Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of the Feed Bucket

One subject you will hear a lot about these days is animal rights and animal welfare. But these two terms mean very different things. Animal welfare is treating animals ethically and providing the best habitat and health you can to meet their physiological needs. Animal rights is the belief that animals have the same rights as humans and deserve to be treated the same. Livestock producers are greatly concerned with animal welfare. It is one of the key components in providing a quality product and maintaining a stable business. If the animals are not treated well and kept healthy, they will not provide a quality product at slaughter. If you can't market a quality product, you cannot stay in business. It is that simple. So even if a livestock producer wanted to treat his animals poorly, he would not last very long in this business. It's a great thing, then, that most livestock producers LOVE what they do and love their animals. This is not a business you stay in if you hate it. There is too much back-breaking, hard work for such little return. It is a passion. Animal rights activists want to do away with any form of livestock production. Because of their deeply-held belief that animals and humans are equal, they do not even want to see people own a dog. They believe eating meat is murder and that we have no right to keep livestock. There is no appeasing this type of activist, even with humane, gentle treatment of animals. The best thing we can do is fight the legislation that animal rights groups like PETA and the HSUS try to pass, and work to keep the average American consumer appeased with the way we raise and slaughter our animals. Animals deserve to live a strong, healthy life, and farmers work every day to ensure just that.

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