Mike Rowe/FFA/HSUS/PETA

[Jay_Bunny]

Well I can honestly say I hate factory farmed anything. Of course I don't have a lot of options so just like many others, I buy my food from dear ole Walmart (which I dislike). If I had my way, I'd be raising my own food and growing my own crops. I would love to be connected to my food so directly like that.

I don't think we should go as far as no longer farming with animals for meat, dairy, and eggs, but having such a large population to feed, it is very hard to do anything but factory farming, however horrible it is. But I do think that the old fashioned farm (cows grazing in pastures, horns intact, chickens really free ranging all over the farm, able to eat bugs as they please,) is the way to go.

I've already told my husband that I want us to have a house with a small bit of land so I can raise chickens for eggs and meat, goats for meat and dairy, and grow at least some of our own food.

[j_h_smith]

I met Mike Rowe when he was just starting to do TV locally here in Baltimore. He's a good guy. I like the article, but I thought I probably would.

Jim Smith

[wolfy-hound]

You really have to watch terms like "factory farming". Just because they raise a lot of animals for food doesn't necasarily mean it's going to be inhumane. No, having chickens running loose in the yard isn't going to happen for getting eggs for the population of the United States. Especially not with the eggs being cheap enough for most families to afford them.

Part of the tactics of HSUS in their attacks is to portrey all animal agriculture as the worst possible way they can video. Then they clip it up so it's the worst thing you could imagine, then they present that as EVERY animal agriculture place existing.

Just like chickens in egg farms can be kept humanely in "battery" cages to produce eggs, not all farms that commercially produce meat animals are automatically cruel, nor are they all horror houses depicted in Peta's films. They might not be the ideal environment for the perfect animal, but they are not the evil places you see in Peta and HSUS's propaganda films either.

I support treating the animals as humanely as possible, but I also support our farmers being the ones who know the animals best. HSUS likes to say that letting the farmers decide how to keep the animals is like letting the fox run the henhouse. But that's really not true. Letting AR folks decide how farmers should keep animals, is like letting a bread baker design a car. You might get some sort of car that LOOKS okay, and the bread baker might be happy as a clam, but I wouldn't want to ride in it.

[wilomn]

Did you know, and this is something that was true and I'm pretty sure still is true, but it may have changed, but, companies like The Golden Arches that use lots of beef can buy land in other countries, raise their beef there, import it here, without some of the safety measures in place in the USA, and, and this is the good part, claim that it is American Beef, raised, and this is the REALLY good part, on American soil, in another country, on another continent, never seeing America itself, if at all, until it is shipped here to be slaughtered IF, and this is another good one, it wasn't butchered in its HOME country and then shipped here ready to cook.

Pretty neat, huh?

[kitedemon]

the local farmers in my area have started a simple movement. Buy Local. Buy food from the farms in your area when possible. Ask at the store for LOCAL produce. I have a cousin whom used to raise beef cattle, He isn't this year, he can make much more money to raise hay for horses. Grass is worth more than beef. Sad.

[iCandiBallPythons]

I'm sure in the grand scheme of things concerning this country, our forefathers turn in their graves like rotisseres daily. We already have zoning in some areas where I live that farmers can only run equipment during set hours of the day because a $1 mil or more per house development just moved in beside them. It also sickens me to see things like imported fish from China considering the same fish are being raised here. Mike Rowe is an absolute genius in my book.

[4theSNAKElady]

That was great. And coming from Mike Rowe, who's a sort of "opinion leader", that means a lot.