However, I started at MSU in fall of 2006, and came expecting I would learn the latest technology in producing the safest, healthiest food in the world.

But the last thing I thought I would ever have to do is defend my right to carry on my family’s heritage, our nation’s economy, and try to explain the simplest aspects of agriculture to those who know little about it but want to condemn it.

I am a student in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources because I am proud of my family’s heritage and I enjoy working with animals and watching them grow.

I appreciate the responsibility that was instilled in me knowing that animals in my backyard depended on me for food and water and that I was given the moral and ethical responsibility to care for my animals.

We in the agriculture college feel betrayed by PETA members because they show only pictures of animal cruelty that are the worst of the worst but not the true farm experience.

These pictures are absurd; conditions are and the acts of the farmer are not standard agricultural practices, they are pictures of acts that we as farmers condemn. We question whether these pictures of animal cruelty were even taken in our country.

I would urge any person who wants to condemn animal agriculture to learn the basics of farming. Many want to condemn the way we raise our animals but don’t even understand the basics of raising care.

Greg Thon

agribusiness management junior and president of FarmHouse Fraternity