M.A.C.’s editorial staff is active in researching the fakes launched by various organisations against livestock farms that are contemptuously called intensive rather than protected. Calling things by a name, chosen to be consistent with their purpose, is a strategy that activists use to generate fear.
Even the poultry industry has long used the term ‘intensive’, although it prefers to publicly refer to it as ‘protected’ due to the fact that it is an environment that takes care of animal welfare and consequently the health of the entire supply chain.
The poultry industry uses the term intensive without any malice, only meaning that a planned and controlled organisation produces much more (and more efficiently and safely) than a hobby farm, and it should be emphasised that:
- the amount of poultry reared follows the demand of those who – around the world – consume white meat and eggs;
- the demand for white meat is growing steadily, both for its nutritional qualities and its low cost, which represents an opportunity for access to safe and affordable food.
Unfortunately, on a semantic level, the term ‘intensive’ has crystallised into a negative meaning, precisely because anti-farming activists use it with contempt, with a distorted and instrumental meaning that manifests itself in all their communication activities, with the aim of damaging the reputation of farmers, their commitment and the supply chain as a whole.
Each of their messages is designed to strike the uninformed in the stomach, with images and phrases that, observed by experts in the field, are ridiculous and misleading precisely, but which generate unjustified anxieties and fears in inattentive and uninformed readers.
In order to better understand the degree of distortion that activists generate, the M.A.C. editorial staff thought of submitting to our readers the text of one of their communications circulated in Italy, flanking it with our own clarifications that we have also tried to make ironic.
Below is our elaboration.
The text we have chosen is one of the last ones sent by CIWF to their database of addresses in which one of our volunteers (in Italy) has also entered. The technique adopted by CIWF is precisely that of humanising an animal by ‘baptising’ it with a name (Orlando) -which is usually given to a person- to make the story more dramatic!
Enjoy reading at this link: M.A.C. vs CIWF
The Editorial Board of M.A.C.
