Narrowly escaped livestock disaster today as the in-calf milk cow I was trying to purchase, but opted out a few weeks ago because she was too wild, bore a dead heifer calf (luck for me, not the cow or the owner). It and the vet bill for removing the upside-down, backwards breech could have been mine. . . At any rate if and when I get my earnest money back I’ll join R-Calf with it.

In previous years, the House Agriculture Committee flatly rejected proposals by cattle farmers and ranchers to make competition-related reforms, which resulted in the notable absence of country-of-origin labeling (COOL) for meat and a limitation on packer ownership of livestock in the House version of the 2002 Farm Bill. Predictions of a similar fate for renewed competition reforms could not be read into this year’s outset of the House Farm Bill.

R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard attended the hearing and said when it came to amendments that his organization holds particular interest in, it appeared that Subcommittee Chairman Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, was carefully weighing the level of opposition among his other Subcommittee members.

“Though it was anticipated that Chairman Boswell would introduce the entirety of his previously introduced H.R. 2135, a bill to prohibit unfair practices and strengthen the Packers and Stockyards Act, only excerpts from the bill were offered as amendments, and only the provision dealing with arbitration clauses was brought to a vote,” said Bullard. “All others, including an amendment to improve price transparency in forward contracts, were withdrawn.”

In two roll-call votes, both 8-6 along party line votes that favored the sponsors, two amendments to House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson’s, D-Minn., first draft of the 2007 Farm Bill were passed. The first, introduced by Rep. Steve Kagen, D-Wis., provides relief to domestic veal farmers that suffered market-depressing prices as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The second, introduced by Boswell, reforms current livestock contract language dealing with arbitration clauses. The amendment allows the use of arbitration after a dispute arises between the producer and the integrator and provided both parties to the dispute agree to arbitration.

“The fact that both votes cut along party lines without all the members voting, and the fact that Ranking Member Robin Hayes, R-N.C., had attempted to persuade Chairman Boswell to ignore the favorable vote on the arbitration amendment and, instead, lump all the competition reforms into a single package for full Agriculture Committee consideration, suggests the outcome of any further votes would have been unpredictable,” he commented.

Bullard said R-CALF USA is disappointed that the Subcommittee did not immediately amend the Farm Bill to eliminate language that would allow the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to tie animal identification to COOL. Also disappointing, he said, was the fact there were no amendments to include the entirety of Chairman Boswell’s competition bill (H.R. 2135), the captive supply reform act (H.R. 2213), or a ban on packer ownership.

“On the positive side, no adverse votes were cast that would slow R-CALF’s efforts to include its reforms into the 2007 Farm Bill,” he noted.

Another amendment offered by Kagen would have allowed the interstate shipment of state-inspected meat, provided the state-inspected meat plants matched or exceeded federal standards. Though the amendment received favorable comments from both sides of the aisle, and an Administration official testified that 27 of the 28 states that operate state meat inspection programs already are certified as equal to, or greater than, the federal program, the amendment was not voted on. Instead, the sponsor agreed to work to further simplify the amendment’s language and bring it to a vote before the full House Agriculture Committee at a later date.
“The fact that all of our issues are still alive shows that our cattle-producing members from all across the country demonstrated significant, initial strength through their calls, faxes, and e-mails to each member of the Subcommittee,” Bullard said. “Their efforts prevented any attempt to cause an early death to our reforms. Our challenge now is to continually build momentum for each of our reforms over the next couple of months so they become a reality in the 2007 Farm Bill.”
# # #

R-CALF USA (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America) is a national, non-profit organization and is dedicated to ensuring the continued profitability and viability of the U.S. cattle industry. R-CALF USA represents thousands of U.S. cattle producers on both domestic and international trade and marketing issues. Members are located across 47 states and are primarily cow/calf operators, cattle backgrounders, and/or feedlot owners. R-CALF USA has more than 60 affiliate organizations and various main-street businesses are associate members. For more information, visit www.r-calfusa.com or, call 406-252-2516.

