”Water, Soil, Toil: The Ways We Farm”
Farmers and ranchers make tough decisions every day in their farming and ranching practice. Recently proposed policy expansion and calls for increased consideration of animal welfare have pressured farmers, ranchers, and the organizations that represent them to take positions. Where are the farmers’ and ranchers’ voices? Dr. Thompson will provide a presentation laying out the various consumer-farmer-industry interests in agriculture while illustrating how these interests create dilemmas for our farmers and ranchers.
Dr. Paul Thompson holds the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural Food, and Community Ethics at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. He has formerly held positions in philosophy at Texas A&M University and Purdue University. His research has centered on ethical and philosophical questions associated with agriculture and food, and especially concerning the guidance and development of agricultural techno-science. He serves on the United States National Research Council’s Agricultural Biotechnology Advisory Council and on the Science and Industry Advisory Committee for Genome Canada. Thompson’s new work focuses on nanotechnology in the agrifood system.
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"The Key Ingredients for Animal Agriculture: More Farmers, More Attention to Animals"
Pacelle will discuss why it’s critical that family farmers & animal advocates unite to take back our food system from people who have little regard for animals, family farmers, & rural communities. American consumers & corporate farmers have become too disassociated from the way animals are treated, resulting in a wide array of abuses & a dissolution in American family agriculture. Consumers increasingly want options. They want to know their farmers, they want to know how animals are treated, & they want more transparency in the process. With more farmers on the land, we can help put an end to the disastrous 50-year experiment with factory farming & restore a conscious awareness of humane, responsible, & sustainable food production in the United States.
Wayne Pacelle is President & CEO of The Humane Society of the US. The HSUS is the largest provider of direct care services to animals, & it works to shape public & corporate policies in the realm of companion animals, farm animals, horses, wildlife, & animals used in testing & research. In the last 9 years, he & HSUS have helped to pass more than 725 new state laws for animals & worked with dozens of major food retailers to provide markets for more humanely produced animal products. Pacelle is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them.
