MFN: Lives in the Balance

Excellent article in the Michigan Farm News.

Lives in the balance

November 15, 2007
By Paul W. Jackson

Horses like these would be of no concern to animal rights extremists, right? Maybe. Maybe not, according to a number of Farm Bureau members who are concerned that any well-meaning but uninformed perception of bad care - including sparse springtime pasture - could lead to a visit from county animal control officers.

Tom Zenz was driving past his own property a half-mile from his house last spring when he saw a sheriff's car pull onto the shoulder.

"I thought he was going to cite me for speeding," said the Jackson County Farm Bureau president. "I pulled up to him to see what was going on, and he told me he had driven by once, and there was a horse lying on its side in the pasture. When he came back, it hadn't moved.

"He told me he thought something must be wrong with it," Zenz said. "So I hollered at the horse - Jake - and Jake stood up. The deputy said 'well, that's good. I didn't know what I would have done next.' Then he drove on. But I know what he would have done next if Jake hadn't gotten up or if I hadn't come by," he said. "He would have called animal control."

The mere mention of Jackson County Animal Control in the days following the county's March seizure of 69 horses amid charges of animal neglect, cruelty and torture near Grass Lake was enough to make farmers such as Zenz walk on egg shells. But now, more than six months after the seizure and about two months before the criminal trial for horse owners Matt Mercier and James Henderson, the eggshells are in pieces as local farmers seek to change what some of them view as trampled rights and a dangerous precedent that could lead to animal rights extremists dictating animal husbandry to farmers.

What is still muddled - and won't be clear until a verdict is reached in the Jan. 7 criminal trial - is whether Mercier and Henderson were cruel or negligent or merely in business over their heads, as Jackson County District Judge Joseph Filip wrote in his ruling in the preliminary examination and forfeiture hearing which resulted in seizure - and auction sale - of nearly all the horses, months before the two men were to go on trial.

"I want to make it clear," Filip said, "that I certainly don't find that Mr. Henderson and Mr. Mercier are bad people. I don't think they did any of this on purpose."

Zenz, however, takes that opinion one step further. He said the two men were guilty of nothing more than poor housekeeping.

"They may have been poor caretakers, but they didn't starve those horses," he said. "I brought over the first load of hay after this all started, and we stacked hay on top of hay, which is a far cry from what the animal control officers said when they told the press that the horses hadn't been fed all winter. I'll admit the two men are not good farm managers, but I can drive in a five-mile radius of that farm and show you horses that are in worse shape than those animals were."

Before anyone jumps to the conclusion that there are undernourished horses all around Jackson County amid debris and poor fencing, Zenz's point is that people who know little to nothing about livestock shouldn't go around condemning what farmers do. He's watched as extremist groups such as the Humane Society of the United States and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals spent millions of dollars to push their anti-farming agenda in other states with little fact and bountiful emotion. And, he said, he would have been content to watch the Jackson County hearing on forfeiture proceed if not for his familiarity with the property - he leased it from the absentee owners many years ago - and his firm conviction that witch hunts drown a lot of innocent people before a real witch surfaces.

The innocence or guilt of Mercier and Henderson will ultimately be in the hands of a jury, although Zenz insists that biased press coverage - including an article in Michigan Farm News - has tainted the potential jury pool against them.

Attacks on the press aside, the uproar over the seizure - fueled by trial transcripts and other items posted on GLhorsetruth.com - is far from objective and at times borders on hysteria. People involved have reported death threats, threats to set their barns and houses ablaze and rumors that have no basis in fact.

Facts - and there certainly are some in this case - are hard to uncover these days because opinions tend to wrap them in shrouds of emotion. Perhaps it's enough simply to say that for every person like Zenz who is convinced that the two men are innocent, there is another who is convinced that Jackson County Animal control did the right thing for the well-being of the horses. Who is ultimately right will be for the court to decide, although the verdict is certain to be controversial.

Wrongs impeding rights

If there is any one person involved with the case who sees both sides of the issue, it may be Jim Spink, a farmer and vice-president of the Jackson County Farm Bureau and a county police officer who saw the horses first-hand and was a major source for the April Michigan Farm News article.

"Those horses were not good at all, and I know that Tom (Zenz) and I disagree on that," Spink said. "I took 20 round bales there myself, and there was no other hay there. The shape of the barns, the manure the horses were standing in, all were a travesty. But the other travesty is what's been done since then. Animal Control is just as guilty of mismanagement in how this was handled as Mercier and Henderson were guilty of mismanaging the herd."

