On January 5, 60 Minutes ran an unflattering story on the pork industry. The feature included less than two minutes of an 80-minute interview with Dr. Liz Wagstrom, chief veterinarian of the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC).You can also read NPPC's response here.
NDFB Promotion and Education Committee member Heather Lang of Sterling, who also is a member of the American Farm Bureau Federation Promotion and Education Committee, and is a frequent contributor to OYT blog posts, penned this response.
By Heather Lang
As much of America either watched the CBS 60 Minutes show or has now heard about it, you know that it was a brutal day for those in the agriculture community that produce your pork.
With that being said there are so many take aways from that, I will just share a FEW of mine.
1. Why interview a professional if you are only going to air 2 minutes of a 80-minute conversation? Because they (CBS media) already had a laid out agenda - to make the pork industry look bad, no matter what was stated by the PROFESSIONAL.
2. Pork producers and everyone in the agriculture industry are all humans. Are there days we wish would turn out differently than they do? Of course. Does it affect us when our animals get sick? Absolutely! We spend countless hours with them, getting a plan together with the vet on the best and proper way to treat them so they get better. Not to mention that we know each animal individually. We know their records, their history.
3. Antibiotics are a vital part of any animal herd if you want your herd to lead a healthy life. If you have compassion for animals and don't want to see them suffer, antibiotics are vital. Now, that does not mean we use them haphazardly. There are strict guidelines and laws when giving medicine to livestock and we MUST follow them.
4. If you do research you will find that the use of antibiotics are actually DOWN by like 41%!
I really hope that people are starting to realize that so many are out to shut down our industry. But why? Because they want to save the earth or better the planet? So do we! That's why we use modern technology to better our industry, to better our planet's food to provide safe, healthy, affordable food for more and more people on less acres.
I pray that people are realizing that media is feeding them full of false "truths" through marketing, TV shows, "news" articles, and the list goes on and on.
I beg that if you ever have questions please, please reach out to a professional, NOT GOOGLE or media outlets who already have a set agenda, whose story is already written before they even meet with the professionals they are interviewing.
And I'll leave you with this: know that you are free to come to our farm anytime and I'd be happy to let you see for yourself how our animals are raised, treated, cared for, loved up on. Come on out and feel free to ask questions. Because even if I don't have the answer for you I can point you in the direction of other professionals who do.