Environmental interest groups and their policy influence

Environmental Interest Groups

The National Cattleman's Beef Association: Environmental group profile

The National Cattleman's Beef Association: Environmental group profile

While most individuals think of environmental interest groups as predominantly left-wing in nature, the power of the National Cattleman's Beef Association in the U.S. Congress is a reminder that not all interest groups that affect national environmental and agricultural policy support a green agenda. As its name suggests, the National Cattleman's Beef Association (CBA)'s website states that it supports the interests of independent cattle producers, small and large. The organization is more than one hundred years old, and comprises 29,000 independent cattlemen and more than 64 state and cattle breed affiliates. It claims to represent over 230,000 cattlemen across the United States. However, because of its support of industrialized farming practices, some of its position statements could be said to run against the interests of small, organic, and grass-fed beef farmers.

CBA identifies its mission as promoting 'free enterprise' in American agriculture. It seeks to minimize any federal regulation over food and agriculture, including the use of hormones and antibiotics in beef. It states that it opposes 'extreme' environmental regulation of land use and animal welfare regulation. It does support reducing the capital gains tax; expanding market access to nations that have either banned or sharply regulated the import of American beef, including Japan and Korea; and permitting the use of science in animal husbandry (Join now, 2010, CBA).

One of its most enthusiastic causes is the allowing the use of growth-promoting hormones in agriculture. According to its website: "growth-promoting hormones help stimulate growth by increasing the efficiency in which feed is converted to muscle. Certain products, when administered to animals in very small amounts, supplement their natural hormone production and improve growth rates by allowing the animal to produce more muscle and less fat. This helps the industry produce leaner beef for consumers" (Hormones, 2010, CBA). It is obviously in the cattle producer's interest to be able to use growth hormones to increase the weight of the animal more quickly to 'slaughter weight.' This means a swifter time to market and less time spent fattening cattle on feedlots, where the cows cost money for their food and upkeep.

Why does the organization stress the leanness of hormone-raised beef? Reading between the lines, the organization's position reflects the growing link between obesity and the use of hormones in animal products, including beef. "Fetuses, infants, and children are thought to be more vulnerable to the hormone-disrupting effects of exogenous hormones and hormone-like chemicals & #8230;Since 1988, use of steroid hormones in cattle production has been illegal in Europe," and abstaining from the use of hormones has also been supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics (Opposition to the use of hormone growth promoters in beef and dairy cattle production, 2010, APHA).

While the use of hormones is a debatable issue, other policy statements by the CBA seem openly misleading. For example, the organization defends the use of antibiotics in cattle, stating that it is necessary to treat sick animals. However, the predominant reason there is great resistance to using antibiotics amongst environmentalists and critics of factory farming is not the occasional treatment of ailing animals, but the fact that all young cows are given antibiotics so they can digest corn, an unnatural diet for the species. As the author and activist Michael Pollan has noted: "The only way you can keep a cow alive getting this much corn [necessary to fatten the animal] would be with antibiotics. And they get large quantities of antibiotics with their feed every day. They get rumensin, which is technically an ionophore. it's a kind of antibiotic that helps with the bloat and the acidosis. And then they get tylosin, which is in the erythromycin family. And that antibiotic cuts down on the incidence of liver disease, and without that, they would all have liver disease probably" because of the effects of corn on cattle (Gross 2003). The CBA is so committed to the use of chemicals in agriculture it even promises to new members that they may receive a free bottle of Cydectin® Pour-on for joining, and if they recruit ten new members, a Swiss Army Watch (Join now, 2010, CBA).