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Wagner Farm animal auction spurs protests

By Jeff Danna TribLocal reporter July 30, 2010 at 5:00 p.m.
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Mata Stilp, 11, walked through the pens in a livestock barn at the Lake County Fair this week, tending to the animals she and her family have raised at Wagner Farm’s 4H Clovers program in Glenview.

Among the animals were a cow named Lily and a pig named Buddy. After a couple days of showing the animals, Mata and her brother, Hans, 10, were eagerly awaiting the fair’s end.

The end of Buddy and other livestock has some activists fuming. Amid growing frustration that Wagner Farm is on Glenview Park District Land, protesters plan to demonstrate at the farm before Saturday’s auction.

For Mata, the auction is the culmination of all the kids’ hard work.

“You take them into the ring, and people bid on them,” she said.

Lily is not in the class of animals to be sold, but the children have no illusions about what will happen to Buddy — a big winner at the fair — after he’s purchased. Like other animals destined for auction, the slaughterhouse is his final destination.

The slaughtering of animals purchased by the families of children in the Wagner Farm 4H club has caused some controversy since the Clovers were formed in 2002 by Wagner Farm director Todd Price.

The backlash has escalated recently, and as Saturday’s auction nears, the protests have grown louder. The lawyer for a local activist has written a letter to the farm trying to halt the upcoming auction, and a protest is scheduled for 9 a.m. Saturday at Wagner Farm.

About a month ago, Glenview resident Anne Hoffman started the Eye on Wagner Farm Facebook page, which was designed to raise awareness about the 4H practices at Wagner Farm and had 181 fans as of Friday morning.

Hoffman has worked in conjunction with Debby Rubenstein, who founded the Wagner Farm Rescue Fund around the same time Price started the Clovers. Through the fund, both women have worked to place animals from the farm at sanctuaries.

Rubenstein said that while the fund worked with the Glenview Park District and Wagner Farm to re-locate some farm animals, it hasn’t had the same luck with the 4H animals.

“They said they would utilize us as a resource, but only when they choose to,” Rubenstein said.

In the late 1990s, the Glenview Park District acquired Wagner Farm, a once private, working farm, to teach people about agricultural. Thousands of people visit each year to learn about the day-to-day life of a farmer.

“When we developed the idea for Wagner Farm, the residents said they didn’t want to see a cutesy farm; they didn’t want to see a petting zoo,” Price said.

Price, who came to Glenview from a farm in Iowa, had long participated in local 4H clubs, learning skills that ranged from furniture refinishing to researching genealogy and raising beef and lamb.

He started the 4H Clovers to give Chicago area children a glimpse of rural life that they might not otherwise see, growing up in a major metropolitan area.

Park district-owned Wagner Farm is a rare vestige of farm life remaining in the urbanized near-Chicago suburbs. To Price, it seemed like an ideal location for a 4H chapter.

But to people like Rubenstein and Hoffman, it’s a problem that the farm is on park district property. Taxpayer-supported land shouldn’t be used for a program that culminates in the sale of animals for slaughter, they say.

Rubenstein, who visits the farm often, doesn’t think people know about the 4H Clovers. Hoffman said she first visited the farm a couple months ago, and did not know about the chapter.

“People walk by, they see this bucolic setting,” Rubenstein said. “I think people thought more or less that the farm would be maintained the way it was at the time of the referendum. It was no longer a family farm trying to support themselves.

“Why [Price] would start the 4H club and have the ultimate outcome be slaughter is beyond me.”

But some members of the 4H Clovers said their experience was different.

Glenview residents Tim and Mia McNary said their 12-year-old son, Patrick, is finishing up his first year in 4H, which will end with the sale of his lamb at the Lake County Fair.

Tim McNary said the entire family knew what it was getting into from the beginning. Both Price and club director Julie Tracy were up-front about the program, the responsibility involved — and the eventual outcome.

McNary said he and his wife also made it clear to their son that his animal would eventually be killed for food.

“That’s why I think it’s even more of a valuable experience,” he said. “It’s a working farm, and I think that’s one of the beauties of the experience.”

Children — and adults — in communities like Glenview often aren’t aware of the work involved getting food to supermarket shelves and to their plates, he said. 4H teaches that, he said.

