HSUS Tries Fooling Nebraska Livestock Producers

Humane Society: Not ‘anti-ag'


By Leslie Reed
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

LINCOLN — The Humane Society of the U.S. has no plans to conduct a petition drive in Nebraska aimed at treatment of farm animals, the group's president and chief executive officer said here Sunday.

But Wayne Pacelle said his group still will continue to work to eliminate tight confinement practices on farms and ranches.

“We are not anti-agriculture,” Pacelle said. “We want animals to be able to stand up, lie down and turn around. That is not a sweeping agenda.”

Some of the agriculture representatives said they remain wary of Pacelle's group, despite his conciliatory tone.

Mark McHargue, a Central City, Neb., pork producer and a director of the Nebraska Farm Bureau Federation, said he remains skeptical of the HSUS's motives. McHargue said he uses gestation crates to house pregnant sows on his hog farm. He said he believes the crates are a humane way to handle animals that would fight and harm one another if they weren't restrained. Working without the crates also would increase his cost of production.

“You heard a lot of frustration and anxiety tonight about what's happened in other states,” McHargue said. “There's no reason to think that what happened in other states won't happen in Nebraska.”   Read More

These farmers and ranchers that believe the HSUS is a friend to them really struggle with reality.  One look at the recipe section on their website shows you what their true goals are.  Never once does it say anything about eating meat, milk and eggs grown in certain conditions.  It states that using animals as a source of food is cruel.  I’m not sure how Pacelle can say that he isn’t anti-ag with a straight face.  The only way he can keep his professional fundraising organization afloat is to keep creating one crisis after another directed at agriculture. 

A Great Weekend

Being involved with the National Beef Ambassador Contest this past weekend was a great time!  Eighteen of the most talented young leaders in the beef industry were in Rapid City to show off their knowledge and passion for this great segment of agriculture.  While every one of them would have done a fantastic job representing beef producers, the field was whittled down to five. 

Your 2011 National Beef Ambassadors are Kelli Fulkerson from Michigan, Maddy Ruble from Minnesota, Jessica Sweet from Callifornia, Austin Joyce from Texas, and Kristen Stufft from Pennsylvania.  I'm looking forward to following these great young leaders as they travel around the country telling the great story of agriculture and the beef industry. 

It was an honor to help judge this competition and to speak at the awards breakfast.  Hopefully we inspired the contestants as much as they inspired us over the weekend.  The future of our industry is in great hands.

Activists Attack Modern Ag With Misinformation

Friday, Apr. 23, 2010
The Problem With Factory Farms
By Claire Suddath

If you eat meat, the odds are high that you've enjoyed a meal made from an animal raised on a factory farm (also known as a CAFO). According to the USDA, two percent of U.S. livestock facilities raise an estimated 40 percent of all farm animals. This means that pigs, chickens and cows are concentrated in a small number of very large farms. But even if you're vegetarian, the health and environmental repercussions of these facilities may affect you. In his book Animal Factory, journalist David Kirby explores the problem of factory farms, from untreated animal waste to polluted waterways. Kirby talks to TIME about large-scale industrial farming, the lack of government oversight, and the terrible fate of a North Carolina river.

What exactly is a factory farm?

The industrial model for animal food production first started with the poultry industry. In the 1930s and 40s, large companies got into the farming business. The companies hire farmers to grow the animals for them. The farmers typically don't own the animals, the companies do. It's almost like a sharecropping system. The company tells them exactly how to build the farm, what to grow and what to feed. They manage everything right down to what temperature the barn should be and what day the animals are going to be picked up for slaughter. The farmer can't even eat his or her own animals. People who grow chickens for Purdue in Maryland have to go down to the market and buy Purdue at the store.

We collectively refer to these facilities as factory farms, but that's not an official name. The government designation is CAFO, which stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation. Basically it's any farm that has 1,000 "animal units" or more. A beef cow is an animal unit. These animals are kept in pens their entire lives. They're never outside. They never breathe fresh air. They never see the sun.

And the fact that there are thousands of animals packed into one farm is also a problem.

