Parents blasted what they labelled Animal Aid “anti-farming propaganda” delivered to young pupils at a Nantwich school.
They say year 8 youngsters at Brine Leas were handed leaflets (pictured) which “misinformed” children about farming methods in a bid to turn them against eating meat.
Now headteacher David Cole has been approached by the National Farmers Union who aim to talk to students so they receive the other side of the debate.
Animal Aid denied it was “propaganda” and say the talk was based on facts and was appropriate for the age group.
But one parent Dan Jones, who runs a farm near Audlem, said: “We called him (headteacher) and we said we would be happy to go in and invite pupils or whoever to come on to our farms to see the truth.
“The fact that someone has been allowed into a school of education to push veganism…in a way we shouldn’t need to go in to do the counter balance!
“Kids should be taught maths, science, languages at school.
“To be fair to my daughter, who spends a lot of time on the farm, she stood up and pointed out not all farms are the same and a lot of the leaflet was misinforming.
“She was patronised and mocked by whoever the person was and angered!
“This in my eyes is massively wrong.
“I think the school has been very naive and were not on board with the whole thing.”
Hundreds of people shared Dan’s post on social media and commented in support.
Carl Hudspith, of NFU Cheshire, said: “The NFU has been informed that Animal Aid was invited into Brine Leas School and promoted an anti-farming agenda in class.
“Unhappy with the content of propaganda style leaflets given to pupils, headteacher David Cole has contacted NFU Education and NFU Cheshire County Chairman Richard Blackburn to apologise and to ask if we can send some farmers into school to rectify any damage caused.
“The NFU North West team sees this as a huge positive that our message to schools about NFU Education is working.
“Our team of farming ambassadors are all working in the agricultural sector and are able to offer unique insight from industry into the key issues around food and farming.
“We work with our ambassadors to ensure they equipped to speak to a secondary school audience.
“They can deliver a presentation to a group followed by a Q&A session promoting discussion amongst pupils.”
Mark White, spokesman for Animal Aid, says their talk was based on facts and was “appropriate” for the age group.
In a statement, he said: “The Animal Aid education department were invited to run a series of sessions on general animal rights with Year 8 Religious Education students at Brine Leas School in Nantwich.
“The speaker received excellent feedback following the talks from the teacher who invited us in.
“We have previously run sessions in Brine Leas School and we have been invited back due to the quality of the sessions that we run.
“We pride ourselves on running sessions that are age appropriate, tried and tested over many years and designed to fulfil the teachers’ educational requirements.
“Our trained volunteer speakers do not tell students what to think, rather they (as the teacher who invited us in said), focus on ‘providing the facts to pupils to allow them to make their own informed decisions’.
“In Religious Education students consider the moral and ethical aspects of how animals are, for example, used in sport, reared for food and utilised as research tools in laboratories.
“Only when students are given an opportunity to be informed of the facts can they make informed choices.
“We don’t claim to offer a ‘balanced case’. The provision of ‘balance’ to the case we present is the responsibly of the school.”
We contacted Brine Leas headteacher David Cole for his comments and are awaiting a reply.
Well done David Cole for standing up to the meat industry. The terrible suffering of animals is a closely-guarded secret and the industry goes to great lengths to sanitise the process and hide it from the general public. I’d go so far as organising tours of abattoirs so children can make an informed judgement for themselves. I’d love to see how the NFU will argue its case.
Well said, I just want to add to that, that thousands of calves are loaded on to the live export trucks to the continent, and that once they get there we have no idea where they can end up. In the case of Spain, they have increased exports of the amount of live imported animals to North Africa, where they die a terrifying and extremely violent death. Modern farming has reduced life to nothing more than commodities.
At least they are admitting that animal rights fits into religion as a cult. It is dangerous and misleading.
Hope the Vegans propaganda machine pointed out they use more food miles and use bees which are a farmed animal with no rights to pollinate their precious varied diet.
Along with using pollutants to fertilize their food.
Hang on NO they don’t as they don’t see that as agenda worthy.
There is no true vegans on this planet
I hope the NFU education team tell the children how cows are artificially inseminated (and what that entails) and that the newborn calves are taken away so they don’t drink their mum’s milk so humans can drink it instead. That the babies are slaughtered or kept in isolation for veal. That the mum and baby cry for each other when separated and that the mother goes through this cycle over and over every 9 months or so until she is knackered through over milking, exhaustion and overbreeding.
That all animals are babies when they are killed in relation to their natural lifespan.
That chicks are hatched in hatcheries and never see their mum. That the newly hatched male chicks are dumped on a conveyor belt to drop into a grinder to be killed as they are of no use to the egg industry. Or that the females have their beaks cut off. That most never see daylight.
This is the reality of farming nowadays. Their is no happy ending for any animal bred for food by humans.
The biggest question to ask the children is do you think it is ok to kill animals when you don’t need to?