterparts, receiving no taxpayer-funded subsidies at all. We do have to be keenly focussed on the almighty dollar to survive. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean we cut corners when it comes to animal wellbeing.

A dairy farmer with a dislike of animals would soon quit. We work with them all day, 365 days of the year. They’d also quite likely get “sacked by the bank” because being mean is not profitable. Our livestock, our land and our people are our greatest assets – generations of farmers and cows know that.

So, how do we respond when we are labelled as “greedy farmers who exploit animals”? The US experience is that it’s best to say little about the link between profitability and animal welfare, preferring instead to focus on the values that we as farmers hold.

I agree because it’s true that values are much more powerful than profit. When the chips are down during drought, fire or pestilence (so to speak), it is the farm family that goes without, not the cows.

How transparent should farmers be?

/ dairymilkmaid / 2 Comments

There is no counter argument out there. Could it be because there is no humane practice?

Can’t take your word for it. You need to explain your practices and where your product goes. What happens to your male calves? Etc.

Show me! Tell me! I would like to keep consuming dairy.

The campaign against you is growing.

Honestly. I’m very open to being educated. It was an FYI. “You” = “dairy industry”.

One of your biggest hurdles is that like the cattle industry, u appear secretive. Transparency might be too late.

These tweets from a journalist with a self-proclaimed “love for our living planet and my opposition to her corporate destruction” has made an understandable choice: to believe a charity dedicated to the welfare of animals rather than an “industry”. Yes, although 98 per cent of Australian dairy farms are family farms where cows roam free, the perception is that we act as an industry in perpetrating animal cruelty on factory farms in the name of profit.

Why do I say it’s understandable? Do a little test to see for yourself. Google “bobby calf”.

Animal welfare organisations dominate the results. The people who live and breathe animal care – farmers – are missing. Our voices are not being heard.

I don’t really believe that Animals Australia campaigns will cause a noticeable drop in milk consumption because Aussies love to drink milk but these activists and their followers have worked hard to win the attention of policy makers.

Some of their views are valid, some are ludicrous, and some of the policymakers may well be swayed to adopt them. If we want to be able to operate farms free from a tangle of compliance or, worse, mandatory practices that are actually bad for animal welfare, we must learn from our detractors.

Animals Australia knows that science and logic do not resonate when it comes to animal welfare. Emotions quite rightly do because animal welfare only triumphs when the custodians hold the care of their animals close to their hearts. And because everyone knows that politicians are quick to follow popular opinion, we cannot be satisfied with lobbying in Canberra. We’ve got to tell the story like it is to anyone who will listen.

Tonight, Twitter forum AgChatOz will host a discussion on bobby calf welfare and other dairy practices. I will be there (baby bedtime permitting) and I hope lots of other dairy farmers will be too.

Ashamed to be a dairy farmer today

/ dairymilkmaid / 13 Comments

Yesterday, two industry representatives and a dairy farmer spoke about the treatment of bull calves on Australia’s Radio National program, Bush Telegraph.

It made Victoria’s dairy farmers appear as callous as Big Tobacco and today, I am ashamed to call myself a farmer of any description, let alone one that bludgeons premature calves to death with an axe.

The media feeds voraciously on such hideous depictions and it will be all over the internet and in the mainstream media unless something with even more news appeal happens this weekend.

This is something we can’t deal with by talking about industry standards and so on. Nobody believes that stuff. None of it resonates in the soul. We need to tell people the whole truth and how we feel about it.

And the truth is this:

I will never induce the birth of a calf unless its mother’s life depends on it. In the four years since I took over custodianship of the family farm, this hasn’t happened.

I can barely manage to hear the shot ring out as a suffering animal is euthanased humanely, even though I know it is the right thing to do.

I will always put the quality of our animals’ lives before profit.

We sell every bull calf we can to neighbours who rear them until they are big and powerful steers, even though we sacrifice income to do it this way.

The bottom line is that I will not do anything on the farm that I could not show five-year-old Zoe without any qualms. Our farm is also our home and we could not live with cruelty.

Farmer’s forums are jammed with distressed dairy farmers this morning and I spoke long into the night about it with another yesterday. I am ashamed yet I am proud to know I am not alone in this. If you are a farmer reading this, please add your voice to the news forums and don’t be afraid to tell them how your heart guides you.

Better care for bobby calves

/ dairymilkmaid / 7 Comments

There’s some good news about the welfare of our most vulnerable charges: young calves.

I hate selling any of our animals but we simply can’t keep all the bull calves. Our solution is to sell them to a neighbour over the river who grows them out until they are big, powerful two-year-olds. Not all dairy farmers have this option though and send them to market as young “bobby” calves.

For a long time now, there have been standards to ensure they are strong enough and fully fed before they leave the farm but once we hand over their custodianship, we could only rely on the decency of their buyers. The good news is that while governments have not been able to reach a consensus, the people involved with bobby calves have taken the lead and announced new national standards concerning their care.

The electronic scanning technology is already in place to make sure the standards are kept and I really hope that monitoring reveals the people who take calves from farms are already doing better than we expect.

Animal welfare is not just about dairy farmers doing the right thing

/ dairymilkmaid / 4 Comments

“If not appropriately handled, animal welfare concerns could threaten the long-term viability of several livestock industries. Even though the industries operate within their legislated requirements, there is a real risk they could lose public acceptance.”

This excerpt reportedly from a brief by the Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Department for the incoming Minister Ludwig makes sense. Farmers don’t have a monopoly on caring about animals and everyone has a right to feel comfortable that the food they’re eating is ethical. At the moment, much of that is based on trust that we farmers will do the right thing but when that trust is sufficiently shaken, Aussies will understandably demand that we are made to do the right thing.

In the wake of the Indonesian cruelty revelations, who could blame urban Australians for asking more questions about animal welfare, whether at the abattoir on the farm? Rather than being defensive about farming practices, I think it’s time to open the “farm gates” and show everyone what really goes on so they can judge how we are doing for themselves.