La Vida Locavore is the blog for anyone whose crazy life includes planting, growing, weeding, fertilizing, raising, picking, harvesting, processing, cooking, baking, making, serving, buying, selling, distributing, transporting, composting, organizing around, lobbying about, writing about, thinking about, talking about, playing with, and eating food!
Agriculture
Chair: Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
- Max Baucus (D-MT)
- Michael Bennet (D-CO)
- Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
- Bob Casey (D-PA)
- Kent Conrad (D-ND)
- Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
- Tom Harkin (D-IA)
- Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
- Pat Leahy (D-VT)
- Ben Nelson (D-NE)
- Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
- Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
- Thad Cochran (R-MS)
- John Cornyn (R-TX)
- Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
- Mike Johanns (R-NE)
- Dick Lugar (R-IN)
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
- Pat Roberts (R-KS)
- John R. Thune (R-SD)
Appropriations
Chair: Daniel Inouye (D-HI) Ag Sub-Committee
Chair: Herb Kohl (D-WI)
- Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
- Dick Durbin (D-IL)
- Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
- Tom Harkin (D-IA)
- Tim Johnson (D-SD)
- Ben Nelson (D-NE)
- Jack Reed (D-RI)
- Robert Bennett (R-UT)
- Christopher Bond (R-MO)
- Sam Brownback (R-KS)
- Thad Cochran (R-MS)
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
- Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions
- Chris Dodd (D-CT)
Agriculture
Chair: B Collin Peterson (D-MN)
V. Chair: B Tim Holden (D-PA)
B Joe Baca (D-CA)
- John Boccieri (D-OH)
B* Leonard Boswell (D-IA)
- Bobby Bright (D-AL)
B* Dennis Cardoza (D-CA)
- Travis Childers (D-MS)
B Jim Costa (D-CA)
- Henry Cuellar (D-TX)
- Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA)
B Brad Ellsworth (D-IN)
- Debbie Halvorson (D-IL)
B Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD)
- Steve Kagen (D-WI)
- Larry Kissell (D-NC)
B Frank Kratovil (D-MD)
- Betsy Markey (D-CO)
B Jim Marshall (D-GA)
P Eric Massa (D-NY)
B Mike McIntyre (D-NC)
- Walt Minnick (D-ID)
B Earl Pomeroy (D-ND)
- Mark Schauer (D-MI)
- Kurt Schrader (D-OR)
B David Scott (D-GA)
B Zachary Space (D-OH)
- Timothy Walz (D-MN)
- Frank Lucas (R-OK)
- Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
- K. Michael Conaway (R-TX)
- Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE)
- Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
- Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)
- Sam Graves (R-MO)
- Timothy Johnson (R-IL)
- Steve King (R-IA)
- Robert Latta (R-OH)
- Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)
- Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)
- Jerry Moran (R-KS)
- Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)
- Phil Roe (R-TN)
- Mike Rogers (R-AL)
- Jean Schmidt (R-OH)
- Adrian Smith (R-NE)
- Glenn Thompson (R-PA) *=House Organic Caucus member B=Blue Dog Democrat
Appropriations
Chair: Dave Obey (D-WI) Ag Sub-Committee
Chair: P Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
- Sanford Bishop (D-GA)
* Allen Boyd (D-FL)
- Lincoln Davis (D-TN)
*P Sam Farr (D-CA)
*P Maurice D. Hinchey (D-NY)
P Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)
P Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
- Jack Kingston (R-GA)
- Rodney Alexander (R-LA)
- Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO)
* Tom Latham (R-IA) *=House Organic Caucus member
P=Congressional Progressive Caucus
Education and Labor
P Chair: George Miller (D-CA)
- Jason Altmire (D-PA)
- Robert Andrews (D-NJ)
- Timothy Bishop (D-NY)
P Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
- Joe Courtney (D-CT)
- Susan Davis (D-CA)
P Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
P Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
P Phil Hare (D-IL)
- Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX)
P Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
- Rush Holt (D-NJ)
- Dale Kildee (D-MI)
P Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
P Dave Loebsack (D-IA)
- Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY)
P Donald Payne (D-NJ)
- Jared Polis (D-CO)
- Robert Scott (D-VA)
- Joe Sestak (D-PA)
- Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)
P John Tierney (D-MA)
- Dina Titus (D-NV)
- Paul Tonko (D-NY)
P Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)
- David Wu (D-OR)
- Buck McKeon (R-CA)
- Judy Biggert (R-IL)
- Rob Bishop (R-UT)
- Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
- Michael Castle (R-DE)
- Vernon Ehlers (R-MI)
- Luis F Fortuno (R-PR)
- Brett Guthrie (R-KY)
- Peter Hoekstra (R-MI)
- Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA)
- John Kline (R-MN)
- Kenny Marchant (R-TX)
- Tom McClintock (R-CA)
- Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)
- Thomas Petri (R-WI)
- Phil Roe (R-TN)
- Todd Russell Platts (R-PA)
- Tom Price (R-GA)
- Mark Souder (R-IN)
- GT Thompson (R-PA)
- Joe Wilson (R-SC) P=Congressional Progressive Caucus
This is the final section of the Farm FAQ, about livestock and poultry.
