Over the last week, I have had the chance to attend a class on pork production process management. The premise for the class is getting pork producers to think about their business like it is manufacturing, and become more efficient and effective by monitoring throughput. Each farmer in the room understood the connections, and how farming is a form of manufacturing. As a farmer and business person, I realize that animal production is a manufacturing process, and that doesn't scare me. Making your lunch in the morning, can also be looked at from a manufacturing standpoint, and I understand that by looking at it that way, we aren't automatically using robots, and automation to "build" pigs. We are just trying to become better at the processes we do everyday, managing our people and resources to the best of our ability.
Looking at the class, I realize that consumers could be appalled by the concept as agriculture as manufacturing. Many like to believe that farms are quaint little places with 2 ducks, 2 cows, and a goat thrown in for good measure. What they don't realize is that farming is a business. Farmers buy things from suppliers, like feed ingredients, seeds, and animals for reproduction in order to improve the meat quality the animals will provide. People then are willing to buy the meat produced for a price. What happens in between in order to make money for the farmer is business. There is nothing sinister about the process, or unnatural. Every other industry does the same thing, for example, your clothes are not made by an elderly woman working out of her cottage, nor do I think that people want it that way.
At work last week, I was talking to one of my coworkers about the common misconceptions people have about animal agriculture. One is created in part by advertisers, but driven by uninformed consumers. If you ever have looked at chicken sold in the grocery store, it is often labeled as hormone free. What consumers don't realize is that Chickens are never treated with hormones because it doesn't make any type of economical sense. Hormones are very expensive, and a chicken that will mature naturally in about six weeks, it does not add up to give it hormones. However, because of this labeling, people assume that chickens are given hormones at least part of the time.
Another misconception is that animals sent to market are often laden with drugs and so sick they have to be basically carried into the packing plant. What consumers don't realize is that animals going to market have to be rated as #1. This means no antibiotics in the system, no limping, wheezing, or other signs of sickness or distress. If producers were to send these types of animals to market, then they would not be paid for them, and all scheduled contracts with packing plants would be jeopardized because the farmer has delivered a substandard animal. It doesn't pay for anyone involved in the process to have a sick animal in the food supply.
As advocates for agriculture, we must realize what types of misconceptions are out there and work hard to correct them. It takes time and effort, but by being transparent to consumers we can make progress towards coming to a consensus on how food should be produced.
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