Issues that have been discussed in scientific circles for decades were addressed in an animal science department seminar Friday.Paul Sundberg, assistant vice president of veterinary issues for the National Pork Producers Council, and Joan Hopper, ISU director of Laboratory Animal Resources for veterinary medicine, were the joint presenters of a seminar dealing with animal rights. Sundberg focused on animal-rights organizations on the Internet, on consumer attitudes and how they are affected by animal rights and on how the pork industry is trying to answer questions about animal welfare. “Our concern as an industry is not to have the public and our consumers misled by information,” Sundberg said. He said the National Pork Producers Council tries to stay on top of the latest developments in the animal rights movement by checking homepages on the Internet. These resources help the council anticipate questions that may be raised by the public about animal rights, Sundberg said. Another way the council tries to anticipate questions is through its animal-welfare committee. “NPCC has an animal-welfare committee whose goals are to raise producer awareness, provide information and support research,” he said. The council also gives producers and experts information and techniques they can use directly on the farm. The swine-care handbook, produced in cooperation with the American Association of Swine Veterinarians, gives producers and veterinarians guidelines for management practices from start to finish. “We try to go through the pork chain, because we know how the things that happen not only on the farm but all the way through can affect the quality for the meat as well as affect the welfare of the animal,” he said. “We make sure we can relay the latest scientific information that we have and the best we have it as it applies to pork production.”One of the main obstacles the industry continues to struggle with is the topic of measuring welfare, Sundberg said. To try to combat this, the council is developing an indexing system producers can use on the farm to track the welfare of their animals using objective measurements. With information on each pig’s physiology, behavior and production, the producers’ methods can later be evaluated by veterinarians and other experts to fix any problems they may arise. “The single most important factor in animal welfare is the husbandry skills of the manager,” Sundberg said. Hopper said the animal rights movement has become more militant and more personal towards the researchers themselves. Information has been burned and contaminated and researchers have become threatened and harassed, she said. “Some of the things that are upsetting is the language that is being used,” she said.Legislation, litigation and infiltration also are being used as tools by the animal-rights advocates, Hopper said. Students are being recruited to give information about their university’s animal research that they find bothersome, Hopper said. Educating the public and enforcing employee and student training is a top priority, she said.”If we can talk to the public as much as possible, we can make sure they understand what we do here, how we do it [and] the kind of constraints that the animal care program asks you to comply with,” Hopper said.