By Mike Barnett

Some in agriculture continue to be bewildered by assaults on livestock operations by animal rights groups. I’m not sure why. The activists’ goal of vegan lifestyles for everyone is no secret. As long as animals are mistreated, they’re going to be on the lookout with video cameras.

A harsh reality for Texas livestock producers is recent documentation by animal activists of young calves being knocked in the head with hammers and pickaxes.  This case of animal abuse has knocked another chunk out of farmer and rancher credibility.

By Mike Barnett

I hope 2010 was a year to suit you. Here are my fearless ag predictions for 2011.

January 2011: In late 2010, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) lauded Bill Clinton as Person for the Year in honor of his newfound vegan diet. PETA revokes title as the former president is discovered in a compromising position with a cheeseburger.

February 2011: Global warming officially declared dead after mini-Ice Age continues to grip East Coast.

March 2011: Mass defection to meat markets as vegans discover there’s a little bit of bovine in most everything.

By Mike Barnett

“Why, in my day, you could buy meat anywhere. Eggs they had, real butter! Fresh lettuce in the stores.”

That was a line delivered by Edward G. Robinson, who played Sol Roth in the movie Soylent Green, a bleary, futuristic film made back in the 1970s starring Charlton Heston as New York City detective Ty Thorn. Roth was Thorn’s roommate/sidekick/researcher.

Thorn and Roth live in New York City, along with 40 million other people. Food as we know it is expensive and rare. Most people eat a processed substance called Soylent Yellow or Soylent Red, which is high energy processed vegetables—or so they’re told.

By Mike Barnett
I have a double-dose of fed up. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), as well as other animal rights groups, continue to mislead the public on animal abuse and food safety with today’s release of an undercover video of an egg production facility in Texas.

On one hand I’m sick of those bad players in the livestock industry who mistreat their animals.  On the other, I’m sick of the animal rights activist groups who promote these isolated incidents as an indictment of the entire meat and egg industry.

By Mike Barnett

Chicken factory farming in Texas is not at all what it is cracked up to be.

Consumers uneasily listen to horror stories about how birds suffer acute and chronic pain and are confined in unsanitary, disease-ridden chicken factory farms in Texas and other states, where they frequently succumb to heat prostration, infectious diseases and cancer.

These wild-eye claims remind me of an old saying from former president and Texas native Lyndon B. Johnson: “Boys, I may not know much, but I know chicken poop from chicken salad.”