Unfettered Letters

Another kind of bailout

What makes farm subsidies, now paid out for the last 50- plus years, any different from the money Congress wants to put into corporations that are failing? Are farms not businesses, and should they not have at some point been able to succeed or fail?

This is the double standard in our government, and no one in Washington has the guts to confront the truth about this entitlement, which was never meant to last for decades.

Is the free market only good for the other guy?

Herman Kirkpatrick
Leawood

Why put FDA office in China?

Why should we, the U.S. taxpayers, fund an FDA Office in China? (11/20, A-14)

If they can’t guarantee the quality of their exports, we should buy from somewhere else — preferably a country that is not run by communists.

Amy Brown
Leawood

Treatment of farm animals

Farm wife Marcia Gorrell wants us to believe that she and other factory farmers are treating their animals humanely (11/17, Opinion, “As I See It: Horror stories don’t reflect America’s farming excellence”).

While employed by Merck, I visited many modern farms. The standard practices that Gorrell defends as being based upon sound research would disturb most people.

History has taught us that we humans have the capacity to close our hearts to suffering and injustice when we benefit or have become desensitized.

I think Upton Sinclair was speaking directly to Gorrell’s predicament when he said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Gorrell asks if it’s in our best interest to change these abhorrent practices. Yes it is! Diets rich in meat have been associated with more cancer, heart disease and kidney disease. They use more fossil fuel, create more greenhouse gases and pollute our water. When meat prices rise and we eat less, everyone will benefit.

JoAnn Farb
Lecompton Kan.

In defense of modern farming

I must express my extreme disappointment over Karen Dillon’s article “Factory farms under fire” (10/30, A-1). I know farmer Scott Phillips and his family personally. They are solid, patriotic, Christian, caring family farmers who certainly did not deserve this shellacking.

Today’s farmers and ranchers do a magnificent of providing the world’s safest, most abundant and certainly most affordable food supply, using currently accepted production methods. Articles like this will force agricultural producers to ask themselves why they must continually apologize for the job they are conducting.

Sources such as the Humane Society of the United States, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Farm Sanctuary are not “animal welfare advocates.” They are animal-rights activists that actively promote a vegetarian lifestyle. Agriculture is only the low-hanging fruit. Ms. Dillon’s article only whips controversy to feed their money machines.

There is no middle ground of compromise with the animal rightists. All they really want is your money.

Rick Kennedy
Parkville

Farm animals deserve better

Thank you for Karen Dillon’s well-written article detailing the cruelty of factory farms (10/30, A-1, “Factory farms under fire; Warehouse-style conditions and confinement inspire a wave of challenges”).

Pigs are more intelligent than dogs and cats. They can learn to play simple video games, and when raised on pasture, they have a complex social structure. A mother pig will gather grass and straw and build a nest for her piglets.

How unbearable it must be for these intelligent animals, who like to root in the ground and have their minds challenged, to be locked in tiny barren crates where they can’t even turn around.

Additionally, factory farm pigs often suffer painful foot and leg problems and respiratory illnesses. In fact, 70 percent of the antibiotics used in this country are fed to factory farm animals to keep them alive in such stressful conditions.

All 27 countries of the European Union and four American states have banned these cruel practices. It’s time for national legislation to ensure that all animals, including those raised for food, are treated humanely.

Pam Snyder
Pleasant Hill

Just how dumb do factory-farm owners think we are? Spare us the lies and lame justifications for the cruel practices of these mega operations. Are we supposed to believe:

That animals in confinement are loving every minute of it?

That the selfless owners are thinking only of the welfare of the dear animals, rather than exploiting them for profit?

That animals living in cramped, toxic indoor conditions eating unnatural food, getting body parts cut off and forced into production overload and ill health is an improvement on God’s designs?

Which of these owners would be willing to trade places with the animals? It’s time that we demand reform and end the abuse of the least among us, our animal kin.

