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It’s just not fair…

Why is it activist groups of any stripe aren’t held to the same standards of honesty and veracity that we in “industry” are held? It has long frustrated me that any group with a blast email system or the price of a full-page ad in a national newspaper can say whatever it wants when slamming farming and ranching?

When some group wraps itself in the image of a perfect world, happy puppies or an Eden-like environment, whatever it says about the dastardly deeds of “industry” is automatically accepted as gospel, at least in the media and by a great majority of the unenlightened public. Perhaps it’s because “man-bites-dog” stories sell newspapers, or because we need someone or something to blame when things go wrong.

One of my bright ideas years ago was model state legislation to hold activist speech to the same standard of accuracy as commercial speech, meaning if it was bad thing to mislead or fabricate in advertising widgets, it was an equally bad thing to mislead or fabricate in advocating for social causes. More than a dozen states passed what were immediately dubbed “veggie libel” laws. I was immediately accused of trying to stifle “free speech.”

However, it continues in its inevitablity that when industry states a fact or asserts a rationale, a reporter will demand the source of the information, and wo unto the source who can’t verify that fact with three different independent sources and the blessing of a minister, a priest and a rabbi.

A big part of the problem is our absolutely rotten record of educating the public so they’re immune to the scaremongering. Not so with the media, which is at least supposed to know better. A big part of the problem is also the double standard at play in these disputes. Slap “humane” or “consumer” into your group’s name and apparently you can say or write whatever you want to whomever you want whenever you want.

This week I’ve dealt with a couple of issues that bring this fact home. The first is the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) and its latest “undercover” investigation of an egg farm in Texas, an effort that appears to me to be more about scaring retailers than “working with industry” as it claims. HSUS doesn’t like cage-raised egg laying hens. OK, then don’t buy the eggs if, in fact, you eat eggs. It then paints the facility as not caring about animal welfare based on edited video and the fact it doesn’t like cage systems. Forget the welfare benefits, forget the economic benefits, HSUS alleges and the world should turn upside down.

Then there are the anti-technology forces arrayed against biotechnology in general and genetically engineered food animals in particular. Food & Water Watch is the newest and most gloves-off player in this game. It’s raised more straw men to scare consumers and demonize the technology and yet no one has challenged the credibility of its claims even though they’re in direct contradiction of the facts and the science of the matter.

I’d like to compile a list of the “10 Least Credible Animal/Enviro/Consumer Groups,” based upon public allegations that can be refuted through a simple Google search, hold a press conference and give out awards for reaching new depths in misrepresentation and misinformation. Send me your nominees and I’ll share the list at a later date.

But in the meantime, let’s call these guys out when we hear the junk. Let’s go after the reporters who run one-sided stories with no fact checking. Let’s help our fellow consumers see the light.

My wife told me about an experience she had last weekend while grocery shopping. A young couple was buying a dozen “natural, free-range, antibiotic-free, vegetarian-fed” eggs for about three times the price of a conventional dozen eggs. When my wife explained the woman was wasting her money — my wife has had to endure my rants for a very long time — the younger woman answered, “I’m just trying to do my part.” My wife’s response: “Part of ‘doing your part’ is to do your homework.”

Just one of the reasons I love my wife.