Oh, definitely. There are simply too many animals in too small of a place. In a traditional farm, a sustainable farm, you grow both crops and animals. There is a pasture and you have a certain number of animals per acre. But when you have 2,000 cows per acre instead of two, you have a problem. You can't fit them in a pasture, you fit them in a building. You can't grow enough crops to feed them; you have to ship in their feed. You don't have enough land to absorb their waste. It has nowhere to go. Read More

I would think that true journalists would have a hard time calling this an interview. Usually in an interview, the journalist would ask questions to be answered. In this case, there was an activist that actually made several statements of her own belief and then let the author of the book comment on them. In fact, it’s obvious that the person who posed as a journalist for this article didn’t do any research at all because she didn’t challenge the false claims made by Kirby. His description of a CAFO isn’t right, nor are his statements about how the animals are fed or handled. A journalist would have uncovered that, an activist helps spread the misinformation.

Ranching A Green Profession

Cattle Ranching a Green Profession, Survey Finds



America's Cattle Farmers and Ranchers Highlight 40 Ways They Protect the Environment in Honor of the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day



DENVER, April 15 /PRNewswire/ -- When your office is the great outdoors and your commute is on horseback, preserving and protecting the Earth is part of the job description. This Earth Day, America's 1 million cattle farmers and ranchers are being recognized as having one of the greenest jobs.



In a new national survey of American beef eaters, cattle ranchers and farmers were selected as the third greenest profession from a diverse list of jobs, with park rangers topping the list. This survey was conducted by IPSOS Public Affairs for The Beef Checkoff Program.



Generations of Earth Day Values



It's no surprise to Gary Teague, a Colo. cattle rancher and environmentalist: "We work every day to teach our three children what it means to be truly passionate about the land and the animals. Preserving natural resources is how we make our living and how we secure our family business for our children and grandchildren."



Two-thirds of US cattle farms and ranches have been in the same family for two generations or more (Aspen Media & Market Research, 2008). American cattle farmers and ranchers have embraced the values of Earth Day for generations, and Americans recognize that commitment. Eighty-six percent of Americans surveyed think cattle farmers and ranchers are committed to environmental preservation. Read More



For those that only celebrate Earth Day once a year it may be hard to comprehend that it’s second nature for farmers and ranchers. Long before Earth Day became trendy, they were taking care of the land, air and water. It was in their best interest to do so then and it still is today.

HSUS Legislation in Congress

HSUS supports bill to re-define animal cruelty
John Maday Monday, March 08, 2010

U.S. Representatives Diane Watson (D-Calif.) and Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.) introduced H.R. 4733, the “Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act,” last week. The bill would set federal standards regulating housing and animal treatment on operations that supply food to government purchases such as the School Lunch program. The Humane Society of the United States immediately issued a release praising the proposed bill.

Such a law would, in practice, apply to virtually all livestock operations, since the USDA purchased food from packers and processors, not from farms. Without full traceability of every product back to its farm or ranch of origin, packers would need to require compliance from all their suppliers to continue selling meat or dairy products to the government.

The HSUS release is available online. Link to Article

I didn’t get this post last week when I was on the road, but I wanted to make sure everyone is aware of this bill. Anyone who follows the HSUS knows that they would love to get federal legislation passed that would accomplish what they have been trying to do on a state-by-state basis. What is probably the most irritating part of this is the title of the bill itself. It implies that unless you change your management practices that you are being cruel to your farm animals. We know that’s not true. Please take a moment to contact your elected officials in Washington DC and visit with them about this bill.

Food Inc. Is More Fantasy Than Documentary

What If Food Inc. Takes Home An Oscar?
03/02/2010 02:02PM
CattleNetwork.com

You may not care much about the Academy Awards, but this Sunday (Mar. 7) may be worth a bit of your time; at least pay attention to the “Best Documentary “ category.

Nominated for an Oscar is Food Inc.-- The film that “lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies USDA and FDA.” That’s a promotional line from the film that appeared in theaters for most of last summer.

While you’re not fooled by Food Inc. carrying the label “documentary”, most of the viewing public takes it more literally. The common logic is-- in order for a film to be set apart as a documentary, it has to be truthful—Food Inc. is a documentary, therefore Food Inc. must be truthful.

Between the theater release and DVDs, millions of people have already seen this movie. Too often they walk away believing American farmers are greedy, reckless with food safety and the environment and are forcing unhealthy products upon the public—and U.S. regulators are supporting all of it.