You might notice that in this and in the other sections there are some repeats. I'm planning on putting this up on the web as well and will be placing links in the document with a main menu up top, which is one of the reasons for the repeats.
People reading the farm FAQ will usually be doing so in conjunction with the subscriber survey/application, so details about crops grown and further information on the meat animal aspects of the farm are covered in more detail there.
As I said in today's Pot Luck, I spent the day writing a farm FAQ. The reason I did this is to add transparency to the farm for the benefit of my subscribers and anyone else who's interested in how I farm.
I think I have a pretty good handle on the thing, it sorta turned out a bit bigger than I'd anticipated though. Well, there's a lot involved....
Anyway, I'd appreciate if anyone has any ideas as to how I could improve the FAQ, anything you'd ask if you were a potential subscriber, or anything that I've already covered that I could cover better.
This is the first part of the FAQ, General Information
PAMTA Senate Briefing
H.R. 1549 - Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA)
Steve Ells Remarks
March 2, 2010
Thank you for joining us today, and for giving me the opportunity to speak on this important issue. I'm Steve Ells, and I am the founder, chairman and co-CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill, a national chain of about 1,000 restaurants that is changing the way people think about and eat fast food.
We are doing this in a lot of ways, but none more important to me than our quest to serve the best tasting food we can, made from ingredients from more sustainable sources. We call this commitment "Food with Integrity."
Four organizations representing farmers, ranchers, and consumers issued a press release (shown below) praising the USDA for dropping its National Animal ID System. Those groups are Food & Water Watch, the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, the National Family Farm Coalition, and R-CALF USA (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America). They say that NAIS "was created by industrial livestock and meatpacking interests to shift the burden of animal disease problems onto the backs of family farmers instead of corporate agribusinesses" and "The imposition of NAIS would have severely hindered the recent movement towards more sustainable local food systems."
Furthermore, Food & Water Watch said that NAIS did not address the root cause of our food safety and animal disease problems:
"Now that the USDA has realized that the proposed NAIS was unworkable, it's time for the agency to turn its attention to an effort that would actually protect consumers," said Patty Lovera, assistant director for Food & Water Watch. "USDA should start improving the testing of meat in slaughterhouses where many of our food safety problems occur, and fix their inspection policies to make sure that contaminated meat is traced back to the slaughterhouses were it was produced."
"It was just overwhelming in the country that people didn't like it, and I think they took that feedback to heart," said Mary Kay Thatcher, public policy director of the American Farm Bureau Federation, which had opposed the identification system. "I think it's good they've at least said we're going to do something different."
Umm... no. The American Farm Bureau helped develop NAIS and originally supported making the program mandatory for anyone who owned any of a long list of animals, even if the animal was just a pet (like a pot-bellied pig or a horse). The defeat of NAIS is entirely thanks to grassroots outrage, opposition, and plain old refusal to comply NO MATTER WHAT. That opposition stalled the USDA long enough that Congress eventually yanked some of NAIS's funding because the USDA was essentially just wasting all of its NAIS funding, trying to get the program in place and utterly failing. When Vilsack came into office, he set up "listening sessions" about NAIS all over the country. The attendance at those listening sessions was overwhelmingly anti-NAIS.
The listening session transcripts are no longer up on the USDA's site (as best I can tell) but fortunately, Google never forgets anything :) Below, I've posted a quote by the Farm Bureau at one of the listening sessions, followed by a quote by a farmer that is more typical of what was heard at these listening sessions.