Better yet, stop raising animals for food at all, since it is an unsustainable practice, terrible on the environment and a contributor to poor health.

Carol J. Meyer
Roeland Park

Conditions at factory farms

Pig farmer Scott Phillips and University of Missouri agriculture professor George Jesse defend factory farming conditions where large sows live their entire lives in 2-by-7 foot slatted-floor cages, unable to even turn around (10/30, A-1, “Factory farms under fire”). They say it keeps them safe, protected and out of the elements.

I’d be willing to put farmer Phillips and Jesse in cages about the size of a vertical coffin. Their confinement would be roomier than a sow’s, because they could at least turn around.

The benefits, of course, would be numerous. They wouldn’t have to worry about paying bills or taxes, shopping, having accidents, maintaining vehicles or homes, encountering criminals, getting robo-calls from politicians or even dealing with plumbers. A slatted floor would drain any waste into an open tank just below their feet.

Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, huh guys? Surely you deserve a life as safe and protected as some pigs.

Talis Bergmanis
Fairway

Fighting factory farms’ stench

We commend The Star in supporting restrictions on placement of factory hog and chicken farms near state historic sites (9/2, Opinion, “Tougher laws needed to regulate hog farms”). However, folks visiting historic sites can leave when the unbelievable stench rolls in.

Those of us farmers who have had the misfortune to have factory hog farms come into our areas have no such luxury. We have to endure, while Department of Natural Resources does nothing.

My farm and residence is six miles from 140,000 hogs and four miles from 80,000 hogs. The factory hog farm proposed for near Arrow Rock was for far fewer.

Citizen Legal Environmental Action Network represents about 70 farm families who have fought factory hog farms for over a decade. Sadly, we still have to endure the stink.

Rolf Christen
Secretary CLEAN (Citizen Legal Environmental Action Network)
Green City, Mo.

Safe beef first

Creekstone Farms, a small beef producer, has attempted to exercise its freedom of choice and test all of its cows for mad cow disease (at their own expense) in order to assure its customers that their product is safe. In a year when the government inspection system has demonstrated ineptitude resulting with a large scale salmonella outbreak and an exposé showing diseased cattle being mistreated and put into the food chain, it would seem to be a good idea.

But no, big beef producers complained that consumers might exercise their own freedom of choice and buy Creekstone’s product over the mass-produced beef, where only 1 percent of the beef is tested. The USDA sued to block Creekstone and won on appeal using some of the most contorted logic I’ve ever read.

In this free market, big business is free to do what they want to, and we consumers are free to eat what’s put before us or nothing at all.

Now I know what Republicans mean when they say freedom isn’t free. It costs millions in campaign contributions.

Mark Hastert
Kansas City

Farmers for Kay Barnes

I am writing for hundreds of Missouri farmers who believe we need a change in Washington and Kay Barnes is the right person for the job.

The family farmers I know are not happy with Sam Graves. We are sick and tired of being represented by someone who does the bidding of the oil companies and special interests.

With diesel and fertilizer costing more than ever, it is hard for many of us to make a living. But instead of looking out for us, Graves has voted to give oil companies more tax breaks. And he even voted against the Production Tax Credit for renewable energy. Many farmers have benefited from the biofuel and wind energy investments in their communities.

Family farmers are getting hit from all directions. Production costs and health insurance premiums are skyrocketing, so there is little left to save for retirement.

Kay Barnes is who we need in Congress instead of Special Interest Sam. She has the courage to stand up to oil companies and fight for our interests. And she knows how to get things done by working with Republicans and Democrats. Vote for change in November.

William Bruce Jr.
Chairman, Farmers for Kay
Lucerne, Mo.

A fertile idea for farmers

With the cost of fertilizer rising and also the cost of corn, why don’t the ranchers and feed lots trade the farmers manure for corn?

Seems to me that could make more of our food supply organic and solve three problems.

Ethel Kean
Independence