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Preface - Introduction - CHAPTERS: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12
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CHAPTER V - LIVESTOCK SUFFER, TOO

I gave three distinct grounds for believing that nonhuman animals feel pain: behavior, the nature of their nervous system, and the evolutionary usefulness of pain.

--Peter Singer, Animal Liberation

The meat/poultry/fish section of this "ranch market" is a big customer draw and features as its main attraction "the finest range-fed beef available -- 100% Rocky Mountain Pure." A colorful handout on the meat counter details how these beef cattle "graze on unfertilized mountain pastures, drink from snow-melt streams, breathe crystal clear mountain air, and are raised in a completely natural environment." On the cover, beautiful and rugged Colorado mountains sweep majestically into a deep blue sky. The foreground is filled by a large meadow scattered with cattle. The meadow is badly trampled and overgrazed.

A beautiful Western scene, but the open foreground and even much of the forested background have been severely degraded by cattle.

(George Robbins Photo, Jackson, WY.)

Granted, the meat from these animals usually is superior to that produced exclusively on crowded pastures and feedlots (and this particular ranch is widely considered the most organic large operation in the West). But do these cows really lead a life of pleasure in Rocky Mountain Paradise?

Apparently many customers think so, for they buy this higher-priced range-fed beef not only because they believe it is "a clean, healthy alternative" but because "the cows don't suffer." If they only knew.

Most of us are comfortable with the familiar pastoral scenes where seemingly contented cows graze in the grassy countryside. Few of us consider that most of our images derive from memories of small, carefully fenced, well-watered private pastures. Even there most of the animals actually lead short and uncomfortable lives, but livestock on the open Western range generally have it much worse.

In cattle on range the first symptom is partial or complete blindness. This is followed by, or accompanied with, inability to use the tongue or swallow. The disease is termed "paralyzed tongue. " Because of blindness, animals may wander aimlessly until exhausted, or stand and push against a solid object in their path for hours. Because of inability to swallow, animals may stand in water, unable to drink or they may try unsuccessfully to crop forage. Animals become thin and weak and die if treatment is not undertaken.

--Description of tansy mustard poisoning from "Poisonous Range Plants of New Mexico," New Mexico State University Cooperative Extension Service

Cattle commonly are turned out onto the open range in spring or summer, basically to fend for themselves, and then rounded up after the growing season. In some areas they are left on the range year-round. Generally sheep are more closely watched, often herded, although shepherds usually must each watch over hundreds or even thousands of sheep.

It is ironic that because most Western range is overgrazed and/or otherwise degraded, range livestock must cope with most of the same problems that wild animals do. But because these domesticated animals are unnaturally manipulated and have had much of their original instinct, intelligence, and agility bred out of them, they often are unable to do so. They frequently die or suffer due to starvation; thirst; exposure; physical injuries; infections from foxtails, stickers, and thorns; poisonous plants; snake bites; lightning; fires (sheep especially); predators; disease and parasites -- problems most of which are much less common to the generally healthier and more closely supervised livestock on small private pastures.

For example, as I write this now in Tucson thousands of cattle on nearby overgrazed rangeland are dying of thirst and starvation, many with their mouths filled with spines from the cactus they ate. Cattle dying from thirst or starvation on the Western range is common, especially during prolonged dry spells and harsh winters when deep snow covers forage for long periods. Further, mostly because palatable plants on Western ranges have been depleted and toxic plants spread, annual range livestock mortality from poisonous plants averages 2%-5% (Holechek 1989); each year tens of thousands of range cattle and sheep suffer torturous poisoning deaths. Some cattle become addicted to locoweed and consequently die from starvation or thirst as they give up food and water in favor of the narcotic contained in the plant. Likewise, many range stock succumb to deficiencies or excesses of minerals. Others die from exposure during blizzards, extreme cold, or heat. Some become entangled in fences or loose barbed wire which strangles, maims, or holds them until they die from thirst, starvation, or exposure. Others die from drowning, quicksand, or falls.

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This cow like 2%-5% of all range livestock annually — ate too much toxic vegetation.

In fact, range livestock mortality from causes other than predation averages roughly 10% annually. An additional 2% of losses are blamed on predators; thus roughly 12% of stock animals on the open range die from "natural" causes each year (sheep losses are higher than cattle losses). Probably a larger percentage suffer from these hazards without dying.

