Farmscape for April 5, 2006  (Episode 2106)

The Director of the Sioux Center, Iowa based Agricultural Stewardship Center suggests  livestock producers need to place a greater emphasis on the moral justifications for raising animals for food.

Born in 1980's the animal rights movement has been tremendously successful in raising the public's awareness of the interactions between animals and humans.

Dr. Wes Jamison, an associate professor of agriculture at Dordt College and director of the Agricultural Stewardship Center told delegates on hand yesterday for Manitoba Pork Council's annual general meeting the animal rights movement has exploited the vacuum between animal usage and public perceptions of animals and focused on the moral implications of killing animals for food.

Clip-Dr. Wes Jamison-Dordt College

As agriculture has focused on parameters of efficiency and economies of scale and competitiveness and foreign trade, things that are absolutely required, they've tended to view the animal as objects, as means of production but society around us has changed.

They have increasingly come to view animals as something other than an object and so we're going to have to change along with that and certainly address that.

Now, what can we do?

What we have to do in agriculture is give people permission to both love animals as family members and to eat them as food.

We have to provide a moral rationale that allows them to do that.

Really the raison d'etre of animal welfare and animal rights groups have been to make that argument against us, see look what

they're doing to these animals that are just like your friends.

They've been trying to shine a light on that difference between how we produce animals and how urban culture experiences them so we've got to step in there and give a narrative, a story as to why people can use animals for food and entertainment.

Dr. Jamison suggests, while it's critical for livestock producers to be able to justify their businesses in terms of both science and economics as a matter of survival, when it comes to the public's perception, the moral aspects of the debate are even more important.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council