* Tech-savvy farmers using social media
* Agribusiness, food safety activists pour money into
campaigns
* Whistleblowers see new laws aimed at them
By P.J. Huffstutter and Lisa Baertlein
April 16 (Reuters) – Standing before a crowd of McDonald’s
Corp shareholders at its headquarters last spring, an
unlikely investor prepared for battle.
Paul Shapiro, a senior official of the Humane Society of the
United States, brandished a sheet of paper. The fast-food chain
was serving eggs to Americans from caged chickens, he said, each
living in a space smaller than the paper rectangle. Why was
that?
The board members were quiet, recalled Shapiro, the group’s
senior director of farm animal protection. Some shareholders in
the audience clapped.
Shapiro’s bit of stagecraft was part of a fight under way in
the American heartland that reaches into corporate boardrooms.
U.S. farmers and agribusiness are on one side and food safety
groups and animal-rights organizations are on the other.
It is fueled, in part, by politicians eager to court
influential backers during an election year. Farm groups, too,
want to be heard as Congress picks up its review of the federal
farm bill.
And although food-safety activists and animal-rights
organizations have different agendas, they both agree on one
thing: Much of the public is unaware of what happens to their
food before it arrives on their plate.
The recent furor over so-called “pink slime” beef filler
underscores how social media have given activists and consumers
a powerful weapon to influence that process. Using tools such as
Twitter and the threat of spending boycotts, consumers and
activists pressured retailers to abandon Beef Products Inc’s
ammonia-treated lean, finely textured beef.
“WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO HIDE?”
BPI idled three plants, affecting 650 workers. AFA Foods,
one of the largest ground beef processors in the United States,
filed for bankruptcy in early April, citing the uproar over pink
slime. Agribusiness giant Cargill cut production of the meat
scraps and warned the public’s resistance to the filler could
lead to higher hamburger prices this barbecue season. Wal-Mart
Stores Inc and Kroger Co, among other grocery
sellers, dropped it.
“What do you have to hide?” is the new battle cry for food
activists, said Amanda Hitt, a director at the Government
Accountability Project, a group that protects whistleblowers.
Stung by the setbacks, farm groups and agribusiness
heavyweights are spending hundreds of thousands dollars on
political campaigns to block critics from stepping inside barns.
Tech-savvy farmers have launched social media campaigns
about farm life and trained their peers on how to tweet critical
food bloggers. The agribusiness sector spent $123.8 million on
lobbying efforts in 2011, up from $110.2 million in 2007,
according to OpenSecrets.org.
Critics are equally determined. Tens of thousands of dollars
have been plowed into lobbying efforts this legislative year by
activists on proposed laws regulating the raising of hogs in six
states. Activists are pushing for legislation that would bar
farmers from housing pregnant sows in certain types of crates.
The Humane Society is snapping up shares of agriculture and
food companies to press them to change corporate purchasing
practices.
The fight has gotten so intense that Nebraska Governor Dave
Heineman recently told a crowd of cattlemen that he had a
message for the Humane Society: “We’re going to kick your ass
and send you out of the state.”
BATTLE LINES DRAWN
The Humane Society and other activists say their goal is to
pull back the curtain on the nation’s food supply. But what is
behind that curtain is often a messy sight – particularly in the
meat industry, where production methods can be less than
appetizing.
The outcry over BPI and its “pink slime” worries farmers and
food processors. They argue that they are being sabotaged by
opportunists who have infiltrated farming operations.
They also fret that agriculture is misunderstood by a public
whose ties to farming were cut generations ago. About 2 percent
of the nation’s population lives on a farm, according to
government data.
“We have to stop them,” Forrest Lucas, founder of the Lucas
Oil Co, said of the activists. He owns a 16,000-acre cattle
breeding ranch in southwest Missouri.
Lucas said he invested more than $600,000 to start the
agriculture advocacy group Protect the Harvest and plans on
spending “much, much, much more” to help back political
candidates and social media campaigns to thwart critics this
election year.
But amid this outrage, an unsettling realization is growing
among the farm set: Some of these battles may already be lost.
“We have to do a better job of communicating with the public
and that includes listening to what they say,” said Don Lipton,
spokesman for the American Farm Bureau.
WEIGHING THE RISKS
This conflict has raised concerns in the financial and
commodities sectors, where the fallout from the “pink slime”
uproar is still being felt.
Some agricultural lenders say they now weigh whether a
company has a plan in place to deal with the “media risk” of
activists portraying them in a negative light.
