No, not ‘meat.’ Or ‘beef.’ Or ‘pork.’ An activist group is resurrecting a campaign from the past: A boycott of veal, and its accusations are as far-fetched now as they were 20 years ago.
Not a day goes by without a slew of solicitations arriving in my mailbox.
And endless stream of oversize postcards with a breathless pitch for some local candidate, complete with bullet point promises to solve even the most persistent problems and four-color photo of the candidate and his/her loving family looking like the head of the household just won the Mega Millions jackpot.
Then there are the well-stuffed envelopes with urgent pleas plastered on the outside: “Open immediately.” “Your help is needed!” And the classic “Don’t Discard This Message!”
The latter of which falls into the same category as “Whatever you do, please don’t throw me into that briar patch!”
Then there was a recent mailing about a subject I presumed had fallen off the animal activist agenda — but apparently not.
On the front was a photo of what appeared to be a three-month-old Holstein calf, with a puzzled expression on its face that, if captioned, would be something like, “Hey, I thought you bringing me a treat; what’s with the camera?”
Inside was a plea to “Stop the Torture: BOYCOTT VEAL,” a message from the Humane Farming Association, which has conducted various campaigns over the years, most notably a push to demonize the practice of using crates to raise veal calves.
After boasting about how the group has “achieved an unprecedented drop in the sale of factory-farmed veal,” the recipient of its package of shock docs is informed that despite that success, there’s a sad fate in store for “tens of thousands of calves” in the United States. According to the HFA, they are:
- Chained for life in wooden crates barely larger than their bodies
- Prevented from moving or turning around
- Deliberately kept anemic and denied all solid food
- Deprived of drinking water
- Kept in the dark, never seeing the light of day
Are they describing a livestock barn, or a Turkish prison? Al Qaeda doesn’t treat its captives that badly.
The letter accompanying the handy reply card, to which you can check off how much you’d like to donate (suggested minimum: $75), then goes on to provide additional gruesome details about the existence of an (allegedly) typical veal calf:
“Excrement covers his rear. He chokes on the ammonia gases from his own waste, He’s sick and anemic; his resistance to disease is nil. The cramped rows of tiny crates are perfect breeding grounds for disease. He lives in agony. If you or I abused a dog or cat like this, we would be in jail.”
The disconnected consumer
Even for animal extremists who regularly pander to people’s most horrific notions of livestock production, HFA’s language is shocking in how far over the top its leaders are willing to go to fundraise from well-meaning supporters.
If even a fraction of their descriptions of veal production was accurate, the owners of such an operation would be out of business.
Because their animals would be dead!
Of all the accusations that could conceivably be leveled at farmers, ranchers and producers raising livestock, the one that’s the least plausible is that they’re deliberately destroying their profits by making sure their animals are as sick and diseased as possible.
That’s basically the argument HFA is offering in its Boycott Veal campaign: Producers are sadists who starve, abuse and otherwise mistreat their livestock — so they can boost their profits!
The only reason that description flies is because consumers are gullible. They’ve never been on a ranch or inside a barn. They have no idea what animal husbandry’s all about, because their only connection to animals is either the pampered pet currently sacked out on the living room couch or some nature documentary that makes it seems as if living in the wild is a Disney-esque paradise where life is blissful — well, minus the occasional getting eaten by lions, crocodiles or wolves or getting your carcass picked apart by buzzards after you’ve died of starvation or disease.
If animals could talk, and were given the chance to decide: life in the wild dodging predators, endlessly competing for food and hoping to survive drought, blizzards and disease … or, that nice, safe barn, with plenty of food, visits from the vet and protection from getting attacked by creatures higher up on the food chain, they might surprise us with their response.
Heck, if humans were forced to choose between living in some wilderness forest, sleeping under the stars, drinking water from a spring and hunting wild game for sustenance … or, living in a climate-controlled townhouse, choosing one’s meals from a fully stocked refrigerator-freezer and crashing at night on that king-size Sleep Number mattress — well, I think we know how that vote would go.
As always, there is a straightforward solution to counter the propaganda of the Humane Farming Association and its activist kin. It’s called transparency, and it’s accomplished by allowing people to see what goes on inside the barns and the animal housing where the nation’s livestock are raised.
And if conditions inside those barns aren’t suitable for public display, well then there’s another solution that needs to be applied: Fix the problems!
There is no way the propaganda being pushed by HFA and its activist allies should be allowed to stand unchallenged.
And if any of the conditions they so graphically depict are even remotely accurate, that can’t be allowed to stand, either.
The opinions in this commentary are those of Dan Murphy, an award-winning journalist and commentator.