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This cow may have succumbed to disease or toxics from a nearby mineral spring.

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This calf starved on a barren, overgrazed range.

(Steve Johnson)

Additionally, many range livestock are shot by hunters who mistake them for "game" animals, who don't like them competing with "game," or who simply want to shoot something big. Usually the animals are only wounded and amble off to suffer and perhaps die later. Others are shot or poisoned by people who don't want livestock on public land and by angry landowners who have suffered livestock damage. Also, hundreds, perhaps thousands, are poached annually. And thanks largely to "open range" laws that allow livestock to roam practically anywhere, thousands of cattle and sheep are injured or killed annually by vehicles on Western roadways.

Bleeding at four points on its body, a big bull calf bucks to its feet and plunges headlong into a nervous wall of cattle at the far end of the corral. What [the rancher] had just done to that bull is enough to make any man cringe.

--l-22-82 Wall Street Journal (Ferguson 1983)

In addition to the above-mentioned hardships, ranchmen themselves subject range livestock to numerous brutalities, many of which originated with barbarous Spanish stockmen centuries ago. Animals are branded with hot irons, dehorned, castrated, and mutilated in the ears, cheeks, and neck for identification. They may be shocked, pushed, prodded, punched, roped, rounded up, dragged, kicked, whipped, and beaten. They are trucked great distances without adequate food, water, shelter, or rest, causing animals discomfort, injury, and death. (Trucking livestock to and from public grazing areas is increasingly common.) They may be injected, fed, dipped, sprayed, and otherwise treated with various insecticides, fungicides, fumigants, antibiotics, minerals, chemicals, and fertility drugs. Some suffer reproductive failure, birth deformity, bodily impairment, illness, and death from herbicides and pesticides sprayed on rangeland.

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And, a fall from a cliff onto these boulders proved fatal to this cow.

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These stockmen are violently jabbing, beating, and kicking the cattle in this trailer -- ordinary behavior on the Western range.

Range cattle usually mate when their owners allow them to and with whom their owners provide, not as they would naturally. Occasionally, beef cattle are artificially inseminated. Difficult or slow births may be assisted with clamps, hooks, pry bars, ropes, and even blocks and tackle. Though many ranchers have become proficient with these tools, most lack the knowledge or desire to minimize trauma to the animals, who frequently die from complications.

Young calves are vaccinated against disease present in their grazing areas. Still, many contact disease or suffer protein and other deficiencies while nursing from their ill or emaciated mothers. Calves are usually weaned by separation from their mothers at 6 to 8 months of age, rather than the 10-12 months Nature intended.

When large animals are dehorned there may be excessive bleeding. If this occurs, you may pick up the main artery on the underside of the cut with forceps and pull it until it breaks. Thebroken artery goes back into the softer tissues and usually bleeding stops.

--from Beef Cattle Husbandry Study Course, USDA

Most cattle are dehorned at an early age to prevent future damage to valuable beeves, hides, and cowboys, and because dehorned cattle are considered easier to handle (they cannot defend themselves as well). Younger calves are roped and held down; larger animals are restrained in dehorning chutes, pinch gates, squeeze pens, and cattle stocks, or thrown against and tied to any large, sturdy object. Usually horns are simply sawed or clipped off, though they may be burned off with hot irons or gouged out with patented dehorning spoons and tubes. All these methods are extremely painful. Sometimes caustic chemicals are applied to the horn area of young calves to prevent horn growth. When rain follows, or when the job is improperly done, the chemical gets into and burns the calves' eyes, sometimes blinding them.

Dehorning is such a shock to a body that often the animal Will lose weight and not regain it until a week or two later. Cracked and slivered skull bones and lacerated blood vessels are not uncommon. Some animals even die from excessive bleeding, infection, or resultant parasites or introduced disease.

Most young male cattle are castrated, thereafter becoming "steers." The main reason this is done is that castrated cattle are more lethargic, therefore easier to handle and apt to gain more weight. Also, castration precludes unplanned breeding, prevents animals from developing well-proportioned, less profitable bodies, and is alleged to produce more tender, flavorful meat. Almost all castration is done by ranchers themselves, usually with knives. The scrotum is slit lengthwise or the lower portion cut away entirely, the testicles pulled out and cut or yanked off. (Men: Do you think this would hurt??) After these procedures, the animals often cry, lie down, and kick for an hour or more. Pain killers are not used. Other methods of castration include clamping off the testicles with a rubber ring called an "elastrator" or severely crushing the cords and blood vessels above the testicles with special pincers, after which the testicles eventually waste away for want of circulation. Or, the whole appendage may simply be severed with a pocket knife. As with dehorning, castration sometimes results in excessive bleeding or infection and, in rare cases, death. Some cattlemen spay heifers, and most spaying is done by ranchers themselves, not veterinarians. The details of and complications arising from these operations are best left to the imagination.

