There is ever increasing interest across America in livestock agriculture and a big push being put forth to sell beef on the averages of choice and so forth. You folks in 'Reporter Country who are breeding quality carcass livestock had better be awake. This situation, in my opinion, is taking dead aim at you, your breed, and/or your program.
I think it's possible that some wild-eyed outfit will grab hold of a judge someplace and say that what's going on now is showing preference to certain breeds or to certain programs and that they want to throw out the whole situation. This would be dynamite-dangerous to some of the very successful meat programs that are in place.
Evidently there is a lot of jealousy and competitive thinking arising from some folks that have what they think is a pretty good program, or else they want to develop a program, and they want to be able to take part in a situation that they feel now is getting undue preference. I'm concerned that someone is going to grab hold of some liberal judge that is going to upset the applecart for folks breeding outstanding beef cattle here in America. If you haven't paid attention to this situation, I urge you to do so.

New GIPSA rule...
Subcommittee blasts USDA
On July 20, the House Ag subcommittee on livestock held a hearing on the USDA's proposed rule on livestock marketing practices. The hearing came just two days after the agency released its rule, which is open for public comment until August 23. After thoroughly blasting USDA officials, the committee unanimously called for an extension to the public comment period for at least 60 days, with some calling for 120 days.
Committee chairman David Scott (D-GA) concluded the hearing with his own comment aimed at USDA Undersecretary Edward Avalos and GIPSA Administrator J. Dudley Butler saying, "You've heard a very passionate, very serious outpouring of concern from this committee" (about the proposed rule). Scott said USDA had "overstepped its boundaries," adding that sections of the bill were "soundly rejected during the legislative process in the House and Senate" during the 2008 Farm Bill debate. "For you and the department to arbitrarily go against the wishes and intent of Congress is serious," Scott told the two. "The least - the least - you can do is to extend the comment period. To move ahead would be the worst thing that we could for the industry and for America."

Beef Checkoff Corral: Part 15
Review & Update

By Leesa Zalesky

This edition is a good time to review recent events with the beef checkoff. Here are the highlights of what we know thus far:
- In January 2010, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) rolled out its proposed governance model during its annual convention in San Antonio. Stakeholders at the convention did not vote to approve the proposal as written; rather, they voted in favor of NCBA leadership "pursuing" the venture.
- In March of this year, six industry groups (American Farm Bureau, National Farmer's Union, U.S. Cattlemen's Assoc., National Livestock Producers Assoc., Livestock Marketing Assoc., and the National Milk Producers) wrote a letter to Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack expressing the groups' joint concerns with how NCBA's proposed governance restructure would affect the mandatory beef checkoff.

Petition seeks to have wolves howl across US

Tens of thousands of gray wolves would be returned to the woods of New England, the mountains of California, the wide open Great Plains, and the desert West under a scientific petition filed July 20 with the federal government. The predators were poisoned and trapped to near-extermination in the United States last century, but have since clawed their way back to some of the most remote wilderness in the lower 48 states. That recovery was boosted in the 1990s by the reintroduction of 66 wolves in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. As those first packs have flourished, increased livestock killings and declining big game herds have drawn sharp backlash from ranchers, hunters, and officials in the Northern Rockies.

Eminent domain revisited

Mike Noel doffs his cowboy hat as he rounds up the wayward calves on his ranch just outside the southern Utah town of Kanab. It is hot and dusty in the summer sun, but the battle that the 62-year-old rancher and Republican state legislator is saddle up for pits his state against the nation's capital. "You've got a federal government that is stopping us from even developing our own private lands and our state trust lands here in Utah," he laments, saying there is "way too much control from a federal bureaucracy from 2,000 miles away that has no idea what our lifestyle is about here. It's really caused us great problems here in the state of Utah and throughout the West."

Here's your editor earlier this spring aboard her favorite cowpony Mikey, waiting for the cowboys to get the herd gathered at Tim Smith's outfit near Lodge Grass, Montana. Thanks to Aubry Smith for taking and sharing the photo.