I am a dog person. I once had two pugs named Smith and Wesson, whom I was closer to than some of my relatives. I am also a hunter. I eat the animals I kill and try to never shoot at anything I can’t kill in one shot.
People like to attribute human traits, emotions, or intentions to animals. It is considered to an innate tendency of human psychology.
Never has this been truer than in today’s dairy market. Animal welfare is one of the main reasons why consumers are switching from milk to almond beverage. Further, people who continue to eat and drink dairy want to know from which farm their milk is coming. This new reality also comes with a higher scrutiny on producers and that scrutiny is incredibly public with the advent of social media.
In today’s dairy market, producers are under extreme financial duress. When coupled with the potential for bad publicity, producers could be one YouTube video away from going out of business.
True, there are instances of abuse out there, but these are truly few and far between. General dairy practices are coming under fire now in this era where human like animal care is being unfairly demanded by some in the public. I recently watched a video where the narrator who was an animal rights activist walked through a free stall barn, railing about the manure in the alleys. To anyone in the industry, you could clearly see that the mechanical scrapers were doing their job well. However, this person was making a judgment from the perspective of what constitutes acceptable human living conditions and not those that are entirely suitable for a cow.
Assigning human emotions to farming can be dangerous, as it leaves out substantial amounts of environmental factors and species dependent characteristics. It would be extremely easy to keep the alleys of a barn clean if the cows would simply stop pooping in them. The problem is that nothing we do will make this happen. Cows poop, whenever and wherever they want. Farmers respond in the only manner that is reasonable; they clean their milking parlors using an industry standard protocol.
We in the dairy industry need to keep educating the public. 99.9% of dairy producers do that they do as a labor of love. The average farmer takes home roughly $7.39 per hour and works weekend, nights and holidays. They deserve our respect and as an industry, we need to help educate the public on good farming practices.
By Brett Roeller
Director of National Accounts, QualiTru Sampling Systems
brett@qualitru.com Follow Brett on LinkedIn