The film is filled with mistruths and misrepresentations. “Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, and the safety of workers and our environment.” Organic is the only sure choice, is one of the messages drilled home. Another tells consumers that they are the only hope to drive change, because the regulators and corporations are in control and don’t care. Read More

It’s troubling that we have so many high-profile people in the many different types of media that are more concerned about personal wealth through activism rather than journalism. Real journalists provide all of the information and allow people to form their own opinions. Wealthy activists like Pollan provide only what he wants his audience to know about and then tells them what to do with it. If Food Inc wins an award this weekend, we will need to view this as an opportunity and motivation to do a better job of sharing the real story of production agriculture.

Growing Enough Food

Food crisis looms, warn scientists
By Stuart Gary for ABC Science Online
Feb 12, 2010

A new report by Australian researchers claims far more needs to be done if we are to feed the estimated 9 billion people who will be living on the planet by 2050.

The report, by Professor Mark Tester and Professor Peter Langridge of the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics at the University of Adelaide, appears today in the journal Science.
"The simple fact is while food production has increased by 32 million tonnes a year, an annual increase of 44 million tonnes a year is what's actually needed to meet the food targets for 2050 set down by the World Summit on Food security," Professor Tester said.

"But this represents a 38 per cent increase over historical improvements in food production and it needs to be sustained for the next 40 years.

"This scale of increase is unprecedented and will require huge changes to current food production methods."

"India, which has more undernourished people than Africa, is a real challenge," he said.
"Especially with their government's hard stand on genetically modified foods."

Professor Tester believes new breeding technologies are needed to increase crop yields by quickly identifying the best genes for any given conditions.

"This is the way forward if we are to feed the world in the future." Read More

We continue to hear food production experts stress the importance of using technology to meet demand. Just like Norman Borlaug used all the resources and technology at his disposal to stave off world wide famine, we will need to do the same. It would be unethical at this point in time to do anything less. We can’t turn our back on the ability to produce more food when we have hungry people in this world. We can’t let the Michael Pollan’s of the world decide who will eat and who won’t.

America's Agricultural Angst

America's Agricultural Angst
Joel Kotkin, 01.19.10, 12:01 AM ET
Forbes.com

In this high-tech information age few look to the most basic industries as sources of national economic power. Yet no sector in America is better positioned for the future than agriculture--if we allow it to reach its potential.

Like manufacturers and homebuilders before them, farmers have found themselves in the crosshairs of urban aesthetes and green activists who hope to impose their own Utopian vision of agriculture. This vision includes shutting down large-scale scientifically run farms and replacing them with small organic homesteads and urban gardens.

Troublingly, the assault on mainstream farmers is moving into the policy arena. It extends to cut-offs on water, stricter rules on the use of pesticides, prohibitions on the caging of chickens and a growing movement to ban the use of genetic engineering in crops. And it could undermine a sector that has performed well over the past decade and has excellent long-term prospects.
Over the next 40 years the world will be adding some 3 billion people. These people will not only want to eat, they will want to improve their intake of proteins, grains, fresh vegetables and fruits. The U.S., with the most arable land and developed agricultural production, stands to gain from these growing markets. Last year the U.S.' export surplus in agriculture grew to nearly $35 billion, compared with roughly $5 billion in 2005.

Yet none of this seems to be slowing the mounting criticisms of "corporate agriculture." A typical article in Time, called "Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food," assailed the "U.S. agricultural industry" for precipitating an ecological disaster. "With the exhaustion of the soil, the impact of global warming and the inevitably rising price of oil--which will affect everything from fertilizer to supermarket electricity bills--our industrial style of food production," the article predicts, "will end sooner or later."

The romantic model being promoted by Time and agri-intellectuals like Michael Pollan hearkens back to European and Tolstoyan notions of small family farms run by generations of happy peasants. But this really has little to do with the essential ethos of American agriculture.

Read More

It’s great to see common sense in the media these days. This columnist realizes that our goal should be to utilize technology, like we have for generations in agriculture, to improve our food supply and stop attacking family farmers and ranchers. The anti-agriculture crowd likes to pretend that they support families that farm but their actions show otherwise. Agriculture can supply the wealthy with their specialized food requests, but it’s unconscionable for them to force this upon everyone else.

