Livestock
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“The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.”
Digest T
by LEE PITTS
A Bone To Pick
– JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL JANUARY 15, 2014 • www. aaalivestock . com
Volume 56 • No. 1
Heard The Word? A by Lee Pitts
very dangerous word is slowly creeping into the vocabulary of mainstream America. It’s a pleasant sounding word and you might even feel flattered if someone used it in describing your ranch. And I’m sure we’ll be criticized for suggesting that there is an ulterior motive behind those who would use it to take away your freedoms. The word is “sustainable”. Who can argue with such a nice sounding word? Sustainable. How nice. It has become the latest buzzword of liberals, enviros and bureaucrats. It’s hip, identifies you as being well-educated and who doesn’t want to be sustainable? You might say that sustainability is the next “paradigm”, another popular overused word the politically correct use in every other sentence. Sustainability is supposedly all about saving people, animals and the environment from ourselves. But the day is fast approaching when “sustainable” will be the dirtiest word in the English language. In a word, it is the next global warming, endangered species and biodiversity, all rolled into one.
If you’re ridin’ ahead of the herd, take a look back every now & then to make sure it’s still there.
Talking In Code when the United Nations called for a “more sustainable world” in a document called Agenda 21. It is a 40-chapter book of rules socialists first envisioned at the U.N.’s Earth Summit in Rio. Just like the word “sustainable”, at first everyone thought Agenda 21 was harmless; it was just a document that addressed how we as humans might improve our plight. Sustainability was just about ensuring “intergenerational justice” and “a future
world fit for children so they might be able to grow up healthy, educated and culturally sensitive. Who could argue with that? As always, the devil is in the details. Much like another recent liberal disaster, no one bothered to actually read what was in Agenda 21 either. Nancy Pelosi might have easily said about Agenda 21 what she said about ObamaCare, that we had to pass it before we could find out what’s
According to the U.N., “Since 1990, the international community has convened 12 major conferences which have committed governments to address urgently some of the most pressing problems facing the world today. Taken together, these high profile meetings have achieved a global consensus on the priorities for a new development agenda for the 1990s and beyond.” The most pressing problem as the U.N. sees it, is that the world simply can’t continue the way continued on page two
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: Re-introduction of the Mexican Gray Wolf BY ALICIA ALLEN
The Devil Is In The Details
FOR ENGLISH 101, TOMBSTONE HIGH SCHOOL,
The folks who make a living creating disasters began promoting sustainability in the 1990s
TOMBSTONE, ARIZONA
NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING
in it. Now we know, and it isn’t pretty. Turns out that Agenda 21 is a playbook on how the liberal progressives can take away your Constitutionally granted rights, freedoms and property. It was written by one-worlders who want to elevate third world countries to our level by bringing us down to theirs, all under the umbrella of sustainability.
nvision yourself on a large, beautiful ranch at the base of a mountain, one that your family has passed down for generations. You are riding your horse, mending the fences, and checking on the cattle. As you ride by, you notice two of your weanling calves dead in the wash. While you are trying to think about what could have gotten to them, a huge gray wolf comes out from behind the brush and stares you down. You spin your horse around and take off to the barn. This sounds like a bad horror movie, right? Unfortunately, this scene has become a reality due to the re-introduction of the endangered Mexican Gray Wolf in the Southwest. The wolf has become a grave threat to the people of the Southwest and their livelihoods. The protection and re-introduction of the Mexican Gray Wolf is nothing new to the area. The re-introduction program started in the 90s.The reason for the re-introduction is to repopulate areas in the Southwest where the wolves previously lived, before European immigrants began settling in the area. In 1976, the
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Mexican Gray Wolf was marked an endangered species, making it a federal issue. The Arizona Game and Fish Department, along with other government agencies, have been trying to reintroduce the Mexican Gray Wolf in the areas of central Arizona and western New Mexico since 1990. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife). Recently, the wolves have been repopulating in captive breeding programs to help bring up the numbers before releasing them into the wild. According to a 2011 issue of the Endangered Species Bulletin, “In December 2010, the wild population numbered approximately 50 wolves—half the number needed for our objective to establish a single population of at least 100 wolves pursuant to the 1982 Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan” (Barrett). While 100 may seem like a small number, it is quite an improvement from the handful of wolves prior to when the re-introduction program started. On the other hand, with a higher wolf population means more animals being killed to supplement the dietary needs of the wolves. The reason the wolves were eliminated in the Southwest was because of their increased attacks on the cattle and sheep in the area. Ranchers and government agencies alike started shooting, trap-
he only kind of shopping I do is grocery shopping because food is my business, and my life. In doing the weekly shopping one thing has become painfully obvious to me: in the product extension area beef is a flat-out failure. Just look at the almond folks; they’ve taken a previously little-known nut and put it in ice cream, cakes, cans of beans, salads, cereals, candy, cookies, chips, protein bars and a shopping cart full of other foods. And it’s a nut! As a result, the almond farmers I know are driving late model pickups and taking vacations to exotic locales like Paris and Rome. (That’s Paris, Texas, and Rome, Illinois.) The raisin growers have done the same thing and yet I bet I haven’t met six people in my entire life who’ve admitted to liking raisins. Surely there are many products that could use a little beefing up. Come with me now as I take you on a tour of a modern supermarket and suggest products that would NOT be left gathering dust on the shelf, past their expiration date, if they only had a little beef in them. Or, in the case of pickles and oatmeal, a LOT of beef. We are in the salad dressing aisle now and I notice that ranch dressing appears to be the favorite kind, and yet there is nothing “ranchy” about it. No cow parts or body fluids at all! It’s like trying to find the grapes in Grape Nuts! How can you have ranch dressing without any beef? After reading the labels I’d say mostly what ranch dressing is made of are chemicals that sound like something you’d spray on weeds. Now we are in the ice cream section and I see that Ben and Jerry’s has a flavor called Phish Food. Yuck! Ice cream gets mixed with a lot of stuff these days but I think Haagen-Das really missed the boat by not selling Bacon Bits Ice Cream, a combination of two of the greatest things on earth. But the pork people’s lack of vision provides a real opportunity for cattleman. Instead continued on page fourteen
continued on page four
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