Rubenstein and Hoffman, though, aren’t sure that the lesson is complete. Children could become desensitized to the realities of raising food, they said.

“If it was raising from birth to the plate, they should be going to the slaughter,” Hoffman said.
Rubenstein added that once animals are auctioned, they enter the “factory farm” system, which can be cruel.

Price acknowledged that the animals do enter a system that prepares them for mass consumption, but that process is strictly regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The animals, he said, could not be treated better during their lives than they are through 4H. The children who care for them are at the farm several times a week to feed and tend to them, he said.

“If customers had a choice, this is how you’d want your livestock raised,” he said, gesturing to the animals at the fair.

And the children do sometimes grow attached to their animals. Hans Stilp, whose family is from Wilmette, said that although he is looking forward to the auction of his pig, Buddy, he will be sad to let go.

“I didn’t think I’d be this attached to him,” he said. “Buddy’s the only one with spots, the only one with a tail.”

At the fair, Hans Stilp hopped the fence of Buddy’s pen to tend to his pig, smothering it in hugs as they both wallowed in hay and sawdust.

His sister, Mata Stilp, showed similar affection for Lily the cow. Her involvement in 4H grew from her love of animals. Her mother, Regina Stilp, said she believes that learning how to properly care for the animals only makes that love grow.

Still, Regina Stilp said she doesn’t think the children would want to see an animal like a pig in its later days if it wasn’t auctioned. Pigs like Buddy can grow to be about 700 pounds, sometimes to the point where they cannot move, she said.

But even she admitted, “There are a lot of tears involved.”

Tracy, the Clovers leader, said she think some people who aren’t familiar with 4H misunderstand some aspects of the program, and the raising of the animals.

When asked about two letters sent to the park district by residents who said they witnessed children hitting pigs with a stick, Tracy said what they likely witnessed was children guiding the animals.

Pigs are directed around, she said, either by using a flat surface or a tap from a wooden paddle to simulate a wall.

“People not familiar with livestock tend to give [the animals] qualities they don’t possess,” Tracy said. “[The animals] aren’t thinking like people. They’re thinking, but it’s not the same.”

Rubenstein and Hoffman both said they had never been involved with 4H. But they said they learned through research that 4H does not require animals raised to be auctioned for slaughter.

Participants don’t always know about the rescue fund, and that they could arrange for their animals to be sent to a sanctuary instead of the slaughterhouse.

On Thursday, Rubenstein’s lawyer, Gary Shulman of Levun, Goodman and Cohen LLP, sent a letter to the Glenview Park District and the village of Glenview calling for Saturday’s auction to be stopped and for the animals to be sent to a sanctuary in Madison, Wis.

Shulman said his client could purchase the animals through her nonprofit organization at fair value. He declined to say whether the issue could lead to a lawsuit.

“We don’t want taxpayers to suffer as part of this agreement,” he said.

But Wagner Farm leaders and parents said taxpayers aren’t affected through the current practice. 4H families purchase the animals, and they are reimbursed through their sale. Sometimes, animals and proceeds are donated to charities, including local food pantries.

Tracy said that little about the 4H Clovers is taxpayer supported. Food, shelter, bedding and other necessities are funded through donations. Only the farm itself is supported by taxpayers through the park district, she said.

Shulman said he had no knowledge of families purchasing the animals.

Tracy and Price also said they have never heard of market animals raised 4H chapters not being sold at auction, contrary to what critics of the program have said. Children are able to participate in non-agricultural activities through 4H, and some can raise animals that aren’t used for food, Price said.

But not only would saving the market animals run counter to Wagner Farm’s mission of agricultural education, it would not provide the same learning experience for children.

Still, critics are planning to rally at Wagner Farm at 9 a.m. Saturday to protest the auction, according to Eye on Wagner Farm.

Hoffman and Rubenstein, both of whom are vegan, said they aren’t trying to force their beliefs on anyone. They said even some meat-eaters have gotten involved with the cause.

But they believe both parties can reach an agreement that allows children to continue to learn from 4H but does not involve the auction of animals.

“This is not about me, this is not about them,” Rubenstein said. “This is about the welfare of the animals.”

jdanna@tribune.com

 

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