The Confusion Over CAFO's

This letter to the editor appeared in the Columbia Tribune, MO.

Independent family farms’ methods safe
Saturday, January 16, 2010

Editor, the Tribune: In light of Hank Waters’ confusion about chicken CAFOs and Cindy O’Laughlin’s confusion about family farmers, a lesson is in order.

Google “CAFO” or “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation,” and you’ll learn a CAFO, or “factory farm,” is an operation where livestock are mass-produced in confinement and are usually, and most important, owned by a corporation and not the farmer (i.e. Smithfield, Tyson). These absentee owners, headquartered in fancy offices miles away, call the shots yet seldom go near their factories while local dollars funnel out of Missouri.

Another confused term: “family farm.” These days it’s necessary to include the word “independent” when referring to family farms. Conversely, independent family farmers make daily decisions about their animals. Sadly, these independent farmers, despite their rich heritage, find it difficult to compete with factory farms on an unleveled playing field created by agribusiness corporations that have, through big money and political influence, duped the public and politicians into believing factory farms are the same as independent family farms, which they’re not. Corporate dollars and special interests at the federal level block independent family farmers’ access to an open and competitive marketplace and take away jobs from our once vibrant rural communities.

Independent family farmers must remain strongly independent. No livestock board, filled with a handful of pro-industry representatives, need dictate daily decisions on raising livestock as independent family farmers have done so for centuries.

Both conservatives and liberals support independent family farmers’ safe and sustainable methods over factory farms’ antiquated and unfair practices.

Julie Fisher

Link

I have said many times that if you want to know more about agriculture and food production you should ask farmer, not a search engine. This letter to the editor that appeared recently in a newspaper in Missouri proves my point. This lady Googled the term “CAFO” and she determined that it means a farm with mass produced, confined animals and owned by a corporation. Unfortunately, Google failed her in her quest to define the term.

At no time does a CAFO designation reflect who owns the livestock on the facility. As much as the anti-agriculture crowd would like to make people believe that, it’s just not true. It’s also a fabrication to say absentee owners make all the decisions. How could they? It would be impossible for these “absentee owners” to make any daily decisions about the health of an animal or to make ration determinations. These allegations fly in the face of reality and logic.

A CAFO is solely determined on the number of livestock that will be present on a farm or ranch and fed in a specific area for a certain amount of time. For example, on our ranch during the winter we feed our cattle in a designated area so we can provide them adequate protection from the weather and a balanced ration that matches their nutritional needs. Even though we didn’t have enough livestock to require us to do anything, we felt the right thing to do was create a more comprehensive nutrient management plan and become permitted.

So it’s interesting that since our family ranch took those steps to become better stewards of our livestock and land, people like Julie Fisher want to paint us in a negative light. It highlights the lack of understanding about animal agriculture and motivates me to do a better job telling my story.

Cattlemen Dealing With Many Issues

WINDMILL: Cattlemen bristle at EPA, USDA rules
By Jerry Lackey
Saturday, November 21, 2009

SAN ANGELO, Texas — An unbelievable number of issues confront not only the cattle business but agriculture as a whole, says Colin Woodall, vice president of government affairs for National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in Washington, D.C. But one of the biggest concerns is the Environmental Protection Agency’s dust rule.

“The EPA is proposing a tenfold reduction in the thresholds of what they call coarse particle matter, which is EPA talk for agricultural dust,” Woodall said in a recent interview during the 65th annual National Association of Farm Broadcasters convention.

“We’re talking about everything that comes out of the back of a cotton stripper or a combine (dust, leaves and harvest debris), cows that are milling around in the lot, even dust kicked up from pickup tires while driving down the ranch road,” Woodall said. “They would all be in violation of EPA’s clean air rules.” Read More

There certainly are many issues facing agriculture, and animal agriculture in particular. In my mind it highlights the need for producers to become involved in helping shape the solutions to these problems. It’s more important than ever to be active in an agriculture organization that represents your views. Your involvement can’t end there though, you need to be politically active as well by contacting your elected officials to share your thoughts and let them know how pending legislation might affect your ability to produce food and fiber. I was reminded again this weekend that politics is a contact sport. If you have been sitting on the sidelines, please suit up and get on the field!

HuffPo Suggests I Think Children Are Disposable

Children's Health And The Meat Industry
By Christina Perillo

When did our children become disposable?

