Monday was Food Day, a nationwide campaign encouraging Americans to eat real. Organizers say there were over two-thousand Food Day events planned across the country. The Center for Science in the Public Interest sponsored Food Day. Jeff Cronin is a spokesperson for that group:
"We're not a vegan organization. But we do want to nudge people in a more vegetarian direction, absolutely. But it's not an anti-meat campaign. We've tried hard to make sure that Food Day is a really inclusive event, designed to attract people, not repel them."
One of the six Food Day principles is to "protect the environment and animals" by reforming factory farms:
"I think most people who eat beef, pork or poultry can look at the environmental issues associated with big, modern farms. Or look at the treatment of hogs, cattle and egg laying hens and just think about the ways we can treat the earth and animals with greater care."
The term “factory farm” is bothersome to a lot of people in the ag community, including Kay Johnson Smith of the Animal Agriculture Alliance:
"No one has really defined the term "factory farm" and it is really an activist term used to attack large farms. Large farms are very, very critcal to our ability to feed the public in the US but also to help meet the needs of a growing population world wide."
To counteract some of the negative Food Day messages, the Animal Agriculture Alliance has developed a special website called "Real Farmers Real Food":
"On this website, we have provided tours of many, many types of farms so the public can really see what modern-day farms look like and we've also addressed many of the myths that are raised by, not only by Food Day, but many other activist campaigns that are targeting the food industry and targeting farming and ranchers."
That's, www.realfarmersrealfood.com
Here's a nice video of the positive impact of today's agriculture:
|