Livestock “The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.”
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Digest D
AUGUST 15, 2012 • www. aaalivestock . com
Volume 54 • No. 8
Breaking The Code
by Lee Pitts
B
You Gotta Be Kidding
NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING
In our December 15, 2010, front page story, “The Bigger
by LEE PITTS
Forbidden Foods
– JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
ack in the day when my fellow cowpokes and I rode the range on our rank stick horses, fanning Roy Rogers pistols and living by the “Cowboy Code”, life seemed much simpler. It was a more black and white world . . . there was right and there was wrong. Our heroes were the TV cowboys like Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy. Roy had his Club Rules, Hopalong and the Lone Ranger had their creeds, and Gene Autry his Code of Honor. Needless to say, back then there was no shortage of rules for my amigos and I to live by. These canons of ethics were all very similar: Be neat, clean and courteous, don’t ride a horse on the sidewalk and eat your share of beans. Gene Autry told us that a cowboy never takes unfair advantage, never betrays a trust, never goes back on his word and when you make a promise, keep it. Live by those words these days and you’ll be shot down like a bad guy in the dusty streets at high noon. It’s clear that the sentimental old world view of our youth has no place in business today, as this unbelievable story will most assuredly attest.
Riding Herd
“If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’.” They Are” I wrote about a company called VeraSun Energy. It was the largest ethanol company in the U.S. and hundreds of corn growers had contracted their crop to them, anticipating a once-in-a-lifetime bonanza due to record corn prices. We wrote, “When VeraSun declared bankruptcy on October 31, 2008, it
left farmers and grain elevators holding an empty sack of whatcould-have-beens. Instead of checks that reflected the highest corn price in history they got checks that bounced higher than Iowa corn stalks at harvest time. Even the lucky ones who cashed their checks while there was still some money in the VeraSun
bank account were told that under state bankruptcy laws anyone who got paid during 90 days prior to the bankruptcy had to repay 80 percent of what VeraSun had already paid them. Payments made during those 90 days are known as preferential payments because a debtor “preferred” to pay one creditor over another.” We wrote at the time, “such a mess could never hit the cattle business, right?” Don’t look now but it just did! When Eastern Livestock, the largest cattle broker in the country went bankrupt, it was estimated they owed more than $130 million to 743 sellers of cattle in 30 states. Eastern’s bank, Fifth Third Bank froze Eastern’s accounts on Nov. 2, 2010, after uncovering an alleged check kiting scheme and as continued on page two
Big Green lawsuits cause megafires, destroy endangered species by RON ARNOLD, Washington Examiner
rofessional foresters have known for years that environmentalists are the forests’ worst pest. Green groups’ lawsuits block federal forest health improvements and catastrophic wildfire prevention measures, leading to destroyed communities, dead animals and forests and timber jobs exported to foreign suppliers. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash., recently convened an oversight hearing on the problem, titled, “The Impact of Catastrophic Forest Fires and Litigation on People and Endangered Species.” A single panel of four nongovernment witnesses laid out different perspectives on the hearing’s major premise: For decades, environmental groups have used the Endangered Species Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act to file dozens of lawsuits that block timber fuels reduction and thinning projects that would decrease the risk of wildfires that decimate species' habitat. The issue doesn’t register on many people because it’s too technical. What are timber fuels? How could thinning prevent wildfires?
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Any number of past surveys show that the American psyche sees forests as either Disneyland or Chartres cathedral: clean, safe, well-managed playgrounds or temples for the faithful. Timber fuels are anything in the forest that gets dry or combustible — grass, brush, trees, dead or downed wood — or whatever. Thinning is the removal of these things through such methods as logging, junkwood hauling, chipping and mulching, pile and controlled burn, livestock grazing to crop tall grasses in open forests, et cetera. Such management of the woods keeps them clean and safe. However, the green faithful hate development, including firefighting roads, tree cutting in fire-prone stands, and water catchments to put out megafires. When imposed by lawsuit upon an actual forest, the Big Green Bible produces a Crispy Critters National Wasteland. Humor aside, such behavior should be a felony. Committee Chairman Hastings made this point tellingly by placing a superscription over the hearing’s briefing paper. It was a 2009 quote from Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Tucson, Ariz.-based Center for Bio-
id you hear that the Mayor of New York has proposed a ban on sodas larger than 16 ounces? For the health of his constituents he doesn’t want them drinking any more 32 ounce sodas, but how dumb does he think the people are who elected him? Given enough time, even New Yorkers should be able to figure out that if they want 32 ounces of sugary soda all they have to do is buy two 16 ounce drinks. Duh! In California they have banned fatty goose and duck liver on the grounds the poultry were force fed. I wish they’d have thought of that 50 years ago so I wouldn’t have had to eat the liver my mom force fed me. It tasted like garden snail, marinated in cod liver oil and held together with library paste, all nonfood items I tasted as a young child. I go on record as being wholly in support of a ban on all liver. Yuck! Massachusetts banned junk food on school days and Indiana has mandated that half of all items sold in vending machines at schools be healthy foods. I know American school kids aren’t doing well on tests but, again, just how dumb do they think they are? It won’t be long before second grade sugar junkies are peddling M and M’s out of their backpacks at highly inflated street prices. (That’s what I’d have done.) If they insist on putting carrot sticks and broccoli in vending machines they shouldn’t expect the kids to spend their folk’s hard-earned money on them. Mark my words, there’s gonna be a whole bunch of produce and carrot juice rotting in vending machines. Rare burgers have been outlawed in California and North Carolina, so can a burger bun ban be far behind? The sale of raw milk has become a real hot issue and 20 states have outlawed unpasteurized milk because it can make people sick, but I think we’ve just become a nation of softies. I’ve never read of a single pioneer who died from drinking raw continued on page four
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