This loaded question was posed around the conference table in Anthony Geraci's sunny office at the Baltimore School District headquarters as a group of us talked about programs designed to help our kids make healthier choices in their lives, beginning with the food they eat.
As Food Service Director, Tony has worked closely with the district's dietician to make systemic changes that have resulted in the kids in Baltimore schools trying new foods and slowly becoming more health conscious. But it has not been without controversy and therein was the question we posed.

When school began in September, the kids of Baltimore became the first in the country to adopt 'Meatless Mondays, an international program that asks people to cut meat from their diet one day a week. Their goal is simple: reducing meat consumption by a mere 15% can improve human and planetary health. Endorsed by esteemed medical institutions like the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, this seems like a no-brainer, right? Impressed with the credentials and the program, Baltimore decided to take part and see what would happen. I'm not sure anyone was ready for the firestorm of attacks being launched at them by the meat industry.

Meatless Mondays is a positive program designed to educate our children to be healthier for life and is being attacked from all sides. Troy Hadrick, a rancher, wrote on the Advocates for Agriculture website that Meatless Mondays are obviously designed to push children toward vegetarian lifestyles by telling them that 'they can't have meat on Monday because meat isn't healthy for you.' He goes on to advocate parents doing whatever it takes to keep this information from their children. Yikes! Read More

I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that the vegan/vegetarians would come out and try to vilify me for advocating that students in Baltimore be fed a balanced diet. Even though our good friend Trent Loos discovered that this situation may have been less of a story that we previously thought, it doesn’t take away from the fact that those of us advocating for a balanced diet which includes meat and dairy products are being targeted. It’s disappointing that since I disagreed with this writer that she thinks I believe children are disposable. I would love to teach her more about raising livestock since she considers me evil for doing it, but she would rather question my integrity than have a reasonable discussion. ~TH

Reporter Eating Meat Makes You Sick

Eating animals is making us sick
By Jonathan Safran Foer, Special to CNN

New York (CNN) -- Like most people, I'd given some thought to what meat actually is, but until I became a father and faced the prospect of having to make food choices on someone else's behalf, there was no urgency to get to the bottom of things.

I'm a novelist and never had it in mind to write nonfiction. Frankly, I doubt I'll ever do it again. But the subject of animal agriculture, at this moment, is something no one should ignore. As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention.

If the way we raise animals for food isn't the most important problem in the world right now, it's arguably the No. 1 cause of global warming: The United Nations reports the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.

It's the No. 1 cause of animal suffering, a decisive factor in the creation of zoonotic diseases like bird and swine flu, and the list goes on. It is the problem with the most deafening silence surrounding it.

Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science, that something terribly wrong is happening. We know that it cannot possibly be healthy to raise such grotesque animals in such grossly unnatural conditions. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. Read More

Foer is desperately trying to jump on the anti-agriculture bandwagon that was hitched by Michael Pollan. If it wasn’t so serious, it would almost be comical how people like Foer repetitiously use indefinable buzz words like factory farming (more than 20 times in this piece) throughout their articles. He never does tell us what a factory farm is. All of this is in an effort to scare people about the safest food supply in the world. Our livestock aren’t sick or tortured. True torture will come if people like Foer get their way and we have to watch our fellow human beings starving to death because we aren’t growing enough food. People like Foer and Pollan are the true picture of greed. They are the ones advocating reckless policies that will cause a decrease in the food supply at the very time when we should be doubling it.

Pollan's Speech at U of Wisconsin

7,000 attend talk by controversial food author
By Nick Penzenstadler, Special to the Journal Sentinel
Posted: Sept. 24, 2009

Madison — Here's some advice: Don't buy any foods you've seen advertised on television.
That was one of the tips of a controversial author speaking Thursday before more than 7,000 people at the Kohl Center in the heart of America's Dairyland.

Michael Pollan visited the campus as part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's "Go Big Read" program, after UW chose his book, "In Defense of Food," as the subject of the program. The book was given free to all incoming freshmen and incorporated into more than 60 courses from engineering to art.

In the book, Pollan provides his perspectives on the growth of manufactured foods and promotes simplifying your diet: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

"We didn't purposely choose a controversial book, but food and food production is important to the people of this state," UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin said. "The interest and the controversy is all positive."

