01/10/2003 
Forming of intention à la SPD & Greens - A comment by Hartwig Wehming, member of the ISN advisory council
Whoever read about the Bundestag's plenary session of 25 September 2003, about which an article was published in the www.schweine.net , must have been amazed when reading about some members of parliament's ideological and one-sided attitudes. A remark made by the SPD faction's member Gabriele Hiller-Ohm particularly caught the eye in this article: Mrs Hiller-Ohm had said she was worrying about the repute of product labelling.
By the wish of portraying the type of livestock management on the products' packaging I felt very much reminded of a statement made by Mrs Bärbel Höhn (North Rhine-Westphalia's Minister of Agriculture and Environment) who visited the Fachhochschule Osnabrück (technical college of higher education) about two years ago. She, too, voiced that same wish and was then asked by the students whether or not she thought it was politics' elementary job to thus manipulate the consumers, allowing her that she might point out to increasing sales figures of
By diplomatic rhetoric, she managed to leave this question unanswered and even aroused some of the audience's enthusiasm about her quick-witted arguments. (As a matter of fact, not only students were listening to her that day ...)
To my mind, this kind of polemic must be taken by far more serious than all those lies we are told about detergents in the advertising shows on private TV every morning -- placed somewhere between the Bärbel Schäfer and Hans Meiser chat shows.
From the example of layer management, with cages being portrayed on the eggs' packaging, it becomes clear how things might look in future. Mrs Hiller-Ohm furthermore said that
To be more precise: In future, drained ground will adorn the packages of conventionally produced schnitzel, and the milking machine portrayed on the milk carton will urge the consumers to better reach for the Coke bottle.
In school we were taught that politics is a way of forming intention. However, it should never be done in this particular way, putting against the wall the producers of high-quality food (and I regard myself as being one of them, too). It must be allowed to wonder about the question whether or not the consumers' sensitivity regarding prices is kind of snatched away and replaced by taking emotional decisions.
The hope remains that expertise and reasonableness arrive in this country and will be triumphant in the end -- especially as such kind of
Hartwig Wehming
farmer / student
By the wish of portraying the type of livestock management on the products' packaging I felt very much reminded of a statement made by Mrs Bärbel Höhn (North Rhine-Westphalia's Minister of Agriculture and Environment) who visited the Fachhochschule Osnabrück (technical college of higher education) about two years ago. She, too, voiced that same wish and was then asked by the students whether or not she thought it was politics' elementary job to thus manipulate the consumers, allowing her that she might point out to increasing sales figures of
floor-laid eggsand then describe the political changes in agriculture as basically successful.
By diplomatic rhetoric, she managed to leave this question unanswered and even aroused some of the audience's enthusiasm about her quick-witted arguments. (As a matter of fact, not only students were listening to her that day ...)
To my mind, this kind of polemic must be taken by far more serious than all those lies we are told about detergents in the advertising shows on private TV every morning -- placed somewhere between the Bärbel Schäfer and Hans Meiser chat shows.
From the example of layer management, with cages being portrayed on the eggs' packaging, it becomes clear how things might look in future. Mrs Hiller-Ohm furthermore said that
... we need to be given this choice and perceptibility for all other products as well ....
To be more precise: In future, drained ground will adorn the packages of conventionally produced schnitzel, and the milking machine portrayed on the milk carton will urge the consumers to better reach for the Coke bottle.
In school we were taught that politics is a way of forming intention. However, it should never be done in this particular way, putting against the wall the producers of high-quality food (and I regard myself as being one of them, too). It must be allowed to wonder about the question whether or not the consumers' sensitivity regarding prices is kind of snatched away and replaced by taking emotional decisions.
The hope remains that expertise and reasonableness arrive in this country and will be triumphant in the end -- especially as such kind of
consumer protectiondefinitely won't bring our society's change in values to a halt. This would rather mean to add fuel to the fire.
Hartwig Wehming
farmer / student
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