It amazes me how the influence of a few vocal, passionate advocates can create policies, laws and regulations that affect so many. Truly there are many wonderful examples of this throughout history, where thought leadership and courage combined to change the landscape of our country. The improvement of factory working conditions in the early 20^th century, women’s suffrage, and the civil rights movements are all perfect examples of how advocacy led to action, which led to change.

But for every example of how it led to betterment, there are those that are detrimental. I’m talking about the misguided, myopic examples that we see more and more every day. People who truly believe that they are “doing good” for all of society when, frankly, they really don’t have a clue about the unintended consequences of their fervor.

This type of advocacy has hit home for me several times in the past few years. Our local school district is geographically large and economically and politically diverse, so it is ripe with examples. Take for instance citizens in one part of the district who strongly believe that orchestrating economic diversity in the population of neighborhood schools will benefit our community, no matter the financial or social cost. Through various channels, they have been able to influence the school board to the point the district has been re-mapped nearly every year for the last five years. As you might imagine, unintended consequences abound from such chaos.

I have also noticed that a Facebook group of local moms acts particularly emboldened to advocate change. Issues from whether it is OK for people to treat their lawns with herbicides or pesticides to what treats are OK to take to school for birthdays are all of the sudden everyone’s opinion. And, unfortunately, the opinions, while passionate, are often quite uninformed.

The pork industry — really all of us in animal protein — are currently dealing with the same, misguided efforts where a vocal few blithely impose their positions and, remarkably, often succeed. The difference is that today, we have gone well beyond local arguments over siting of livestock facilities.

The challenge is, and always has been, convincing the powers that be, those decision makers, that a few loud voices don’t represent the majority — or that their ideas will benefit the greater good. Just because you grease a squeaky wheel doesn’t mean it’s going to move you in the right direction.

We’ve seen it with retailers and restaurants banning gestation stalls at the request of animal rights activists, in non-GMO legislation at the request of special interest groups (when the majority of consumers don’t even know what “GMO” stands for), or in recent state and local referendums that significantly impact production practices far beyond the borders of their jurisdiction.

Some of these decisions have prompted necessary industry change or at a minimum a change in posture and positioning. Many of these issues have forced agriculture to listen better and seek to understand. That said, I truly believe that the change would have been more meaningful if it had come not at the request of a minority group with a megaphone, but instead as a collaboration between the industry and thought leaders. For the people, by the people.

As our country grows more fragmented, the voices of a vocal few will rise up. And while sometimes those voices provoke real, meaningful, lasting change for the better, there are other times when we’re too quick to give in — when decision-makers in our industry would rather avoid the conflict than truly understand the issue and all of its perspectives.

There’s a time and a place to pick our battles. There are also opportunities to head off future battles by identifying areas we can improve and change from within. I hope our industry gets better at both, and fast. We’ve got promising new technologies and advancements coming down the pipeline and how those are received will depend largely on our ability to manage the expectations of the vocal few.

Have you had any success in “taking away the megaphone”? How do you think we can improve our collective efforts against the vocal few?

Defending animal protein against the tyranny of the minority

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