Laura Daniels, a dairy farmer from Cobb, organized a group of more than 100 farmers to attend the lecture with matching T-shirts.

"It's absolutely not a protest, but we just want to enter the dialogue," Daniels said. "Unfortunately, if we don't show up and show our side, many of his claims will become truth."
Pollan addressed critics at the start of his presentation.

"I would have no problem wearing the green T-shirt I've seen. 'Eat food, be healthy, and thank a farmer' - there's nothing there I could disagree with," Pollan said. "America's farmers hold the key to solving the crises in our country, health care, climate change and energy."
Defense of food science

John Lucey, a UW-Madison food scientist, opposed Pollan's view of food technology on the university's Go Big Read Web site.

"Food science has done a lot of good. If you go back 100 years ago, foods were the source of people getting sick and dying, that is a fact. The introduction of technologies like pasteurization of milk, have saved countless lives." Read More

Congratulations to all of those that showed up with green shirts. Your hard work and efforts paid off. Even though he claims not to against family farmers, his irresponsible ideas that he is advocating would hurt both family farmers and our country’s safe, affordable, abundant food supply. It’s vital that everyone understand that.

CA Producers Using Social Media

Blogging on the range: Farmers link to consumers via social media
Issue Date: September 23, 2009
By Ching Lee
Assistant Editor

Whether he's strolling through the corral, doing payroll at his desk or checking on a newborn calf, Stanislaus County dairy farmer Ray Prock likes to stop by what he calls his "virtual watercooler" to chat about his favorite topic: agriculture.

He does this by logging on to his Twitter account, a social networking Web site that allows users to exchange quick, frequent messages known as tweets. By firing up his computer or turning on his smartphone, Prock can get a glimpse of what people in the global community are saying—and talk back to them.

That's important, he said, because with so much misinformation out there about where food comes from and how it's produced, farmers have a responsibility to speak up and set the record straight. And with social media, they now have a tool to help them reach virtually anybody anywhere at any time.

"I started to use it as a way to put a face on the farmer and make the farmer human again," said Prock. "If you're not part of the discussion, then you are the discussion, and if you're being discussed, you might as well be there." Read More

I know many of the people in this article and have witnessed their dedication to telling the story of agriculture. In today’s world, there are more ways than ever to let your voice be heard, and specifically to let the consumer hear your voice. Many farmers and ranchers are quite nervous about talking to consumers because they are constantly seeing and hearing negative things about them and their business. Normally though, that isn’t the case. Today’s consumers are asking for the chance to meet a real farmer or rancher. It’s an incredible opportunity we have to talk with these people and tell them our story. Follow the lead of these great ag advocates.

Wolf Management is Necessary, Not For Fun

September 8, 2009, 4:12 pm
Killing Wolves for Fun
By Randy Cohen

The Issue

The Interior Department has ruled that wolves have sufficiently increased in numbers in the Western continental United States to allow some wolf hunting there. The Idaho hunt began on September 1; Montana’s starts on the 15th. A case might be made for the right to hunt for food and to manage wildlife populations, but surely some of the more than 14,000 people who bought wolf-hunting licenses are interested in neither wolf sandwiches nor animal husbandry: they simply enjoy hunting. Is it morally acceptable to kill a wolf for the fun of it?

The Argument

Unsurprisingly, I believe it is wrong to inflict pain and death unnecessarily on a creature capable of suffering. (Peter Singer more broadly examines the moral standing of animals here.) While this belief might not compel us to be vegetarians, it does demand significant changes in the way we raise animals for food, and it forbids wolf hunting as a form of entertainment. To be clear, I concede all putatively practical justifications for hunting and repudiate only the idea that hunting is a legitimate recreation. It is the person who claims as much who bears the burden of proof — a wolf need not make a case for its not being shot in Montana. I’m not persuaded that hunters have made their case. Read More

The hunting of these wolves is a necessary thing. I’m sure from an office in New York it’s hard to imagine wolves being anything but warm and cuddly but in the real world they need to be managed. These wolves are an apex predator that can severely threaten a family rancher’s livelihood. The population level of these wolves has increased drastically and if they are not managed properly, disease and starvation will threaten them. If this reporter is worried about unnecessary suffering, he should be favoring this hunt.