Speak Up for Agriculture: Use the Best Terms
Compliments of…The Ontario Farm Animal Council
Agriculture is not a common topic of conversation for the average person. The vast majority of Canadians acknowledge that they know very little or nothing about farming. When people in agriculture get talking about our industry, it is filled with acronyms and terminology that the average person doesn’t understand. If you understand this sentence, you know what I’m talking about, “I talked to a rep at OFA and OMAF about my concerns with CAIS not covering my SEW pig barn because of my purebred ewes and my cash crop income.”
To complicate matters, special interest groups use phrases that paint agriculture in the most negative light, such as “factory farms”, “concentrated animal feeding operations”, and “force fed”. Did you ever hear a person who works in agriculture talk about force feeding their animals on their factory farm? It’s pretty easy communications math, who is in favour of a factory farm? And contrary to that, who is against a family farm?
Take a minute and think about common farm terms, like cow/calf operation. A person in the city might think the cow is having a surgery. A farrowing crate and a veal crate, makes one think of the small space of an orange or a milk crate. A horse stall does not have the same negative connotations. Debeaking vs. beak trimming: which more accurately describes what happens? Did you say “wiener” pigs or “weaner” pigs, “ewe” or “yo” or “you”?!
Keeping it simple does not mean people are not smart; they just aren’t familiar with our terminology. Define a term and then use it. Kindergarten students can rattle off long dinosaur names, so they can catch on to words like piglet and calf, instead of baby pigs and baby cows.
Here are a few more to think about:
Animal rights or animal welfare or animal care
Drugs or medications
Excrement or manure
Force fed or free choice feeding or “buffet style”
Frankenfoods or genetically modified foods
Slaughter or market or process
The Ontario Farm Animal Council has a wealth of training programs and resources on how to be a good ambassador for agriculture, including: How to Communicate with the Public, How to Run a Farm Tour, and How to Deal with the Media. See them online at www.ofac.org or call OFAC at (905) 821-3880.