Agricultural News
NPCC Vice President Addresses Oklahoma Pork Producers' Concerns at Pork Congress
Sat, 17 Mar 2012 17:05:13 CDT
One of the speakers at the Oklahoma Pork Council's recent Pork Congress was Audrey Adamson. She is the vice president for domestic policy issues with the National Pork Producers Council. She said there are several issues of concern facing pork producers, but two in particular seem to keep cropping up from time to time.
In Oklahoma, especially, she says, animal rights groups have begun targeting pork producers. She says they seem to be focusing on Sooner producers in particular because of the state's high ratio of breeding operations. She says facilities that use gestation crates are an easy target because the animal rights groups can prey on an ignorant public.
Adamson says pork producers, obviously, are not mistreating their animals. Safety and health are job one in the industry, but it can be difficult to get a word in edgewise when the media seems focused on the accusations of animal rights protestors. Producers, she says, need to redouble their efforts to work with the legislators, to help educate them and show them just how their operations and industry work and remind them of the benefits they bring to the state.
Another key issue that Adamson addressed was the continually rising price of inputs. Producers can only do so much. They can't control the weather. They can't control the economy. They are limited to controlling their operations as best they can in changing circumstances. One thing that does not help is when the federal government gets involved in choosing winners and losers. One of the issues which the NPPC has been working on of late is to try and head off pressure on the federal government to name corn ethanol as an "advanced biofuel." Such a label would, by government fiat, increase demand and therefore increase the price of corn. Obviously, pork producers would be caught in the squeeze-there are no alternatives for feed.
Adamson says farm groups often ally themselves with one another, but this is an issue that tends to pit corn growers against livestock producers. It wouldn't be so much an issue if the government would simply let the free market work instead of tilting the scale by favoring the use of corn for ethanol production over other uses. She said the feds did seem to indicate they were moving back toward allowing market forces to supply, demand and prices last year when it phased out subsidies for ethanol production. But she said designation ethanol made from corn as a preferred biofuel would be heading back down the wrong path.
Click on the LISTEN BAR below to hear more of Audrey Adamson's comments.
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