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Owners of livestock may treat animals belonging to them without being subject to penalties for practising veterinary medicine without proper licensing and permitting.

--Wyoming Statute 33-30-203(a)(i) and (v). (This law is similar to most in other Western states.)

Sheep commonly are "docked," that is, their tails are cut off, largely so droppings won't cling to their wool and draw flies. Docking is accomplished with knives, red-hot irons, chisels, crushing utensils (crushing rather than cutting reduces blood loss), pincers, and special constrictors which cut off the blood supply, whereafter the tail gradually atrophies and falls off.

Older sheep may also be subjected to "tooth-grinding," an operation some sheepmen think extends the productive life of sheep by improving their ability to crop short grass (sheep's teeth grow throughout their lives). Studies show this to be a false assumption; normal grazing prevents teeth from growing too long. In tooth grinding, a sheep is tied and gagged and its teeth reduced with pliers or some other tool. This may cause damage to gums or sensitive tooth pulp cavities, and thus extreme pain to the animal. (Clifton 1990)

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To those who know the Western range, sheep shearers are notoriously brutal, but even the most well-intentioned shearers cause the animals much suffering. (Dick Randall)

In Western lore, sheep shearing is portrayed as a harmless, rustic activity. On the real range, accounts abound of mistreatment and cruelty by sheep shearers. Wool sheep are sheared each spring after lambing. If sheared too early in the season, they may succumb to exposure or associated disease. Because shearers often are hurried or careless, sheep sometimes are kicked and punched to subdue them, and they may have portions of their bodies cut or torn by shearing utensils.

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Branding calves. (Unknown)

Ranchers take pride in their brands for to them it is much more than a sign of ownership; it is a symbol of service -- a pledge of integrity of the man behind it and a mark of courage, character, and wisdom.

--from Beef Cattle Science by M.E. Ensminger (Ensminger 1968)

On the Western range, ownership, age, and breeding information are affixed on individual animals by means of branding, tagging, and bodily disfigurement. The most common method of establishing animal ownership is with brands. Each livestock operation has its own brand, which is registered with the state, similar to a copyright. No one else may legally use that brand. Usually the brand is burned permanently into the flesh of the animal's hip or thigh with a hot iron -- the celebrated branding iron. (This was also a favorite method of World War II Nazi torturers.) Many Western states require hot iron branding. Less commonly, the mark of ownership (and owner's courage, wisdom, etc.) is burned into the animal's flesh with caustic branding fluids. Some ranchers also brand cattle on their jaws or other body parts to indicate year of birth or other information.

Among other symbols of identification used on range livestock are earmarks. Ears are slit open with knives, or notches cut out with ear notchers. The types and number of disfigurements, location on ear, which ear, etc. indicate certain management information. Metal or plastic markers are also common, though less popular than mutilation. Clamped onto ears, they may rub or scratch the skin and cause infections or openings for parasite introduction. Quite often they fall or rub off and animals must be retagged; the colorful plastic numbers are a common sight lying in the dust on the open range.

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Nine common ear marks (mutilations) of cattle, from a stockman's handbook.

Other methods of identification: "Buds" are formed by slitting an animal's nose. "Dewlaps" are created by cutting a long flap from the loose skin of an animal's neck, so that the strip of skin hangs down as an identifying pendent. "Wattles" are made similarly by cutting a strip of skin down off the jaw bone.

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The pendulous flaps on this cow's neck are "dewlaps."

The object of meat animal production is to deliver a salable animal at the packing house.