In short, there will be a new system but it will ONLY cover animals moving across state lines. NAIS would have covered ALL animals (even pets) even if they were born and died on the same farm. The new system will be "minimally intrusive" but it remains to be seen what that actually means. NAIS was extremely intrusive as all animal movements and life events (births, deaths, etc) had to be reported within a brief timeframe after it happened. Also, the new system will use "lower cost technology"... that part is vague, but it implies that microchipping will not be a mandatory part of this program.
The end result will be a meeting in March of this year, followed by a proposed rule this fall. We will be able to comment on the proposed rule when it is published in the federal register.
Below, I've included some of the Q&A's from the APHIS document.
From the New York Times today: "U.S.D.A. Plans to Drop Program to Trace Livestock." This is GREAT news!!!! Many small farmers thought the National Animal ID System (NAIS) would put them out of business if it was implemented. Currently, the policy is (or was?) "voluntary" but certain states were enforcing it as mandatory. But while the current version of NAIS is going away, the big question is "What will replace it?" The NYT says:
In abandoning the program, called the National Animal Identification System, officials said they would start over in trying to devise a livestock tracing program that could win widespread support from the industry.
Start over in trying to devise a livestock tracing system? That means they haven't totally given up. The USDA has a conference call scheduled at noon EST to discuss this decision. I will follow up after that if I hear about any new news on this topic.
What do consumers want? Cheap, tasty, convenient food. And they DON'T care how you produce it. That's what Elanco, subsidiary of Eli Lilly, maker of rbGH and other animal drugs says in a white paper available from their website. Details below.
S. 619, The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA), just gained 3 new co-sponsors in the Senate: Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI), Sen. Lautenberg (D-NJ), and Sen. Specter (D-PA). This brings it up to a total of 15 co-sponsors in the Senate (and 100 co-sponsors in the House version, H.R. 1549). That's still not enough to pass it in either body, but it's nice to see some movement on such an important bill. Furthermore, it doesn't seem to be a left-right issue since both Senators from Maine plus Lieberman have signed on. You'll notice a lack of co-sponsors from the center of the country though.
The bill does not ban all antibiotics in livestock. If an animal is sick, of course the farmer should be able to treat it. The ban will be on nontherapeutic uses (i.e. when an animal is NOT sick) classes of antibiotics that are used in human medicine. The goal is exactly like the name of the bill says - to prevent the evolution of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics used to treat humans. This bill was introduced into the House by Louise Slaughter, and she's got a microbiology background. The Senate version was introduced by Ted Kennedy and it's unfortunate that he won't be around to vote for it. I've included a full list of Senate co-sponsors below. If either of your Senators aren't on the list, shoot 'em an email and ask them to co-sponsor it.
A year ago, I made headlines by asking Al Gore this question. He kind of fumbled with it and admitted he had a meat habit, and maybe that's why he hadn't addressed the issue very well. He added that "we have to walk before we run" on fighting global warming, which seemed to me to be entirely counter to the rest of his message.
Meanwhile, the EPA (under Bush) put out a statement that the U.S. agriculture industry only accounts for 6% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (and, presumably, livestock is a part of that number but not all of it). That's much less than the FAO's estimate that the global livestock industry accounts for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Given this discrepancy, I am very grateful to Ralph Loglisci of Johns Hopkins' Center for a Livable Future, who looked into this very question.
Why is it that physicians who care for humans worry about antibiotic resistance from overuse of antibiotics, but veterinarians are not at all concerned? The vast majority of antibiotics used in this country are given to animals who aren't even sick. The antibiotics are intended to promote growth and to prevent infections from occurring in factory farmed animals whose immune systems are compromised by the harsh conditions they live in. The practice of giving non-therapeutic antibiotics to livestock threatens the effectiveness of antibiotics in human medicine, yet the American Veterianary Medical Association has come out against a bill to ban 7 classes of antibiotics used in human medicine from non-therapeutic use in livestock. What gives?