Spink's concerns are the same as Zenz's: that allowing seizure of personal property and dispersal of that property before the accused reach trial is a dangerous precedent that leaves basic rights in shambles.

"In my opinion, Animal Control needed to do something, but they turned it into an extremely large fiasco," Spink said. "They acted too hastily and got the newspapers involved too soon, and tried to turn public opinion by trying the case in the papers before it got to trial. Everything seemed to be based on emotion, and not sound science. Since March, these men have been crucified in the local paper, and the judge (in the preliminary examination and forfeiture hearing) didn't have a clue. But the other issue that most people don't realize is that Animal Control, like the Department of Natural Resources, has powers of search and seizure that I as a police officer don't have. They can conduct a search without a search warrant based only on receiving a complaint."

Changing the laws

Disturbed by allegations and rumors that Jackson County Animal Control - which has now sold all the horses seized from the farm except one that was euthanized and 11 that went to the Leelanau County Horse Rescue - sold the animals in worse shape than they were at seizure, Spink and Zenz and other members of the county Farm Bureau passed a resolution that would direct Michigan Farm Bureau lobbyists to work to "change the state operating procedures that govern all (county) animal control departments to mirror the same procedures of state law enforcement ..."

While Jackson County Farm Bureau has a specific beef with a specific county agency, other county Farm Bureau resolutions addressed the same issue in more general terms. Cass County expressed its opposition to the concept of "animal rights," while Clare county asks that Michigan Farm Bureau educate all members about the difference between "their local humane society and the National Humane Society." Missaukee County simply opposes unreasonable restrictions on animal agriculture, and Osceola supports animal husbandry GAAMPs (Generally Accepted Agricultural Management Practices). Montcalm County resolved that county animal control agencies be made aware of GAAMPs; and St. Joseph County resolved that "...Before being steamrolled by this issue, animal agriculture must become more proactive and take leadership of this issue."

All those resolutions were amalgamated into several proposed additions to a single Michigan Farm Bureau policy - Animal Care - which will be debated at the State Annual Meeting, Nov. 27-30 in Grand Rapids.

Present policy states that Farm Bureau members "support a sensible approach to the substantiation of animal abuse accusations," among many other things, but directing a lobbyist to bring common sense into the legislature is a difficult task, to say the least.

But common sense is all farmers seem to want when it comes to animal-handling regulations. And, they know, it's a very tall order to expect restraint when society's vision of horses and how they should look come from watching movies and a televised horse race every now and then that involves animals worth more than many people earn in a lifetime.

Ruined reputation

But a little restraint and common sense is all Matt Mercier asks, and not necessarily for himself, but for the next farmers who are accused.

"Even if I'm acquitted," he said, "my name will forever be attached with torture, which is normally reserved for horrible people who set animals on fire. It will be difficult to rebuild my name, and it may not ever happen. I used to have faith that the justice system would protect people, but I learned the hard way. That's not how it works in Jackson County. I've never said that there was no cause of action for Animal Control to come on the property, but they should have called it an investigation, not a wholesale seizure. I mean, they even stole our saddles."

Seizing saddles and other tack from the property before a conviction or trial on animal abuse or neglect charges is just one of the concerns Spink said he has about the situation.

"Animal Control really dropped the ball on this one," he said. "I don't disagree that some assistance was needed on the farm, but they bit off more than they could chew, and kept these animals confined all summer and fed them hay at great expense when there was available pasture growing on the other side of the drain. And I believe that seizing the tack and saddles was just a money grab."

Debating motives is never a sensible proposition, nor is trying to deal with facts when emotions are smoldering. Somewhere in the middle, Zenz said, is one basic fact, and that is that Mercier and Henderson lost everything they had - assets and reputation - but still haven't been convicted of anything.

That leads to what Zenz believes is another fact: farmers are in danger from an ignorant populous and an overzealous government sticking its nose where it doesn't belong.

"I believe the best farm in Jackson County could be treated this same way," Zenz said. "Every farm has a head of cattle or two with a sore foot or problems calving, and at any time, that animal could take a turn to the wrong direction. If someone were to see that, they would call the farmer inhumane, and Animal Control could seize the property and ruin the farm's reputation. Things that happened in this case could happen to any farmer at any time. We're all backed into a corner here, and anyone who knows animals knows what they do when they're backed into a corner."