From Field to Plate

For this week’s blog I am going to be rewriting an article on the Food Dialogues by Holly Spangler. My goal is to make it more understandable for those not connected to agriculture. The title of the article I selected is Food Dialogues: Who’s Shaping America’s Eating Habits? and it comes from The Farmer. My blog is about why we do what we do in animal agriculture and part of that is producing food, which is misunderstood by many.

The US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance is an organization that is trying to get across a positive, accurate message about agriculture. Many people are concerned with where their food comes from so they are hosting these discussions called the Food Dialogues. On the panel they had dieticians and food analysts, a crop farmer, veterinarian and a livestock farmer. With this broad array of knowledge and the moderator Carolyn O'Neill, who is a registered dietician and works in promoting healthy eating, there was a vast array of knowledge available for the discussion.

Sustainability is becoming a new big concept in agriculture. There are three main parts to sustainable agriculture which are producing a product economically with good stewardship toward the land or animals and helping the community. The fast paced lifestyle is changing how people eat. Consumers are eating a lot more processed food, which is what Rahs (a nutritionist) observed when she toured a tomato farm and most of the tomatoes would be canned, but people also want food to be “Fresh”. Because processed foods are becoming the way of life fresh produce and meat is being sent for processing instead of fresh on shelves. Rahs continues to say that a can of tomatoes at a store may be fresher than a fresh tomato on the shelf. The idea of freshness does not really have any set guidelines and is all up to the consumer; however, the next topic does have most consumers confused.

Organic is becoming the new fad, yet many don’t understand what they are getting when they pay the higher price. Natural pesticides can be used on organics which was one point brought up by Clemens. Now many consumers believe when they are buying organic products they are pesticide free, but do they really know what pesticides are? People take medicine all the time when they have a little cold, or if they go to the doctor they want them to prescribe them something. Most people do not have a problem with this, so why do they have a problem with pesticides. Farmers do not spray their crops and pump chemicals into their animals just because it is fun. Livestock producers sometimes give animals shots to make them healthy if they are sick just like people get shots. With crops it costs more money to spray for unwanted bugs and if it is not a problem the producer does not need to spray. Many people do not understand there is always a reason behind the treatment and there is also no major nutritional difference in organic food.       

In the end farmers have a passion for what they do. Animals are taken care of because that is farmers’ way of life. It does not matter if an operation is big of small because there cannot be a line drawn between the two. We are all producers and want consumers to have confidence in what we produce because it is what we enjoy and our values are to make things right.

*The original article can be found at

http://farmprogress.com/story-food-dialogues-whos-shaping-americas-eating-habits-8-109144-spx_1

*A full video of the most recent dialogue can be found at

http://new.livestream.com/USFRA/events/2187525   It starts after about the first 7 minutes

*More information about the US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance can be found at

https://www.facebook.com/USFarmersandRanchers

 

 

 

Debeaking Poultry

With the expanding amount of information on the internet comes the decision for readers to choose what to believe. This blog entry is going to be about debeaking poultry, which is most commonly done with chickens or turkeys. When a person types in debeaking chickens in a google search about half of them come up that debeaking is negative; however these are also all opinion biases. Not even half the sites explain what debeaking is and the ones that want to give it a bad rap do not understand the process. Well, what is debeaking you may, ask and why is it done?

 

 Which do you prefer?

 

 

Debeaking is removing the end third of the beak of poultry. Yes only 1/3 is removed and it is done at a day of age for the infrared process and 7 days for the hot blade method. It is done at this young age because the bird’s beak is not very hard yet so it is not painful to them. It is often compared to clipping a person’s fingernail. Now while this information is actually correct many people who just go on blogs may find information that is totally a person’s belief. Having raised chickens for 15 years and competing in different national contests I hate when the public is misinformed about my industry.

The goal of farmers and ranchers is to take care of their animals and it is really frustrating for me to find people that post comments that have no background. One blog compared debeaking to, “chopping off the hand of a bully who you know is being abused at home.” A little later in the blog the author goes on to blame debeaking as the reason her pullets (female chicken under one year of age) were not laying eggs because they were so traumatized. This is most definitely not the case. The authors birds are most likely not mature enough to lay eggs or have the wrong environmental factors whether that is temperature or a really common problem amount of light.  

Debeaking is a common practice for larger operations as well as small family flocks that don’t want to deal with pecking. Birds are carnivorous and I have definitely witnessed this first hand. If they are not given enough space, proper ventilation, or the right amount of nutrients in their feed it can get to be a problem really fast. Chickens are attracted to the color red and once they have tasted the blood they just want more and it is a really hard problem to fix. For large producers it is better to just have the birds beaks trimmed so they do not have to worry about this problem. It could turn into a disaster really fast with lots of causalities if it was not noticed right away, so beak trimming is a great preventative measure.

With my own birds we have ordered them with and without their beaks trimmed and there have been no differences. Having grown at least 20 different breeds of chickens I have had different experiences with beaks. In the past I have had problems with some birds beaks growing too fast and they would start to cross funny. This could have been prevented had they been debeaked as a chick. Another breed I have worked with for at least a decade is the Brown Leghorn. Leghorns in general are a very flighty high energy breed so they are one of the most common breeds for cannibalism. This is also why major egg producers have their birds’ debeaked. Space is also a limitation for large producers.      

If you want more information this link explains the process of beak trimming in an easily understandable way.  http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/36022000/Beak%20Trimming%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf