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
Friday, some 2000 farmers, ranchers, and people who are otherwise involved in agriculture showed up in Colorado at a hearing held by the Department of Justice. The Obama administration sent its bigwigs (Secretary Vilsack and Attorney General Eric Holder), and many who attended were able to give public comments. At the core of the hearing was the so-called "GIPSA rule" - a proposed rule from the USDA that would ensure more fair competition in the livestock industry. (A lot of the details here are very "inside baseball" to the industry, but it seems that the basic gist of the GIPSA rule is that many anti-competitive practices that are now legal will no longer be.) Obviously those who are benefiting from the system as is do not WANT the system to be more fair. (I wrote about some of the dirty tactics used by beefpackers to screw individual producers at the link.)
Predictably, the American Meat Institute (AMI) came out with a statement after the hearing, claiming that economies of scale calls for larger (and thus, fewer) slaughterhouses and that the concentration in the beef industry has not increased since 1995 (which is patently false... the top 4 firms had 76% of the market in '95 compared ton 83.5% in 2005, and there have been more mergers and consolidation since then.).
On the other side of the spectrum, R-CALF USA came out with a statement today saying "independent beef producers who want some refereeing in the marketing game... No one in my circles wants a handout - just a chance to market their cattle in an open and transparent market." and "That is all these many hard-working people, the foundation of Rural America, desire: Enforce the rules."
I watched some of the hearing, when attendees were given 2 minutes apiece to make public comments. There was some support for the GIPSA rule, and some were opposed. Many seemed to come from Republican backgrounds and they just wanted the government to keep its hands out of their business, whether or not that is in their own best interest. It seems like, while some have pragmatic business reasons for opposing the GIPSA rule, others are ideologues who want the government uninvolved on principle, even if that means the big beefpackers can swindle them until they lose their family farms. Some said the solution is more free trade agreements (Colombia and Panama) and rigging up the Food Pyramid to tell Americans to eat more red meat.
I think an important part of the workshop to review will be what was said by the panels, and that will be available online at some point. Also, I hope someone kept a tally on the comments - how many were for the GIPSA rule, how many opposed, and was the split down the line between Cowboys vs. Packers, or not?
Transcripts and video of Friday's hearing will be available at the link, although they are not up yet.
Today's a BIG day for anyone who eats, although most people aren't aware. The U.S. Dept of Justice is holding one of their historic workshops about competition in agriculture, this one focusing on livestock. And EVERYONE is there. It's gonna be a crazy time.
For a bit of background, I would refer folks to check out some of the stuff put together by R-CALF, like this PDF on livestock market consolidation. They are fighting a big bunch of monkey business thrown at them by big beefpackers that should probably be illegal, if it isn't already. A few tactics they are up against are posted below, from another R-CALF briefing document.
When I finished reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, I felt sick to my stomach. And that's the way one should feel about any accurate account of the way most meat is produced in this country. That said, I don't want to lead would-be readers of this book to say "I don't want to know" and then avoid reading such a complete and nauseating account of where most meat comes from. If you eat meat - especially if you eat meat you didn't raise and slaughter yourself - it is your responsibility to read this book.
The USDA has come out with a new proposed rule and - based on the reaction it has gotten thus far - it's a big fucking deal. In a good way. Here's how the AP described the new rule:
The rules would place the sharpest limits on meat companies since the Great Depression, drastically lowering the bar that farmers and ranchers must meet to sue companies whom they accuse of demanding unfairly low prices.
The rules would dictate how meatpackers buy cattle on the open market, and prohibit them from showing preference to big feedlots rather than buying from small producers.
They would also limit the control chicken companies have over the farmers who raise birds for them. The companies couldn't require farmers to take on debt to invest in chicken houses, for example, unless farmers were guaranteed to recoup 80 percent of the cost.
The law would also make it easier to file suits under the Depression-era Packers and Stockyards Act by stating that farmers don't need to prove industrywide anticompetitive behavior to file a lawsuit under the act.
Sen. Feingold, a longtime champion for fair competition in agriculture, has already come out praising this rule in a statement I've included below. South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson praised the rule as well, as did R-CALF USA. You can see the USDA's press release about this here and the actual rule itself here.
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.