However this text from the latest AgPress Alert seems to say our efforts in the past 24 hours have been in vain:

”
Subtitle B - Miscellaneous Provisions: The discussion draft also repeals the prohibition on the use of a mandatory animal
identification system to implement country-of-origin labeling, recognizes the importance of eradicating pseudorabies in swine under
the Animal Health Protection Act, and prevents a State or locality from prohibiting the interstate shipment of USDA-inspected and
approved meat.”

Is there any way to turn this gargantuan behemoth around before the leviathan steamrollers over all of us? It seems like the 2007 Farm Bill is destined to place the hands of American Agriculture even further in the hands of the corporations than the 2002 Bill. If we don’t get another chance for 5 years to turn this train wreck around the agricultural and edible state of this nation is going to be even more at the mercy of Multinational Corporations who don’t care a whit about the rest of us.

Is it yet time to spill milk, spinach, dog food and ethanol in the streets in protest?

The Honorable Leonard Boswell, Chairman
House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock Dairy and Poultry
United States House of Representatives
1427 Longworth House Office Building
Washington D.C. 20515

Dear Chairman Boswell and Members of the Committee,

The 15,000 cattle ranchers and farmers that are members of R-CALF USA encourage you to oppose the language in the Chairman’s Mark of the 2007 Farm Bill at Title 1, Subtitle B, Section 121 that would repeal the prohibition against the USDA’s use of a mandatory identification system to verify country of origin of beef and other commodities.

The current prohibition provides important protections to U.S. livestock producers from the possibility that the Secretary of Agriculture would choose an overly expensive and overly cumbersome methodology, i.e., a mandatory animal identification system, for which to verify the origins of cattle and other livestock from which the commodities covered under the country of origin labeling (COOL) law are derived, i.e., beef, lamb, and pork.

The use of a mandatory animal identification system for purposes of implementing COOL would be overkill, as the COOL law only requires the differentiation of countries, i.e., the U.S. and foreign countries, not the differentiation of U.S. regions, states, counties, or ranches and farms.

The COOL Act already provides the USDA with various models for which to verify the origins of covered commodities, including the model of the National School Lunch Act. This Act uses a “presumption of domestic origin” to verify the eligibility of commodities eligible to be fed to our school children. Under the school lunch act, the USDA identifies the ineligible commodities, i.e., imported meat and meat derived from animals imported for direct slaughter. All other meat that does not fall under these exclusions is presumed to be of domestic origin and is eligible for U.S. school lunch programs. This is how COOL was intended to be implemented, without imposing a costly mandatory animal identification system on U.S. cattle farmers and ranchers.

The problem today is that the USDA does not support COOL and, therefore, does not want to provide a simplified means of making COOL work. This is why the repeal of the prohibition against the use of an animal identification system would be harmful to livestock producers - it would provide the USDA a tool to make COOL implementation onerous.

Using the cattle industry as an example, all that is needed to implement COOL is the ability to identify the origins of the approximately 2.5 million cattle that are imported annually into the U.S. This ability already exists because USDA requires all cattle imported from Canada and Mexico to be permanently marked with their mark of origin (All Mexican cattle are either branded or affixed with a metal ear tag and all Canadian cattle are either branded or delivered to slaughterhouses in sealed trucks). It is not practical nor cost effective to require 100 percent of the 97 million cattle in the U.S. to be subject to an animal identification system just to identify the less than 3 percent of annually imported cattle that are ineligible for the USA label (During the peak import year of 2002, the U.S. imported 2.5 million head of cattle from Canada and Mexico, representing less than 3 percent of the 97 million cattle in the U.S.). Using permanent markings on all imported cattl
e (which marks could be required more permanently by removing livestock from the U.S. Department of Treasury’s J-list) and presuming all unmarked cattle to be born and raised in the U.S. is the most accurate, practical, and cost-effective means of implementing COOL.

Sincerely,

Bill Bullard
CEO

406-670-8157
billbullard@r-calfusa.com

Stop subsidizing the LARGE meat producers. You won’t get to have a choice in the manner in which your food is produced if you continue to drive small farmers into the ground. NAIS benefits no one and does NOT do the job it was intended to do.

Please - No NAIS!

They are down to earth and will listen. Randy has a town meeting in EVERY town in his district EVERY year.