Designer Pet Food

A couple of weeks ago one of my rams and I had a slight misunderstanding that resulted in him charging me. He didn’t really hit me that hard and didn’t stick around to finish me off. To be honest it was my fault for not paying enough attention and doing too many things at once and that is not the point of this column

When I went down I landed on my left arm wrong and did something to my shoulder. It really hurt and continues to really hurt. I need to see a doctor, but our lovely health insurance has made our deductible so high I hate to think about what it might cost. I also do not have time to be laid up, so I am being the typical farmer and dealing with the pain and limitations. If it still hurts when I get caught up I might go, see the doctor.

The worst part is at night. A couple of times each night I roll over on it and it really hurts. The only way to deal with it is to go sit in the living room for a half an hour or so until the pain goes away. While I am doing that I watch a little late-night television and sometimes that is even more painful than the shoulder.

I am just amazed at the advertising and the claims that are made. I guess consumers are a little like lemmings and really don’t take time to think things through and some of the claims made by these products. Last night I saw an ad for dog food that advertising it was made with farm raised chicken. Any ideas of where else you might raise chicken. Wild or backyard where two options that came to mind right away. The obvious insinuation was that most chicken was somehow modified by evil corporations who probably developed it in a laboratory and either manufacture it there or on an even more sinister factory farm,

This dog food had pumpkin, blueberries, spinach and, of course, farm raised chicken. I am not sure how much time these people have spent watching their dogs, but gourmet food with delicate flavors are probably not what dogs really want. They should follow my dogs around for a while and see what they pick out on their own to eat. Then we would be seeing ads for dog food made with three-day old road kill that is unidentifiable in its origin with hints of fescue grass and calf feed.  Dogs really don’t care how the meat was raised, where it came from or even how it was “harvested”.

While this may make us chuckle it is a sign of how far we have come in terms of the disconnect between farmers and consumers. All meat is farm raised. Some is raised on bigger farms, some on smaller but no matter the configuration all meat is raised on a farm. For that matter, all meat is antibiotic free too. That is another popular claim I see on tv ads. All meat that is USDA inspected is free of antibiotics but if you have never been on a farm or ranch, it is an easy trap to fall into. I would say shame on the company that makes a buck advertising these claims but it is possible that they don’t even understand the differences.

The most outlandish ad I have seen lately was for vitamins. These vitamins would cure any malady, make you live forever and improve the lives of your descendants. OK, maybe I am embellishing it a bit, but this product made claims that if you had even the most rudimentary nutrition knowledge you would know it was not true. However, the last claim made me fall out of my chair. The vitamins were advertised as GMO free. I guess it is an accurate claim since vitamins don’t have DNA, so they cannot be genetically modified. However, that makes the claim one of the dumbest, most outlandish I have ever seen.

Well, most ridiculous GMO-free claim I have seen this side of the paper plates I ate off at a motel a couple of months ago. It demonstrates the total lack of understanding of basic science and the total disregard some companies have for honesty in marketing. Anything to attract attention and sell more product. Tap into the consumers lack of knowledge and exploit it for more sales regardless of what is right.

This will continue to happen until we make a better effort to educate our consumers and show them what we are doing. Present the sound science and exhaustive studies that our products go through to prove their safety. Companies marketing products will continue to make these claims until the consumer understands the farce. Who knows maybe there is a GMO free pain killer out there that will help me sleep through these ads.