PETA released yet another video this week, this time depicting a dairy farm in North Carolina. Whether or not that video was staged is still being debated. Dairy Carrie, a dairy farmer and active blogger, pointed out lots of abnormalities and questionable details about the described situation in the video, and you can check out her entire blog post here.
While releasing videos like this is common for PETA, I’ve never really paid much attention to them. They’re usually staged and don’t get a whole lot of press. The majority of people that watch these are people who agree with PETA and people in the agriculture industry (think: farmers), and neither group is going to be swayed by the others’ arguments. However, this video and story surrounding it was published in a North Carolina newspaper and has since been picked up by the Associated Press. That means that lots of people are going to see the video or at least read about it.
In case you aren’t familiar with PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), their ultimate goal is to end animal agriculture and pet ownership. They want people to stop eating meat. Sound familiar? Same line of thought as the HSUS, except not as wealthy.
What does this mean for agriculture? It means that PETA is sharing our story from their viewpoint. It means that dairy farms across the country are being represented as this offending one. Farmers are losing credibility because of this one video.
My Twitter feed blew up today with comments about the video and tweets to PETA asking more about the video. Unfortunately, PETA is not interested in having a conversation. They tweet canned responses and share links, avoiding the question. Maybe they will eventually answer the question and have an open conversation, but I don’t think that is likely. They’ve even gone as far as calling Dairy Carrie a shill because she, as a dairy farmer, pointed out some questionable details in the video and brought up PETA’s history of staged videos showing animal abuse.
Some of the replies from PETA:
PETA is attacking farmers for standing up for themselves. The agriculture industry needs to stand up and share our stories with people that didn’t have the privilege of growing up on a farm. PETA is not going to stop pushing their agenda, but we can put our story out there and let people make informed decisions about their food and what is really happening on farms.
So what can you do? Talk to your friends and neighbors and answer their questions when they come up. Be active on social media, sharing pictures and stories from your farm. Tweet ag facts. Blog. Strike up a conversation with a stranger in the grocery store checkout line. Find a way that works for you. We aren’t going to change the minds of activists, but we can influence everybody in between. Give people the opportunity to make their own decision by giving them credible information. Be an agvocate. Or, as PETA puts it, be an #agshill.
Oh look, another link.
4 Comments
skepticalvegan
August 13, 2014 at 11:40 pmWhat is your evidence that the video in question was staged? And what evidence do you have that these videos are “usually staged”?
Courts have found the results of such undercover investigations credible enough to gain a number of convictions.
Always jumping to the defense rather than being willing to call out abuse where it happens is not what someone who cares about good animal husbandry would do.
skepticalvegan
August 13, 2014 at 11:40 pmWhat is your evidence that the video in question was staged? And what evidence do you have that these videos are “usually staged”?
Courts have found the results of such undercover investigations credible enough to gain a number of convictions.
Always jumping to the defense rather than being willing to call out abuse where it happens is not what someone who cares about good animal husbandry would do.
biscuitsngracie
August 15, 2014 at 11:53 amThis post was more of a call to action to those in the agriculture industry than “jumping to the defense”.
Evidence that this video may not be entirely accurate was outlined in the linked blog post in the first paragraph. There are several abnormalities that raise the question as to whether or not this video was staged or taken out of context. i.e. Why are the cows so clean?
PETA’s call to action was to stop eating dairy so that these cows would not be needed for their milk. Wouldn’t the immediate solution to be to get them out of that mess and into proper housing? Curbing dairy consumption would be considered more of a long term plan.
Unfortunately, this is not a video representative of the dairy and animal industry. If cows were truly subjected to these conditions, they would not be producing milk. And that’s in addition to all of the environmental violations.
If this video is depicting true conditions, then yes, it needs to be stopped. However, animal neglect was not listed in any of the violations included in the reading material shared with me.
If you have more information on the actual video and the story around it, I would love for you to share that. I’d like the whole story, and not just a two minute video.
biscuitsngracie
August 15, 2014 at 11:53 amThis post was more of a call to action to those in the agriculture industry than “jumping to the defense”.
Evidence that this video may not be entirely accurate was outlined in the linked blog post in the first paragraph. There are several abnormalities that raise the question as to whether or not this video was staged or taken out of context. i.e. Why are the cows so clean?
PETA’s call to action was to stop eating dairy so that these cows would not be needed for their milk. Wouldn’t the immediate solution to be to get them out of that mess and into proper housing? Curbing dairy consumption would be considered more of a long term plan.
Unfortunately, this is not a video representative of the dairy and animal industry. If cows were truly subjected to these conditions, they would not be producing milk. And that’s in addition to all of the environmental violations.
If this video is depicting true conditions, then yes, it needs to be stopped. However, animal neglect was not listed in any of the violations included in the reading material shared with me.
If you have more information on the actual video and the story around it, I would love for you to share that. I’d like the whole story, and not just a two minute video.