Two things you can take to the bank, unless something drastic changes in the near future: the Humane Society is going to keep using its hidden cameras to search for incidents of livestock abuse at farms, auction markets and meat packers; and second, it will inevitably find some.

We can’t control the first bankable prediction, but we can control the second. Knowing that our worst critics are prowling around like wolves looking to pounce on animals being mistreated, we need to redouble efforts to clean up our act, across the dairy chain.

I will concede that these gotcha videos from the Humane Society of the United States – and there have been three just in 2008 – capture a few moments in time, without offering any context or explanation. It’s like looking at video footage of two cars that have just collided; it’s anyone’s guess how the accident happened, who was at fault, and what the extenuating circumstances were. No one likes to be judged based on a snapshot that doesn’t offer any background.

That said, even without the back story, we know the animal rights crowd will leverage these pictures of “spent dairy cows” into new cries for more regulations, more oversight, and ultimately, less consumption of meat and dairy products. This is yet another skirmish in the long ideological struggle over man’s relationship with animals, and what behaviors are acceptable across society. For all the money that the Humane Society and other animal rights groups have, cheap digital cameras may be the far greater threat in the long run, much more than the dozens of lawyers they employ.

As I wrote back in March [0], when the first Humane Society video closed down Hallmark Foods and led to the largest-ever beef recall, the real solution to all this is education. The education has to occur at two levels. First, we need to educate and reeducate everyone involved in animal care, transport and slaughter about the right and wrong procedures to follow. The ongoing assumption should be that hidden video cameras with a direct link to YouTube are everywhere, and that every action may become public at some point.

To help educate dairy producers, NMPF, along with Dairy Management Inc., and the American Association of Bovine Practitioners, will later this month be sending to every dairy farmer in the country a basic tip sheet about the proper care of cattle destined for transportation and/or culling. The 'Top 10 Considerations for Culling and Transporting Dairy Animals to a Packing or Processing Facility' is intended to assist farmers, and their employees, in making responsible decisions so that they don’t end up on the evening news.

NMPF has also been active in working with the Dairy Quality Assurance Center, and has offered the Caring for Dairy Animals technical guide [0] to its members. It’s worth looking at, if you haven’t yet.

The second piece of education, and the far tougher one, is of consumers. We have to remind them about what are reasonable expectations of the entire livestock chain. In contrast to the Humane Society’s claim that dairy cows today are treated as milking machines, I think the videos actually prove the opposite – that animals, like people, are not robots or machines with predictable behaviors that can be easily fixed when things go wrong.

Sometimes, despite the most conscientious veterinary care, animals become ill or injured. It’s not always obvious which will face such a fate. But it does happen, often without warning. This isn’t to excuse practices that increase the chances an animal will become a downer, but it is necessary to explain that animals (and the people working with them) are not perfect and don’t always respond with machine-like predictability to their environment.

Consumers and our society give farmers a lot of leeway and goodwill to conduct their business, which is as it should be. But that license is not unlimited. And more car crashes, regardless of the context, will in time result in that license getting revoked.

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