BIG AG GAG: A ‘Rosa Parks’ Moment For Animal Welfare
Big Ag has much to hide in its zeal to shut down whistleblowers. This prompts a question: where has the press been? Isn't the agony of untold numbers of sentient creatures news?
EAMONN FINGLETON: Animal welfare is the most underestimated issue in American politics. But the issue will not remain overlooked forever. Indeed, the situation could change almost literally overnight. All that’s needed is a proverbial Rosa Parks moment, and it is probably a safe bet that such a moment awaits somewhere in the U.S. factory farm industry’s future. For the time being, however, there are too few prominent business leaders or politicians in the United States that stand to gain by taking the issue seriously. Thus, for the immediate future, Big Ag seems destined to persist with business as usual.
How to deal with all that money that Big Ag showers on its political friends?… We would be well advised to resist Big Ag’s blandishments… One thing is for sure: latter-day Republicans would be making a mistake to get too close to Big Ag… There is after all a matter of fundamental principle here. This can perhaps best be summed up in a rhetorical question: how much pain is it permissible to inflict on, for instance, billions of meek and defenseless chickens to shave a fraction of a penny off food production costs?
Another consideration is simple, plain-vanilla democracy. The American people have not been consulted on this and, as the animal welfare author Peter Singer points out, Big Ag’s excesses don’t win popularity contests. Indeed, anytime in recent years that ordinary American voters have been given the chance, they’ve come out firmly against those excesses…
In a poll conducted by the Gallup organization in 2015, more than 50 percent of Americans said they were “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about the treatment of animals. One thing is clear: nothing much is going to change for America’s factory farm animals until elected representatives on both sides of the political aisle come together in common cause.
Of course, for now there remains an impression that animal welfare is a Democrats-only issue. But as Bernard Unti of the Humane Society points out, the anti-cruelty movement did not start as an expression of partisan politics. Far from it… Indeed Henry Bergh, who in 1866 founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, was a Republican, and so too probably were many of his supporters. A shipbuilding heir, he ranks as probably the biggest figure in the American animal welfare movement’s history…
As the Virginia-based activist Ingrid Newkirk points out, Big Ag’s activities can hardly be held up as an object lesson in American-style free markets. For starters, the industry benefits hugely from various federal and state subsidies, not least sub-market charges for water and land.
A similar point has been made by John Connor Cleveland. In a commentary in National Review, he suggested that many programs administered by the Department of Agriculture have become “troughs of corruption and corporate influence.” Writing under the heading “Why Animal Welfare is a Conservative Cause” and citing in particular handouts to animal feed producers, he added: “This is nothing less than government-sponsored welfare to livestock producers, who are insulated from market shifts thanks to the low costs for their feed.”
By its own tacit, but revealing, admission, Big Ag has much to hide. The industry, in its monomaniacal zeal to shut down whistleblowers, has sought to impose so-called “Ag-gag laws” on several states. These laws have now been generally found unconstitutional but as a practical matter the press—both at state and national level—remains remarkably gun-shy.
This prompts a question: where exactly has the press been? Is the agony of untold numbers of sentient creatures news? No—not much anyway. The media would rather bow at the altar of journalistic fashion. If we are talking about, say, the difficulties of the transgender community finding suitable bathroom facilities, now that’s a different matter. That’s huge news. Hold the front page. All that said, those of us who argue for decency in our relations with animals should not give up. The one good thing about journalistic fashion is that it changes. Just ask Rosa Parks. SOURCE…
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