The President of the Ag and Food Exchange is encouraging livestock producers to use the tools they have available to demonstrate the emphasis they place on animal welfare.

Social media has dramatically increased the level of discussions surrounding livestock production.

Geraldine Auston, the President of the Ag and Food Exchange, notes opponents of animal agriculture are using a variety of tactics to grab the public’s attention.

They protest or hold vigils outside of processing facilities where animals are being delivered for processing. They will visit farms of they’ll go to restaurants and grocery stores and that sort of thing and go into the isles within those areas within grocery stores that use animal products and their strategy is to make the public aware.

With farmers, on these strategies, what they should be doing is using the tools within their power. The number one thing that farmers do well is care for their animals and being able to use what they know and how they do those things to make the public aware as well that equally there are people that are concerned about that production and people that don’t agree with that production but the farmers are doing a good job in raising animals.

It’s a funny thing about farmers. They’re busy doing their job of taking care of things on the farm and they’re not always looking out to, we need to be talking to the public about this and sharing what we do. They do have their provincial organizations. Some provinces have the Farm and Food Care groups. In Alberta we’ve got Alberta Farm Animal Care. There’s a lot of groups that are out there that are available to go out and talk about what farmers do on their farms on a regular basis and bring people back to the farm.

~ Geraldine Auston, Ag and Food Exchange

Auston says many people don’t understand anymore what happens on a farm so unveiling some of that mystery will help a lot with the consumers understanding that farmers are committed to good welfare.