I have thought long and hard about how I could respond the ludicrous attack you made on the American farmer this week, in hopes of selling a few extra over-priced burritos.
My first reaction was to open my trusty dictionary and craft a sentence using every word in it to describe your video collection.
My second thought was to just ignore it, but we all know I can't ignore stupidity. I thought if I could respond in a way that would make just one of your cuustomers think twice about continuing their patronage, it would be worth my time and effort.
I won't pretend to know anything about running a multi-million dollar fast food chain that attempts to be a "higher-class" Taco Bell, so I ask that you offer me the same consideration and quit pretending you know ANYTHING about the American farmer, because its clear through your attempt at satire, you don't know jack shit about farming, livestock, or from reading your restaurant reviews, burritos for that matter.
While I don't have a $3.2 million marketing budget to produce slick videos and release them to Hulu, I do have some images to show you to help prove your "research and facts" wrong.
This is the face of a real American farmer. He is one of the 96% of American farmers who are part of a family owned operation. He and his wife farm a couple thousand acres of corn and soybeans with his older brother and his eldest son. The land they farm is the same land his great grandfather purchased when he came to Iowa.
They also run a 132 head cow/calf operation with their youngest son. (Gee, more family farm stuff going on there...no factories, no corporations, no large scale lots of any sort.) He lived through the farm crisis of the 80's and was able to hold on, while raising three kids whom he sent to college.
THIS is the face of a REAL farmer, not some evil entity YOU chose to create as part of a scare tactic. THIS is my 68 year old father, who to this day works from dawn to dusk doing his best to feed THE WORLD. The products he grows and raises and nurtures are the same products that have fed me and my two brothers and now my children. Do you HONESTLY think he would feed his grandchild something that wasn't safe to eat? And if you think the products he puts on his table are in any way different than the products he sells to the consumer, you are even dumber than I thought.
This is the face of a real American Farmer. Another pretty evil looking character, huh? While attending high school and maintaining a 3.0 GPA, this young farmer is a three sport athlete and will soon begin his second term as president of his 125+ member FFA Chapter. During this time of year, in addition to school, sports practices and FFA meetings, he manages the calving operation of a 60 head family owned cow/calf operation. He checks the cows as soon as he gets home, hand processing the newborn calves, feeding the cows and keeping records. He makes his final check at 10 p.m. then gets up at 2 a.m. to check on the herd and make sure no cows are having trouble or no newborn calves are in distress. He goes out again at 6 a.m. for the morning check before heading off to school. Today, he is checking the cows every three hours or so because there is no school. We are in the middle of a blizzard warning, but the safety and health of the livestock is a priority. This is my 17 year old son. His "job" is to help out with the herd that my husband, children and I own with some good friends of ours and their children. Again, no giant livestock conglomerate to be found here. We live on 12 acres, we have a small pasture/cattle lot with a few barns in it, where the cows and calves live from January to about June. At that time, they head to a large pasture we rent. In the fall, once harvest is complete, they come back home to graze on the corn stalks in the field adjacent to our property, that we rent from my brother. (GASP..another family farm thing.) He loves being part of a family farm and has plans to pursue a career in agriculture. Do you HONESTLY think that with ALL of the opportunities for careers afforded to young people these days, that if farming wasn't a viable, honest way to make a living that any young person in their right mind would want to do it?
This is the face of an American farmer. This is my 9 year old daughter, she is taking Fred, her bottle calf for a walk. You see sometimes, with livestock, just as with people, young mothers will participate enthusiastically in the breeding part of the process, but want no part of raising their young. When that happens on the farm, she steps in and bottle feeds the calf two to three times a day, until it can be weaned and go to the pasture. Do you HONESTLY think that this child would abuse, mistreat or allow anything harmful to happen to HER calves?
Now I haven't even begun to broach your obviously biased and flawed "research" regarding antibiotics (animals get sick, just like people do...there are stringent guidelines put in place when giving antibiotics to meat animals...but you wouldn't want the truth about that, would you?) I won't touch the asinine propaganda you spew about GMO's. (The sad fact of the matter is that a great number of people still think that food magically appears in the back room of the grocery store, so I would be wasting my time.) What I intended to do today was show you what an American Farmer looks like. I wanted you to see the people you are slandering and calling evil. I wanted to show you just how wrong you are about that one point you're trying to get across...and if you got that part of your argument wrong, just how many other parts of your story are bald faced lies, too?
Signed, An American Farmer who never has and now, never will step foot into your establishment.
