Last weekend I was having breakfast with my wife's sister and her husband and we were discussing the hot summer topic of grilling. He said he heard on TV that grilling causes cancer. Evidently some old study about how overcooking your food on the grill can cause cancer has resurfaced. I told him that breathing could actually cause cancer too. What doesn't cause cancer in this day and age if you listen to all the hype and scare tactics you hear in the media?

One Animal Rights group, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), which is made up of less than 5 percent physicians, battles the dairy industry on a daily basis by planting seeds of fear in the minds of consumers. They do this by questioning the nutritional value of milk products and filing lawsuits against the science that suggests that consuming three dairy servings a day contributes to weight loss. The odds are in their favor, aren't they? How easy it is for us to forget that in the past one hundred years we have doubled the life expectancy of American citizens.

The health problem that everyone is focused on today is obesity. People are trying to blame everyone except the person who exerts the energy required to lift the fork from their plate to their mouth. It seems to be easier to blame one food group or one company or one industry than to take responsibility for what we put in our bodies.

On the same day that PCRM filed a lawsuit against the dairy industry, a news story from Kenya read, "Four children from a Kenyan family have died after drinking contaminated milk during a traditional celebration. Thirty-nine other relatives went to the hospital with vomiting and diarrhea but are now said to be stable."

PCRM, like so many other animal rights groups, continues to present anti-human campaigns to the public without being held accountable for their actions. Milk is a basic building block of nutrition that has contributed to healthy living for centuries. When was the last time you heard about a real health problem associated with the consumption of milk? When is the mainstream in this country going to rise up and say, "enough with the scare tactics already?"

Medical research has discovered how to protect humans against diseases such as diphtheria, measles, mumps and malaria. On the horizon of medical research we hope to conquer AIDS and cancer. PCRM, which is opposed to humans consuming basic components of nutrition, is also opposed to medical research that may improve human life.

I could go on and on about the atrocities against mankind that profit-focused fear mongers are committing today. We can continue to wish them away all we want to but the sad fact is that they are here to stay. As long as the world wide web creates an opportunity for groups to say whatever they want to without any regard for credibility, they ultimately will influence some people with their misinformation. Most of us involved in farming take pride in working hard to produce the essentials of life and we don't like to get involved in issues outside our fence line.

Whether we like it or not, each of us in food production will be forced to get more active in telling our story and dispelling the myths put forth by the small but vocal and well-funded minority. We must recognize that our chore list today also includes telling consumers how well we are producing the safest supply of food in the world. We have an opportunity to turn this lawsuit against the dairy industry into a great public relations campaign if we are willing to take matters into our own hands. We have to remind American consumers that we are very lucky. Isn't it reassuring to live in a country where we don't need to be concerned about food safety or food shortages and our main concern is obesity?

We do what we can to keep our fences mended but from time to time we need to round up our critters and bring them back home, don't we? If we regard the lies about food production as a few cows have gotten away, it makes the decision a little easier. Are we going to go look for them and bring them home or just let them go and write off the loss? We need to "round up" those consumers that have been misled when the fence was down and bring them home to realize the bountiful blessing of safe, high quality food they have to choose from.

Editor's note: Trent Loos is a sixth generation United States farmer, host of the daily radio show, Loos Tales, and founder of Faces of Agriculture, a non-profit organization putting the human element back into the production of food. Get more information at www.FacesOfAg.com, or e-mail Trent at trent@loostales.com.

Date: 7/21/05