By TIM ALEXANDER
Illinois Correspondent

NORMAL, Ill. — Children’s books, movies and cartoons are influencing impressionable young minds through the personification of animals at an alarming rate, a University of Illinois professor of animal science claimed during a breakout session at the Illinois Farm Bureau (IFB) Commodity Conference, last month in Normal.

Anthropomorphism – the attribution of human characteristics and qualities to non-human beings – affects more children now than ever before due, in part, to the declining number of people who have contact with non-companion animals, according to Dr. Janeen Salak Johnson. Her presentation, “Animal Rights and Welfare: Are You Informed?” was attended by several dozen farmers and IFB leaders.

“(Anthropomorphism) has really become a major factor we have to deal with,” said Johnson, who also serves as a swine researcher for the UoI. “This starts with children’s movies and books; our pop culture has taken animals and given them human-like emotions.”
Though personification of animals in film and on television has been evident in pop culture since the early, animated Disney movies, each successive generation has been exposed to it through their own films, books or other media. For Johnson’s own daughter at age four, the medium was the animated film version of E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. After viewing the film a time or two, the girl suddenly refused to consume bacon.
“She ate bacon or pork every day before she saw that movie,” said Johnson, adding the girl, now 10, claims no recollection of her short-lived strike against porcine delicacies.

Many people, however, retain their human-like adulation of animals into adulthood and beyond, she said, with some becoming leaders in animal “rights” activism groups or participating in efforts to adversely affect animal agriculture in other ways.

“Animal rights groups are winning the battle by using misconceptions,” she said. “People have minimal contact with animals except for their pets. Their feelings are empowered by animal rights groups, and they make no distinction between production animals and companion animals.”

Johnson spoke about the UoI’s new course focusing on animal activism and its effects on American consumers and legislation. With one semester “in the books,” she has found she will have her work cut out for her in educating UoI students – many of whom hail from urban areas like Chicago and have little or no farming background – about the realities of animal agriculture and food production.

According to a recent poll, only 61 percent of Americans under the age of 25 believe that it is morally correct to raise animals strictly for food. Reclaiming the legitimacy of animal agriculture in the eyes of youth is a primary goal of the class, according to Johnson, though the brunt of that mission lies with livestock producers themselves.

“If we are in some facet of animal agriculture, this issue of animal rights and animal welfare is going to impact (our) future,” she said. “You must be transparent, and help educate the public about how you are caring for your animals. Animal welfare relates to how we can care for an animal to the best of our ability by reducing unnecessary pain and suffering.”

Johnson advises animal agriculturists to take an active stance in speaking out to their neighbors, friends and associates, younger ones in particular, about “misconceptions” perpetuated by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and other animal activism groups, along with Hollywood, Publisher’s Row and national media sources. She recommends producers point out that the U.S. livestock industry will be counted upon to meet global demand for protein in underdeveloped countries as the world’s population nearly doubles by the year 2050.

She also urges producers to promote that through greater efficiency, today’s livestock producers require 37 million fewer cattle to produce the same amount of meat as in 1975, and that antibiotic resistance did not originate because of overuse in farm animals.

‘The bottom line is, we must tell consumers why we do the things we do, what changes we have made to improve animal well-being, what practices we’ve eliminated and which ones we cannot eliminate,” Johnson concluded. “Don’t tap around the issues; soccer moms are intelligent, and they are (part of) our audience.”