--Wesley Calef, Private Grazing and Public Lands (Calef 1960)

On top of all this, the vast majority of public lands cattle operations are geared to produce yearling heifers and steers ("feeder cattle") to send to commercial feedlots for fattening -- "building" as they say in the business -- before slaughter. So, almost all public range cattle end up in feedlots, along with most US cattle. Here they spend their last 100-120 days crammed together by the thousands (as many as 100,000), standing in their own excrement, with little or no shelter from the elements. They are fed a "hot" diet, high in concentrates and grains, scientifically designed to fatten them as quickly and cheaply as possible, supplemented with such delights as processed sawdust, feathers, newspaper, "plastic hay," sewage, tallow and grease, poultry litter, cement dust, cardboard scraps, and even their own excrement, all disguised with artificial flavors and aromas. They receive synthetic and natural hormones to make them grow fast -- as much as 3 pounds per day. From their terrible diet, crowding, unnatural living conditions, and mistreatment, animals commonly experience physical ailments and disease, for which they are given feed heavily laced with antibiotics. (For more on feedlots, see Mason 1980 or Fox 1986.)

Shipping fever is caused from multiple infection due to the interaction of viruses and bacteria, accentuated by environmental conditions creating physical tension or stress. Change in weather and feed, overcrowding, hard driving, lack of rest, and improper shelter all help usher in the disease.

--M.E. Ensminger, The Stockman's Handbook (Ensminger 1983)

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A cattle feedlot. (SCS, USDA)

Whether from feedlot or directly from the range, in the US nearly all of the few million cattle grazed on public land at some time each year eventually end up at brutal commercial slaughterhouses, along with nearly all of the remaining roughly 35 million cattle produced exclusively on private land. They arrive tired, hungry, and dehydrated, often suffering from injuries and exposure from roundup, trucking, and mistreatment along the way; roughly 2 in 100 die in transit. (Globally, hundreds of thousands of sheep and cattle die during shipboard transport each year, and millions die during ground transport.)

The survivors are herded (or dragged behind a pickup truck, in the case of "cripples") into a noisy slaughtering building, where they witness others being killed and butchered before them. The slaughterhouse is filled with the screams of terrified animals; the brutal thump of the pneumatic hammer; the whir, whack, rip, and crunch of bodies being processed. The sticky air reeks of death. The cattle stand in line, awaiting the final insult. In the end, about 40% by weight of an average 800 pound cow becomes what we prefer to call "beef" [Apparently, life for the workers in these establishments is not much better; turnover rate and rate of injury are the highest for any profession in the US (Robbins 1987).]

A $1 hormone pellet transplant behind the ear means the animal [cow] will consume approximately four fewer bushels of corn (a $20 savings) and reach market weight 18 days sooner (15 % faster than if untreated).

--Beef magazine

Feedlots and slaughterhouses make life on the range seem better, but do not be deceived; all are cruel components of the same industry. Also consider that nearly all steers and heifers (by far most cattle) spending time on public land live less than 2 years before slaughter, while breeding females are culled at around 8 to 10 years of age and breeding bulls at not much older. Their ancient ancestors lived full lives as members of complex social herds for 20 to 25 years in the wild.

Most ancestors from which contemporary cattle and sheep were developed established their particular species several million years ago. A wild ancestor of Eurasian cattle, the aurochs, was driven to extinction by hunting and habitat degradation in the late Middle Ages. Forebears of today's cattle are thought to have been domesticated some 9000 years ago in the Middle East. Ancestors of today's domestic sheep are the mouflon of Europe and urial of Asia; their domestication and herding began about 7000 years ago.

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Since that time cattle and sheep have been extensively crossbred and inbred, and have lived unnatural lives of forced work and premature death. Today they little resemble in either appearance or behavior their ancient ancestors. In recent times hybridization has created decreasingly natural animals. Toxic chemicals common in today's livestock industry have also taken their toll on the animals' body and behavior. Today's cow and sheep, bred to be slow and to gain weight quickly, represent an ongoing experiment to maximize productiveness and minimize cost.

The rancher wants as many big, fat, docile, procreating animals as possible. Studies show that confined sheep and cattle expend about 30% less energy than free-ranging livestock (Holechek 1989). So even on the open range livestock are encouraged to minimize expended energy and weight loss. They are moved only when absolutely necessary, always slowly. Various injections and additives, castration, age and sex separation, fences, lack of predators, human mistreatment, and generally unnatural living situations all have created spiritless animals.

Further, many ranchers, feedlot operators especially, feed or inject their livestock with harmful tranquilizers, sex hormones, and steroids to induce them to gain more weight. Livestock "growth stimulators" include "Steer-oid," "Ralgro," and "Compudose."

