Animal Agriculture Must Unite To Survive Its Enemies

Burt Rutherford

BEEF Cow-Calf Weekly

Nov 14, 2008

Animal agriculture faces a single, common enemy and if it is successful, livestock producers are, as Steve Kopperud bluntly put it, “screwed and tattooed.”

That enemy, says Kopperud, is the Humane Society of the U.S. It's big, with an annual budget of around $130 million, successful and patient. Plus, it's totally committed to putting you out of business.

“This isn’t just a beef issue,” Kopperud, with Policy Directions, a Washington D.C. lobbying firm, says of the threat that animal rights activists pose to agriculture. “This is an issue that affects all segments of animal agriculture. It’s time to put away our product differences. It’s time to put away our other issue differences. Because I assure you, if they take down the poultry industry, if they take down the pork industry, they will take down beef.”

Kopperud says complacency has no place in the issue. “Talk to your legislators. Everyone who has a freshman going into Congress, whether it’s a Senator or Representative, your first order of business is to call or make an appointment, somehow educate their field office that this is an issue for you and your family. We unite, we defend, we get proactive. It’s the only way we survive.”

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