Riding Herd
“The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.”
by LEE PITTS
– JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
July 15, 2017 • www.aaalivestock.com
Volume 59 • No. 7
A Sonny New Day
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Oklahoma checkoff officials tried to keep it hush-hush as much as possible because it is, after all, pretty embarrassing. And we’re supposed to feel better about the missing funds because when the gal pled guilty at her trial she said “she was very sorry.” She’s going to try and pay back some of the money but you can’t make very much money working in prison these days. Another story you probably won’t read much about in the glossier livestock press concerns the Montana Beef Council officials who are keeping equally mum about a decision handed down in a U.S. District Court there that affirmed yet another ruling that said the USDA’s Beef Checkoff program, as currently administered, violates the First Amendment. The District Court put in place a preliminary injunction prohibiting the private Montana Beef Council from retaining beef checkoff funds without the payers’ consent. This action took place after a magistrate previously recommended the injunction in December 2016, agreeing with R-CALF, the plaintiff in the suit, that the Checkoff was being run unconstitutionally. R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard said of the verdict, “For well over a decade R-CALF USA members fought to reform what we considered a terribly mismanaged national beef checkoff
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NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING
Where the leather is scarred, there is a great story to tell. 1.9 million pounds) of Brazilian beef products due to public health concerns, sanitary conditions, and animal health issues. It is important to note that none of the rejected lots made it into the U.S. market.” In halting Brazilian fresh beef imports Secretary Perdue said, “Ensuring the safety of our nation’s food supply is one of our critical missions, and it’s one we undertake with great seriousness. Although international trade is an important part of what we do at USDA, and Brazil has long been one of
our partners, my first priority is to protect American consumers. That’s what we’ve done by halting the import of Brazilian fresh beef. I commend the work of USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service for painstakingly safeguarding the food we serve our families.” One of the main reasons the importation of fresh Brazilian beef was stopped was because foot and mouth mitigation measures may have been breached in Brazil. R-CALF had been saying that for months but Obama’s Ag Secretary didn’t
have the courage to do the right thing and shut down the Brazilian imports. There were plenty of other reasons to halt the imports, not the least of which was the disclosure that Brazilian meatpackers, including JBS, had been bribing inspectors and politicians, including the President of Brazil, for favorable treatment and generous loans. Brazil’s largest food-processing firms, JBS and BRF, were raided by Brazilian officials for allowing rotten meat to be distributed in Brazil and exported to Europe. R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard said, “We applaud Secretary Perdue’s decision to halt imports of fresh Brazilian beef but we question why the Secretary did not also halt imports of pre-cooked beef from Brazil after finding that Brazil’s food continued on page two
The Time Has Come BY LEE PITTS
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hings aren’t going well for the beef checkoff these days. We’ve all seen the surveys conducted by firms who want to keep getting the contract from the Beef Board about how wildly popular the beef checkoff is. The last one I saw said that 66 percent of producers felt the checkoff enhanced the profitability of their operations. At first glance that would seem to indicate ranchers are more than happy with the way their beef bucks are being spent. But the last survey unveiled at the NCBA convention showed that there were seven percent fewer of you who agreed with that statement. I don’t ever remember seeing even the faintest indication of negativity since they began conducting these surveys. Nine percent FEWER folks felt the program did a good job of representing your interests. And keep in mind, these polls were taken before it was quietly announced that an employee of the Oklahoma Beef Checkoff had embezzled more than $2.6 million from the state checkoff over a seven-year period to fund a children’s clothing boutique. And she was the person charged with making sure there was accountability in the checkoff! For seven years it seems no one was checking up on her and you’d think someone would have noticed that much of your money was missing.
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ardon me but I’d like to use this column to take care of a little correspondence I’m behind on. My friend, who we’ll call Mr. You-Know-Who, has a bevy of ranching brothers scattered from one end of the Great Basin through Utah and into Wyoming. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting a couple of You-Know-Who’s brothers and I’d like to meet Tom in Wyoming because I’ve never met anyone from Wyoming I didn’t like. They have such great people there and I don’t know if it’s the water they drink or because they’re so spread out. I know You-Know-Who’s cowboy brothers read this column and they’ll know who I’m referring to. Rather than using up a roll of stamps to send them this important message I’ll just take care of it in one fell swoop without having to buy any stamps. I think You-Know-Who is the only one of the family who doesn’t ranch, although he sure looks good in the cowboy hat I gave him and he’s got a Catahoula cross dog that certainly shows signs of being cowy. You-Know-Who is the most easy-going, even-tempered person I’ve ever met. I won’t tell you exactly how old he is because that would be rude. I’ll just say he’s spent at least eight decades on this spinning orb we call home. Although he looks about 60. Because Mr. You-KnowWho is so amicable and easy-going I was surprised when he told me he’d just got home from reading the riot act to his eye doctor. He said he’d given him a good dose of both barrels. It was so out of character of him, so I asked why. It seems after you reach a certain age in my state it becomes necessary to have a written statement from an eye doctor saying that you see good enough to drive at night. I guess they don’t care if you can’t see in the daytime. Maybe that’s why they put all the braille on the steering wheels of cars and trucks. You-Know-Who took the form to his eye doctor to get it signed but didn’t take
BY LEE PITTS
ike the President who nominated him, our new Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, is a different breed of cat. It didn’t take long for the just-confirmed Ag Secretary to show that he’s got a different agenda than other recent Ag Secretaries who talked a good game but soon fizzled out. Soon after his confirmation Perdue halted all imports of fresh beef from Brazil. It’s something R-CALF and this newspaper have said for months needed to be done and darned if he didn’t do it. The suspension of Brazilian imports came after USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) revealed concerns over safety issues and “irregularities” in several Brazilian meatpacking plants, including a plant owned by JBS. The USDA said they had “recurring concerns about the safety of the products intended for the American market.” USDA officials said FSIS inspectors had been inspecting 100% of all meat products arriving in the United States from Brazil and they refused entry to 11% of them. “That figure is substantially higher than the rejection rate of one percent of shipments from the rest of the world,” said the FSIS. “Since implementation of the increased inspection, FSIS has refused entry to 106 lots (approximately
Mr. YouKnow-Who
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