Excited to see farmers speaking up

I am extremely excited to see all of the blogs, tweets and status updates from farmers explaining that what the recent “undercover video” shows is not the norm. The pride I felt today while catching up with reading all the posts that I missed on vacation was amazing so I listed some below.

A few blogs in response to the video:

Farm Experience:

• Dark Secrets of Farms by Michele Payn-Knoper — Michele provides insight into her personal experience on hundreds of dairy farms.  She talk about the common practices she’s seen employed on dairy farms.
• Animal abuse: It’s disgusting by Tessa Curti Hall — Working as a vet, Tessa sees several dairy farms and urges people to understand the footage seen recently is disgusting and reflects a very rare occurrence.
• Drama on the Farm, Farmer Attacked by Chris Chinn —  There are hazards in farming to that threaten the lives of farmers as they care for animals at times. This is the story of a nearby farmer caring for his herd when an accident took place.
• Why I’m mad as hell by Connie Lechleitner — Connie talks about the emotions she went through as she watched the video and continued to think about it.  The reality is caring for animals only makes sense for farmers and anything else is unthinkable.

Community:

• Hell yes, I’m mad by Jeff Vander Werff — Jeff provides some tips on the objectives groups have when they release video critical of agriculture achieve certain goals and why it requires individuals respond, whether the attack is personal or not.
• My Thoughts On The Ohio Dairy Farm Abuse Video by Troy Hadrick — As a life-long cattleman, Troy outlines his thoughts around the veracity of things on the internet, importance for legal followup and how insulting it is that anyone could believe this is part of the community he belongs to.
• Hey! Quit Picking On My Friends. Why I Thank A Farmer! by Eliz Greene — Eliz talks about how she has gotten to know farmers through stress management training.  She highlights how important it is for people to consider fairness and honesty as well as to question what they see by asking farmers for their perspective.
• Zero tolerance needed on animal abuse by Mike Barnett — Mike says this should serve as a call to action for farmers to make it clear that agriculture doesn’t accept such abuse in its ranks and will pursue legal prosecution of anyone engaged in it.
• Now More Than Ever by Kelly Rivard — The importance of community for agriculture is the focus of this post, starting with the neighbor across the fence and continuing to ag neighbors own the road and further afield.
• I Just Can’t Get It, Don’t Want to Either by Janice Person — Having been on vacation when the news of abuse broke, Janice had a contrast of images running through her mind. She cannot understand the motives for such behavior and has decided to build on the images most common in ag even if she can’t forget.

Responding:

• This Week’s Column: Farmers Hate Animal Abuse by Andy Vance — As an Ohio farm broadcaster and cattleman Andy has a unique local view into the motivation of groups like Mercy for Animals and the Humane Society of the US when it comes to the legal process.
• Guest Post: Undercover Agendas by Mike Haley — Ohio farmers are among those most appalled by the behavior seen in the recent on-farm investigation and Mike talks about the thoughts that haunted him in the days after seeing the video and the questions it raised.
• Mercy For Animals Ohio Dairy Farm Video Outrages the Agricultural Industry by Shaun Haney — Shaun provides an overview of the video, his thoughts, and links to the video, other blogs and imbedded the video comments by Ohio ag commissioner.