COMMENTARY Proceed with caution when surfing the web By Dr. Kraig Stemme, DVM Since its beginning, the Internet has proven to be both a blessing


and a curse. Today many of us no longer routinely use a phone book to find a phone number or an atlas to plan a route for a trip or write a check for a monthly recurring utility bill — new technology has given us different, and most often efficient, ways to perform these tasks. But this new technology has also created a myriad of problems relating to breeches of personal privacy, stolen intellectual property and issues of libel.


What, you might ask, has this to do with raising meat goats? Goat meat producers are a very small part of our country’s over- all livestock industry. These low numbers mean that there have been, over the years, fewer studies about goats published by academia, fewer drugs specifically channeled through the pharma pipeline just for goats and only a tiny percentage of the veterinary profession interested in small ruminant animals. This becomes a problem when pro- ducers have questions or concerns about their operation and are unaware of where they can find answers — seeking information on the Internet seems a quick and convenient way to deal with the questions.


During the last 10 years, I have an- swered hundreds of questions from meat goat producers, many of whom contacted me with questionable information they had found on the Internet. At first I was initially surprised at what was being posted in cyberspace — numbers and trends were being quoted from sources that had no data to back them up. Who organized the research — privately or publically funded?


medicine without a license. My response was to get off of Facebook and not participate in any of its forums.


The recent presidential election in 2020 showcased how dan- gerous social media has become in all aspects of our lives. Libel and malpractice laws, enforceable in every state of the union, do not apply on social media. Statements accusing persons of any number of ques- tionable activities or publishing unsubstantiated information are com- mon, everyday practices on social media.


While I believe that Congress will eventually craft laws that cover both libel and malpractice within social media, in the meantime I challenge you to stop participating on these sites and instead use your time in a more positive and productive way. A great resource for meat goat producers are the 1890 histori- cally black universities across the country such as Tuskegee, Lang- ston, Alcorn, Florida A & M, Prairie View A & M, Lincoln (Missouri), and West Virginia State to name a few.


These universities have focused on small animal ruminants (where their larger in-state university counterparts have focused on more traditional food animals such as beef/pork/chickens) and have faculty and stu- dents engaged in timely research. The AASRP (American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners) membership list is a great place to locate a veterinarian in your area with an interest in goats/sheep/lla- mas.


Dr. Kraig Stemme, DVM


Was this information gathered from a 2-week or a 2-year trial? How many animals were involved in the study? Six or 600? Were the re- sults validated by another independent study? Just because it was floating around the Internet didn’t mean that it was correctly gathered data or interpreted accurately with no bias. While my background in veterinary medicine technical services had me reviewing the data from studies around the world as part of my job, I often had a difficult time discerning online what was solid re- search and what was not without doing extensive investigation about the source of the data.


In addition to the confusion surrounding research, there is the additional nightmare of opinion (most often camouflaged as “impor- tant information”) that is touted on Facebook. In the early years of social media, I had a Facebook page and “friended” many in the goat industry.


As more folks joined the Facebook bandwagon, folks began posting such outrageously incorrect (and often dangerous) infor- mation that I was appalled. What came across social media was not based on sound scientific data but on anecdotal experience — if viewed as such (one goat, one location in the USA, one person’s ac- tions, one time) it was not such a problem but if expressed as a guar- anteed way to treat an animal, it bordered on practicing veterinary


If the local extension agent is not par- ticularly knowledgeable about goats, most states now have a statewide small ruminant specialist to handle inquiries. If your infor-


mation source has good credentials, the quality of data you will get will be reliable.


The meat goat industry is about 40 years behind that of the beef cattle industry in the USA in measuring production criteria of impor- tance to commercial producers. Eastern Oklahoma State College, in partnership with Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, hosts the Oklahoma Forage-Based Meat Goat Buck Test, whose goals are to identify individual bucks as well as their sires and dams that carry genetics important in commercial meat goat production and help breeders to compare genetics within their herd and make better man- agement decisions.


The good news is that some of our colleagues are stepping up


and organizing additional opportunities for production testing, ex- panding continuing education offerings at conferences and sales and working hard to identify resources within their communities to assist them in herd health and marketing strategies. Let’s use our precious free time not on Facebook, but on bringing our management practices up to speed!


(Kraig Stemme, DVM, is a retired veterinarian whose second


career is raising performance-tested Kiko goats in East Texas. You can reach Dr. Kraig on Facebook at Lake Fork Kikos or www.lake- forkkikos.com.)


August 2021 | Goat Rancher 9


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