Sopuck takes heat over video touting beef production

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By stating, “If you care about the environment, eat Canadian beef,” Robert Sopuck has evoked the wrath of animal rights activists.

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This article was published 10/01/2018 (2268 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

By stating, “If you care about the environment, eat Canadian beef,” Robert Sopuck has evoked the wrath of animal rights activists.

The Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa Conservative MP posted a Facebook video highlighting this key message on Monday, and by press time yesterday it had already received more than 112,000 views.

“Extensive beef production in ranch country is an agricultural system that promotes animal welfare, landscape conservation and wildlife habitat protection,” he said in the video, adding that the untilled perennial plants that cover grazing land provide a “conservation blanket” that prevents soil erosion and provides habitat for wildlife.

File
The Hagan family is pictured at their property south of Virden last summer. From left is Thomas, Rory and Felicity. The family oversees 3,200 acres of primarily native grassland, which 440 head of cattle graze on in a regenerative agricultural approach, such as what Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa Conservative MP Robert Sopuck is promoting in a new video he has posted to social media.
File The Hagan family is pictured at their property south of Virden last summer. From left is Thomas, Rory and Felicity. The family oversees 3,200 acres of primarily native grassland, which 440 head of cattle graze on in a regenerative agricultural approach, such as what Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa Conservative MP Robert Sopuck is promoting in a new video he has posted to social media.

Although the video resulted in a few positive comments, the majority of feedback has been negative, with many dismissing the video as inaccurate or “propaganda” alongside ad-hominem attacks on Sopuck himself.

Originally from Brandon and now based in Toronto, Animal Justice volunteer director Kimberley Carroll said she understands where the backlash is coming from.

After watching the video, she concluded “he’s like the Donald Trump of Manitoba right now.”

“It’s just so full of manure,” Carroll said. “Just the audacity of saying that consuming cattle is an environmental thing to do is just pretty ridiculous.”

A vegetarian for 22 years and vegan for the past 12 years, Carroll said she has come to believe that one “can’t be an environmentalist and eat animal products.”

Drawing statistics from the documentary “Cowspiracy,” she said animal agriculture

is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the combined exhaust from all modes of transportation.

With every pound of meat requiring six pounds of food crop, Carroll argued that no matter how one cuts it, meat production requires greater inputs than crops do.

“Cows are the middleman (and) we’re feeding them intensive amounts of food to create smaller amounts of food,” she said. “From what I can tell, there’s no getting around it — a decrease in animal consumption has to happen if we’re not going to destroy our planet.”

Sopuck fired back over the negative feedback his video has received on social media.

“These so-called environmental activists on the left are so full of themselves that if someone challenges their preconceived ideas, they can’t stand it, they just vibrate with anger,” he said. “I’m challenging them head-on and they don’t like it, and I don’t care if they don’t like it.”

Even so, he’s not too surprised by the backlash. After all, he posted the video to help dispel anti-beef misconceptions that he said have been running rampant for far too long.

Drawing from his almost 40-year career in conservation and subsequent work representing ranchers as an elected official, Sopuck said that “anything done wrong can have negative environmental effects, but the cattle industry has made leaps and bounds over the last 20 years in terms of protecting water quality, of protecting biodiversity.”

Sopuck’s video cites “ranch country” in specific and not the intensive livestock farming practices that receive the bulk of activists’ criticism.

Located approximately 16 kilometres south of Virden, Thomas and Felicity Hagan own a company, Naturally Manitoba, that strives to espouse the environmental virtues that Sopuck’s video centres on.

They have approximately 440 head of cattle grazing on their 3,200-acre ranch of native grassland where everything is done using a regenerative agricultural approach, which keeps the environment top of mind.

Hormone-free cattle dine on native grasses and are shifted throughout the farm using mobile fences to evenly spread both their grazing activities and manure. The soil is never tilled, which allows it to sequester carbon as well as store and clean water.

Although still early into their efforts, last year, the Hagan family received the National Blue-Winged Teal Award for their commitment to wildlife and habitat conservation.

Thankful to hear that Sopuck is promoting efforts such as theirs, Thomas said: “We need people to realize that cows are part of the answer and not the problem, and it’s all about how we use them.”

Naturally Manitoba seems to be picking up steam, he said, adding that with an increasing number of people expressing environmental consciousness, there’s a growing interest in ethical products such as theirs.

While Carroll said this is a more positive example,

she added that their environmentally conscious approach is in the minority and that the vast majority of North American cattle are raised in an intensive structure that does not carry these environmental benefits.

She also said that from an ethical point of view, the Hagan family’s farm is a “better-case scenario,” but that the animals still only live a portion of their natural lifespans before being slaughtered.

Sopuck said his beef production video is only one in a series of videos about environmental causes that require clarity that he plans on posting to social media in the coming weeks.

Another such video will focus on genetically modified organisms, which Sopuck says have received an unjustly bad rap.

“I think we Conservatives have been far too shy in talking about our environmental record, which I will state is far better than any Liberal or left-wing government,” he said. “We Conservatives have absolutely nothing to apologize for when it comes to the environment.”

Wilderness Committee Manitoba campaign director Eric Reder said that although there is some merit to Sopuck’s comments about cattle production aiding in the development of healthy landscapes, his video isn’t nuanced enough to address the topic in a meaningful way.

The video seems like it’s more a means of proving to agricultural producers that an elected official is on their side, Reder said. “I don’t think the video is going to convince anyone of anything.”

» tclarke@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB

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