“I don’t know that anyone can anticipate something like what
happened” to BPI, said Brian Klatt, senior vice president of
capital markets for CoBank. “But we’re looking at whether
someone has the ability to withstand these kinds of shocks.”
The clash has hit farmers’ incomes. The price of beef
trimmings BPI used fell from an average of $1.01 a pound in late
February, prior to the controversy, to about 50 cents this past
week, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
It also spilled over to the price of lean fresh pork trim
typically used in hotdogs. That fell to nearly 49 cents a pound
last week, down 33 percent from six weeks earlier.
While People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is
better known for its anti-fur campaign and headline-grabbing
antics, no activist group is more loathed by the agricultural
community than the Humane Society of the United States.
Agribusiness lobbyists have written to companies sympathetic
to the group, asking them to halt donations. In recent months,
pick-up trucks across the nation’s Corn Belt have started
sporting bumper stickers that tell the Humane Society and PETA
to “get your paws off our laws.”
“It is HSUS and its issues that truly deserve our attention
because of the threat they pose to our society,” a spokeswoman
for the Nebraska Farm Bureau wrote in a 2007 editorial in the
High Plains Journal. “Laugh at PETA but fear HSUS.”
WELL-FUNDED
The Humane Society is neither small nor poor. The group’s
total assets – including cash, investments, property and other
items – were $231.3 million in 2010, according to the group’s
consolidated financial statements posted on its website.
Over the years, the Humane Society has become known for its
undercover videos. One shot in 2008 at a California
slaughterhouse, where workers were shown using chains and
forklift to move so-called “downer” cows, led to the largest
beef recall in the country’s history.
A more recent victory: eggs.
After several years of successful political campaigns to
require larger cages for egg-laying hens, or to mandate
cage-free egg farm production, the United Egg Producers (UMP)
joined forces with the Humane Society.
The longtime adversaries petitioned Congress to amend
existing egg inspection laws to require all U.S. farmers to
adopt larger standards on cage sizes for egg-laying hens.
Producers say the changes will mean overhauling housing for
nearly 300 million U.S. chickens, at an estimated cost of as
much as $4 billion.
But agribusiness leaders said they felt trapped: They could
join forces with the Humane Society or continue to lose the
fight one state at a time.
“There was legislation in Ohio and Michigan for different
cages,” said Mitch Head, spokesman for the egg producers.
“Washington and Oregon were potentially going to require all
eggs to be cage-free eggs. We realized there were 24 states that
have ballot initiative potential.”
PROTECTING THE FARM
Worried about a repeat in other agricultural sectors, the
industry is battling back.
Much of that fight has resulted in legislative efforts to
block or restrict undercover investigations on farms – or to
force activists to quickly turn over evidence of potential
wrong-doing to local authorities.
In February, Iowa lawmakers enacted a law that makes it a
crime to enter – or try to enter – an animal or crop production
facility using fraudulent reasons. They said it will help
farmers protect their private property but whistleblower groups
and animal rights activists say it was created to silence them
and make it impossible for them to get video footage.
The idea is spreading. Last month, Utah lawmakers passed a
bill similar to Iowa’s. New York, Minnesota, Missouri and
Nebraska are weighing similar or related legislation.
“In an economy that’s very fragile, agriculture is one of
the few bright spots,” said Nebraska state Senator Tyson Larson,
author of that state’s bill. “We have to protect ag and the
industries it supports.”
But critics are keeping the pressure on corporations through
shareholder activism. Earlier this year, when Carl’s Jr. and
Hardees fast-food chains failed to make good on vows to move
away from buying eggs from caged hens and pork from suppliers
who house their pigs in gestation crates, the Humane Society
called a stock broker.
The animal rights group soon bought about $2,000 worth of
shares in Apollo Global Management, the parent company of the
chains – enough to submit a shareholder resolution decrying its
“lack of progress on animal welfare issues,” said Matthew
Prescott, food policy director for the Humane Society.
So far, the fast-food companies have not changed their
buying policies but the tactic has raised eyebrows.
The Humane Society’s stock portfolio today includes more
than 80 publicly traded companies, nearly double the number it
held two years ago, Shapiro said.
The coming weeks promise to be busy, Shapiro said. They have
seven shareholder meetings to attend, including one for Seaboard
Foods, a unit of Seaboard Corp, the third largest U.S. hog
producer and a supplier to Wal-Mart.
Shapiro will be back at McDonald’s, too. The fast-food giant
has started using cage-free eggs in the United States and has
promised to ask its pork suppliers to stop buying from farmers
using hog gestation stalls.
