One Fine Day

After lots of bad news out of Washington, pork producers had several things to cheer about last Thursday.

First, the House voted to keep the Agriculture Department from finishing its costly rewrite of regulations governing how livestock are bought and sold. NPPC has said the draft regulation is bad for producers, consumers and rural America alike and will lead, among other things, to thousands of job losses.

Meanwhile, the Senate was voting overwhelmingly to kill the 45-cent-per gallon ethanol tax credit and a companion 54-cent-per-gallon ethanol import tariff. Together the subsidies drive up corn prices, reduce supplies and threaten livestock feed shortages.

And to top things off, media reports said the Obama administration and congressional leaders are close to a deal on three long-pending free trade agreements that will generate nearly $800 billion in additional pork exports.

Of course, the provisions blocking the livestock regulation and killing the ethanol subsidies face additional hurdles on Capitol Hill. But the ethanol vote suggested that the corn-based fuel’s long stranglehold on Congress has finally been broken. And the action on the livestock regulation sends a clear message that USDA went way too far in drafting the massive and unwelcome rule.

All in all, one good day for pork producers!

Challenging Conventional Wisdom On Ethanol

Is it suddenly fashionable to be against ethanol?

First, Minnesota Republican Tim Pawlenty defied conventional wisdom by proclaiming his opposition to ethanol subsidies while announcing his candidacy for president—in Iowa.

And now, a trio of prominent Republican senators—Tom Coburn, Okla., John McCain, Ariz., and Jim DeMint, S.C.—is targeting ethanol as well.

Coburn is forcing a Senate vote—perhaps as early as today—on eliminating the 45-cent-per-gallon ethanol tax credit, and DeMint says he will offer a separate amendment to repeal the renewable fuel standard (RFS), which mandates ethanol’s production. Not to be outdone, McCain says he wants to bar the Agriculture Department from making grants to install ethanol pumps at filling stations.

If that sounds like a political sea-change, it is. Until recently, the livestock industry was largely alone in questioning federal subsidies for ethanol production. The subsidies drive up corn prices, and the RFS affects corn supplies, threatening livestock feed shortages, which would be disastrous for pork and cattle producers alike. NPPC repeatedly has said that support for renewable fuels should not come at the expense of the livestock industry.

This is News?

Here’s a bulletin from Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y.: Most antibiotics given to livestock are administered through feed and water, with only a small fraction administered by injection.

Slaughter revealed these unstartling “facts” in a Friday press release. Incredibly, she jumped from this information to the totally unsupported claim that livestock farmers are “rampantly misusing antibiotics in an attempt to cover up filthy, unsanitary living conditions among animals” and that this leads to antibiotic resistance.

It seems obvious Ms. Slaughter never has been in a modern hog barn, which is biosecure and temperature-controlled. Such housing protects pigs from parasites and disease, which reduces animals' need for antibiotics. Barns are cleaned and disinfected after each lot of hogs is sent to market.

Furthermore, no scientific study ever has linked antibiotic use in food animals with antibiotic resistance in humans, a point that top government scientists conceded to Congress. Slaughter routinely has ignored these kinds of unhelpful facts—along with the reality that antibiotics help keep animals healthy and ensure safe food in the meat case—in her years-long quest to severely curtail antibiotics use in livestock.

So far her effort has been unsuccessful, and with Republicans firmly in control of the House of Representatives it is likely to remain so.

Vilsack Goal: Final GIPSA Rule by Fall

Poor Tom Vilsack. The Obama administration agriculture secretary just can’t seem to escape his department’s much-criticized rewrite of the rule for buying and selling livestock.

At a Capitol Hill hearing Thursday, California Democrat Jim Costa departed from topic at hand—trade—to tell Vilsack he remains “very concerned” about the massive regulation, known as the GIPSA rule. Costa asked if stakeholders would have another opportunity to comment once an economic analysis of the rule’s impact on farmers and ranchers is completed.

Vilsack answered by noting that the rule already had generated 66,000 comments, 30,000 of them “unique”—that is, not part of an orchestrated postcard or letter-writing campaign. Then he added, “Our hope is we get this (rule) done sometime this fall.”

In its testimony at the Thursday hearing, NPPC reiterated its call for USDA to accept comments on the economic analysis before it issues an interim or final version of the GIPSA rule.

Livestock’s Not-So-Long Shadow

Remember Livestock’s Long Shadow, the much-ballyhooed United Nations report that said livestock account for more greenhouse gases than transportation and that CAFOs are the worst offenders? Animal agriculture has been vilified over those findings for years.

Well, it turns out, five years down the road, the U.N. is saying, sorry, we made a mistake.

Frank Mitloehner of the California-Davis Agricultural Air Quality Center told the Animal Agriculture Alliance last week that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization is working on a follow-up report that backs away from the earlier estimates. Fittingly, the new report is called Shrinking the Shadow.

The 2006 report claimed that animals produced 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and argued that small, pasture-based farms produce fewer emissions than larger operations. The truth, Mitloehner told the animal agriculture group, is just the opposite: larger, intensified farming is better for the environment.

Mitloehner said his research supports estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency that U.S. agriculture contributes about 7 percent of GHG emissions, with about half of that coming from livestock. Of that total, U.S. pork farmers are responsible for only about one-third of 1 percent. By contrast, transportation accounts for 27 percent of U.S. GHG emissions.

Just Saying

“Ethanol is the only industry that benefits from a triple crown of government intervention: its use is mandated by law, it is protected by tariffs, and companies are paid by the federal government to use it.” So said Senator Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., as she joined Senator Tom Coburn, R-Okla., in introducing legislation May 3 to eliminate the ethanol tax credit and repeal ethanol’s tariff protections.

The Ethanol Subsidy and Tariff Repeal Act was filed as an amendment to a pending small business bill. The credit earns refiners 45 cents for every gallon of ethanol they blend with gasoline and costs taxpayers about $6 billion a year.

Testifying before a House Agriculture subcommittee May 4, NPPC President Doug Wolf said tight corn supplies, driven in part by subsidized ethanol production, could cause livestock feed shortages this year and be disastrous for pork producers. Support for renewable fuels is laudable, Wolf said, but it should not “come at the expense of the U.S. livestock industry.”

Eric Schlosser’s Unanswered Question

In a 1,500-word diatribe against large-scale agriculture in the April 29 Washington Post, Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser gets to the point at about word 1,475. “The wealthy,” he proclaims, “will always eat well.”

Yes, the wealthy can always afford the pricey, organic food from boutique farms that Schlosser favors. The problem is feeding the rest of us at a price we can afford. And, while the author-activist never addresses that question directly, pork producers know the answer. All the farming methods Schlosser promotes—organic, free-range, local and more—can flourish in the United States. But modern, large-scale farming is the only realistic way to produce the food the world needs in a safe, affordable and sustainable manner.