"Improved" breeding techniques and genetic manipulation are other juicy carrots in front of ranchers' noses. Already the modern cow more resembles a huge, fat slug than a wild bovine. One is reminded of the futuristic Woody Allen comedy, Sleeper, with its 200-pound carrots and 10'tall chickens. On the other hand, in northern Mexico, cross-breeding and genetic engineering have produced a profitable 3-foot-tall, 300 pound "minicow." According to the 2-28-88 Denver Post, "Ten minicows can graze on less than 3 acres of land [in this portion of northern Mexicol, the area one normal cow requires."

Cross-breeding and genetic manipulation are cruel to the animals being tested, and often lead to gross deformities and birth defects. While some "preferred" characteristics may be passed to following generations, so too are new flaws that may go unnoticed or are ignored by the experimenters.

Advanced biotechnology now offers cloning, gene splicing, sex determination, and more as Woody Allen-sized carrots in front of the ranching establishment's nose.

As one example of the lengths to which the industry will go to make a buck, Donald Johnson, a biologist from Colorado State University, is (with tax money) experimenting with drugs called ionophores, growth enhancers similar to antibiotics. He knew that about 6% of what cattle eat is "wasted" in methane burps, and so theorized that if he could find a way to reduce bovine burping he could increase the efficiency of cattle growth. Says Johnson:

lonophores change the way cows ferment feed in the rumen by inhibiting certain kinds of microbes. In general, the ionophores worked well. We got the same growth with 6% to 7% less feed, and methane loss was decreased by 4% to 25%.

On April 3, the US Patent and Trademark Office announced its intention to pursue a new interpretation of patent law which would allow patents to be granted on genetically-altered animals, with the exception of human beings.

--The Animals' Agenda (Jul/Aug 1987)

Most of this chapter has focused on cattle, and indeed range cattle have fared somewhat worse than range sheep. Nonetheless, sheep experience most of the same open range and inflicted adversities described above, as do goats, horses, and other animals used for ranch stock. Various federal, state, and local laws and ordinances ostensibly protect the welfare of riding horses, dogs, cats, birds, and other pet and wild animals; however, due to the livestock industry's enormous power, few of these legalities apply to commercial "stock."

For example, if your neighbor repeatedly beats her horse, the horse could be impounded and the woman taken to court for animal abuse. However, if a rancher repeatedly beats his horse, even to death, the laws probably won't apply. If a troubled youngster tortures cats with a soldering iron, he breaks the law. Yet, thousands of public lands ranchers burn the flesh of millions of cattle and sheep each year with red hot irons, with the blessing of these same governments (as mentioned, many state laws even require hot iron branding). If a rural resident withholds food from his caged pet geese for weeks at a time, he may be subject to county legal proceedings. But if a rancher puts a hundred cattle onto an overgrazed range and half of them starve to death, then the government gives him emergency assistance.

In fact, because livestock deaths are considered a business loss entitling the owner to a tax break, some ranchers intentionally starve animals to death. For example, multimillionaire public lands rancher John Jay Casey deliberately starved to death many hundreds of his cattle for tax writeoffs and habitually mistreated his animals. Over the years he was charged with hundreds of counts of animal cruelty. Yet he has been criminally charged only 4 times, resulting in 3 misdemeanor convictions and fines of a few thousand dollars. (Bowman 1987)

Try this experiment: Next time you see animal abuse, report it to the relevant city or county authorities. They will advise you of the animal protection law that applies to the situation and may even investigate. Then, find the worst case of range cattle or sheep abuse you can. Report it to the same authorities. They will at first be surprised and confused, and eventually will refer you to your state livestock board. Call the state livestock board and you will talk with a secretary who is similarly befuddled and knows little about livestock abuse legislation. If you are "lucky," you will to talk to one of the livestock board members, most of whom are ranchers. He (they're always men) will treat your concern for a lowly stock animal with controlled bemusement, or hostility, then more or less tell you that animal protection laws generally don't apply to livestock.

A few do, but since the state livestock boards administer livestock statutes, complaining does little good. Direct mistreatment and indirect abuse of livestock is omnipresent on the Western range, yet attempts to prevent it nearly always go nowhere.

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Cows have got to be

the most blantless creatures on earth.

I mean, we eat them.

We drink them.

We wear them.

They don't bite.

Hell, they don't even shit on the sidewalk

--from the movie Endangered Species

Ranchers treat their "stock" animals like meat-production units, like raw materials to be transformed into packaged goods, like "living factories," as one range professional put it. They have always considered cattle and sheep as growing, moving products, not feeling beings with lives of their own.

