Fact checkers use straw man argument to 'debunk' reports that governments ordered egg destruction
A number of mainstream media outlets claiming to be “fact checkers” are attempting to cast doubts on the veracity of a viral video showing the destruction of 360,000 eggs by government order to prevent the spread of bird flu despite negative test results.
Just the facts
The post is 100% accurate. In fact, Lead Stories, in an attempt to debunk the video, substantiates its authenticity.
It's a short clip from a longer video posted by poultry company Avícola Santa Ana in Argentina on their Instagram page on April 15, 2023. Their watermark is visible in the video. The company was critical of the decision by Senasa, the National Service for Food Health and Quality in Argentina, ordering the destruction of their eggs after a positive test for avian flu . . .
Lead Stories even noted the fact that the destruction was ordered despite all the chickens testing negative for bird flu after what appears to have been initial false positive results:
According to an April 18, 2023, news report (translated by Google Chrome), "Argentina's health and quality agency, Senasa, ordered the egg destruction after a test gave positive results in some hens, then in a second test the result was negative yet the company is still prohibited from marketing the product.
Worse than portrayed
According to a news report, the original positive test results were actually from empty test kits due to a miscommunication between government officials and farm staff and this mix-up would have led to the destruction of not only the eggs, but of the entire flock of about 200,000 hens, had the farm not insisted on second and third sets of tests, all of which came back negative.
True but False
Rather than simply confirming the video's authenticity and that the egg destruction was indeed ordered by government officials, Lead Stories searched until they found that, of the many versions of video's captioning, one did not clarify that the destruction took place in Argentina. No matter that almost all of the posts of the video say so explicitly, Lead Stories went with this headline:
Fact Check: Video Does NOT Show Destruction Of Eggs In U.S. – It's From Argentina
But the video caption of the post found by Lead Stories simply omitted the location, it did not falsely state that the destruction took place on an American farm. This did not deter Lead Stories, though, as they simply claimed to be debunking not what the post says but what it “implies.”
It was not in the United States as the video implies.
They then put a “Not in USA” stamp over the post as if they had discovered a lie.
An AFP fact check article appeared a few days after the Lead Stories article and used the same strategy, choosing the title, “Egg destruction footage filmed in Argentina, not United States.” AFP went a bit further, adding the FALSE stamp to the screenshot of the video.
Rather than accuse the post of “implying” that the location was in America, as Lead Stories did, they alleged that it was “suggested.”
Social media posts suggest a video viewed millions of times online shows the mass destruction of eggs in the United States amid a shortage. This is false . . .
One day after the AFP “fact check,” Check Your Fact joined in with an article also focusing on the location and adding the allegation that foreign egg supplies are irrelevant to U.S. supplies.
Verdict: False
The video is miscaptioned. It was taken in Argentina and is unrelated to the egg shortage in the U.S.
The AFP article, however, acknowledged the U.S. has in fact imported eggs from Argentina, albeit while attempting to minimize its significance.
The USDA told AFP the United States imported $290,000 worth of eggs and egg products from Argentina in 2022, and none between January and March 2023. That makes the country the United States' 54th largest supplier, accounting for only 0.04 percent of total imports
While Argentina provides a very small percentage of the U.S. egg supply, it is the overall global production that determines price, not which nation sells to which. If government policy leads Argentina to export less eggs or to even need to start importing them, it would affect global prices. And, of course, the extreme government policies of both euthanizing chickens and destroying eggs after one positive flu test out of flocks of millions of birds, is not limited to the U.S. or to Argentina.
Forced to create straw man
Unable to attack the original post itself as false, each of those so-called “fact checkers” created a “straw man argument,” i.e., an easily defeatable argument. The “straw man argument” has been defined as follows:
A strawman is a fallacious argument that distorts an opposing stance in order to make it easier to attack. Essentially, the person using the strawman pretends to attack their opponent’s stance, while in reality they are actually attacking a distorted version of that stance, which their opponent doesn’t necessarily support
The fact checkers distorted the original claim, that government policy required the destruction of eggs, by adding the claims that the destruction took place in the U.S. and, alternatively, that eggs from Argentina make up a large portion of the U.S. egg supply.
An unbiased fact checker would not create a straw man to attack and they wouldn't replicate the work of other fact checkers, which results in internet search results being blanketed with the articles with identical messages, thus giving the impression of a consensus of opinion that the original claim is false.
The original fact checkers, on the other hand, were employed to ensure the correct reporting of a news organization's own writers — they were internal fact checkers, as described in “When 'fact checkers' fight facts.”
See our previous articles on dangers to the food supply and fake fact checks:
