One thing that every farmer needs to be aware of and try to protect the farm against is animal rights activists. They target farms that are unsuspecting and then post false information about the farm and the industry as a whole. Luckily, there are some precautions you can take to make sure you don’t fall victim to their plans.
- Google your farm. Make sure you’re aware of what information is online about the farm and make sure it’s correct.
- Be proactively transparent about your farm on social media. There are a lot of farms that now have social media pages where they post videos and pictures showing what’s going on each day on the farm. This is a great way for people who aren’t connected to agriculture to see what REALLY happens on a farm. This shows viewers how much farmers care about their farm, their employees, and their animals.
- Tighten up your visitor guidelines. One way to do that is to have a check-in/check-out sheet in the office right when people enter the farm so you know who’s on site at all times.
- Security cameras: There are a lot of farmers who at least have cameras on their maternity pens to keep an eye on the cows, but it would also help to have cameras on all farm entrances.
- When it comes to hiring, it can be a little tricky. A tip for that aspect of the farm is to first ask employees if they have someone in mind that would be good for the open position.
- Also, before hiring, make sure you do your research on the person you’re interviewing. An easy way to do this is just to check Facebook to see their page. One thing to check once you find them is the pages they’re a part of. If they’re a part of an animal rights group, they might not be the right person for the position. It’s the little details that you have to look out for.
- Keep very detailed records of everything that happens on the farm.
- Video and pictures from the farm
- Any employee records including animal care agreements and training records
- Animal welfare audits
- Animal evaluations and health records
- It doesn’t hurt to keep all documents. Scan them and put them on a hard drive for safekeeping.
These are just some of the tips that can help protect your farm from an animal rights activist. These people don’t want to know the truth about how the animals are cared for. An animal rights activist’s agenda is to post false information in hopes that no one actually looks into the claims they make. They want people to just agree with them, share the posts, and think that agriculture is a terrible industry when in reality, it’s a great industry that keeps food on their plates every single day.
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