Unfortunately, ranchers are partly correct. Thanks to the industry's manipulative efforts, the modern cow and sheep, through no fault of their own, have lost many of their animal qualities. No longer are they physiologically or psychologically prepared for life. For example, the cow is one of the few animals on Earth that stands and sits in its own excrement, even on the open range, or evacuates its bowels in its own water. Cows and sheep make comparatively easy prey, and sheep especially are pathetically helpless against many predators. Cattle drift great distances during inclement weather and have a poor sense of territory. Unlike buffalo and other wild herd animals, cattle drift with, rather than against, prevailing storm winds, so they tend to move along with storms. They seldom paw snow off the ground in search of winter forage as do elk, deer, pronghorn, and horses. Their closest Western relatives, buffalo, thrust their heads into the snow and sweep their heads side to side, exposing large patches of forage, while cattle starve to death. Compared to wildlife, livestock also are ill-prepared for harsh winters because they have thin hides, store less fat for the winter, and their metabolic rate doesn't slow down nearly as much. When encountering a fence, a cow may walk back and forth until exhausted. When caught in a wildfire, it may stand in one place and roast to death, rather than flee or find protective cover; sheep frequently burn to death in fires, sometimes in great numbers. Cattle are bulkier, slower, less agile, and more obtuse than any large American ungulate. Unattended cattle on the open range usually die within a few years in most areas, while domestic sheep usually don't survive in the wild more than a few months without human assistance.

While domestication, intensive management, and manipulative breeding have created ever bulkier and more efficient livestock "eating machines," so have they created ever more awkward and lifeless animals.

Cows and sheep have devastated the West, but they are not to blame. They are only pawns in a deadly game of maximum profits. And, yes, they are animals and should be treated with respect. Yet, they are less truly alive than wildlife and should not have priority over wildlife in natural areas, on public land especially.

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I sit on the downed tree and watch the black steers slip on the creek bottom. They are all bred beef: beef heart, beef hide, beef hocks. They're a human product like rayon. They're like afield of shoes. They have cast-iron shanks and tongues like foam insoles. You can't see through to their brains as you can with other animals; they have beef fat behind their eyes, beef stew.

--Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Dillard 1974)

In conclusion, closing down feedlots and intensive pasture farms to instead raise livestock "out on the Western range" in a "natural" manner is nothing more than a wad pipe dream. As detailed above, open range ranching is very cruel to live stock. And, head-for-livestock-head, it is much more environmentally destructive.

Moreover, such a shift would be impossible -- an important consideration. It takes the public lands half of the West to produce only 3% of this country's beef, so it would take roughly 6 billion acres -- an area larger than North America -- of comparable range to produce the beef produced by feedlots and intensive pasture farms. How can we squeeze 30 million cattle onto range that is now terribly overgrazed with the equivalent of only 1 or 2 million? Or, would it be better to cut down all forest in the Eastern US for pasture and increase US beef production by about 1/3? Now, reconsider that nearly 2/3 of the land area of the US is already used to produce livestock, and nearly all of this land that is grazable is already being grazed far beyond its carrying capacity. Obviously, open range livestock grazing is not a preferable, viable, or even compassionate alternative to factory farming or intensive pasture ranching.

If cattle and sheep must be produced in this country, they should be raised on farms in moist climates. They should be grazed very lightly on open, organic pastures, protected from predators, and when necessary brought into barns at night. They should remain physically, genetically, and (as much as possible) behaviorally unaltered. They should be treated well throughout their short lives and slaughtered locally in a compassionate manner. This is more how farmers in the East raised livestock for centuries, and, as long as meat animals are to be raised in this country, it is still the best way. To do so, we would, of course, have to drastically reduce livestock numbers.

Steve Allender of the National Cattlemen's Association ... showed a list of strategies to the audience. First on the list was, "Don't educate the public. " He said trying to argue the cattle industry's position too vigorously might raise the public's awareness .... The second strategy, Allender said, is "Deal with your strengths," that is work with the good public opinion [image] that farmers and ranchers have and try to reinforce it. The third strategy listed was ... not to debate the extremists because it attracts attention which is currently focused on research laboratory animals, not cattle and sheep on the open range.

--11-21-90 Laramie Daily Boomerang, Laramie, Wyoming