Antibiotic resistant bacteria is not a future problem - it's a current problem. In addition to reports of MRSA on factory hog farms, I've also seen reports like this one from Bill Marler about antibiotic-resistant Salmonella:
Just in the last week, the reality (again) of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella Newport has surfaced (again), this time sickening dozens so far in several states, and leading to the recall of nearly a million pounds of tainted hamburger. This follows a recall of nearly a half a million pounds of Salmonella-tainted burger in Colorado after sickening several a month ago.
Of course, this is not the first time that antibiotic-resistant Salmonella has hitched a ride in hamburger - there were illnesses in 1999, and it was reported by the CDC in 2002 and a WARNING issued by FSIS in 2007. The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services has urged a strategy to combat multidrug-resistant (MDR) Salmonella in ground beef. The CDC, through NARMS has continued to raise concerns about the over-use of antibiotics in our food supply. And, there is clearly no question that these bugs are in the cows we get our milk and the meat that we eat.
The CDC has reported that Salmonella Newport is the third most common Salmonella serotype in the United States. During 1997 - 2001, the number of laboratory-confirmed Salmonella Newport infections reported to CDC increased from 1,584 (5%) of 34,608 reported Salmonella infections to 3,152 (10%) of 31,607 (CDC, unpublished data, 2002). The increasing number of Salmonella Newport infections in the United States appears to be associated with the emergence and rapid dissemination of multidrug-resistant strains of Salmonella Newport. Since 1996, NARMS has identified an increasing number of Salmonella Newport isolates that are resistant to at least nine of 17 antimicrobial agents tested: amoxicillin/clavulanate, ampicillin, cefoxitin, ceftiofur, cephalothin, chloramphenicol, streptomycin, sulfamethoxazole, and tetracycline.
Recently, Republican Eric Cantor announced a Republican "listening tour." The next day Rush Limbaugh said:
"We do not need a listening tour. We need a teaching tour. That is what the Republican Party, or, slash, the conservative movement needs to focus on. Listening tour ain't it."
Cantor got the hint and changed his tune very quickly. But so did, unfortunately, the USDA. That's right - the United States Department of Agriculture. No, they weren't planning a Republican listening tour. They were planning a National Animal ID System (NAIS) listening tour to find out why SO MANY family farmers, horse owners, pet owners, and people who like to buy food from family farmers were INFURIATED by the idea of NAIS.
Turns out, it's a teaching tour, more or less. They want to teach us to like this program that is going to crush family farmers without really improving food safety at all. Each "listening" session gets kicked off with an hour of the USDA talking. That's followed by a mere 2 hours of public comment, and then breakout groups. Consider also that this is planting season for anyone who grows crops in addition to raising livestock, and they only gave farmers two weeks notice about the listening sessions.
You can also submit comments via the internet. You can't mail or fax them in. And an awful lot of farmers don't have internet. So many, actually, that rural broadband is a current major initiative at the USDA.
At the end of these "listening" sessions, the USDA will be able to say that they listened to the opposition before cracking down on mandatory animal ID. Except that they won't really have listened.
Want to take action? Don't just send in comments to the USDA (I will make sure to post instructions and talking points on this blog). Read this article about NAIS and then CALL the office of Rosa DeLauro, the Congresswoman from Connecticut. She's the major force behind this initiative to speed up the implementation of NAIS. Don't email unless you live in her district because members of Congress often filter out emails from outside the district. Instead use these numbers:
Many people involved in the local foods movements are aware of NAIS, the National Animal ID System, which, if implemented in full as a mandatory program, will require anyone, large or small, commercial, homesteader, or hobbyist, to register with their state, ID their animals either by group or individually, and report all animal movements to privately or publicly held databases. Large producers will get to ID and report by lot, small producers, hobbyists and homesteader will get to ID and report individual animals and their movements. It's all going to cost, both in money and in time. There will be mistakes made and it isn't going to be the magic bullet in the event that a foreign animal disease (FAD) is found in the USA, especially not if that FAD happens to be something as potentially devestating as foot and mouth disease (FMD), the boogeyman dujour. Now don't get me wrong, FMD is a very, very bad thing, especially if it ever gets back into this country. It hasn't been here since 1929, Harold knew somone, when he was still in California, who lost his whole herd during that outbreak. If FMD ever gets back into this country we're going to have problems like no body's business, especially if animal movements are still allowed during an outbreak. Which brings me to the topic I'd like to discuss today.
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