The Loop Winter 2004
Nevada
Live Stock Association
Newsletter
Drawings
courtesy of Ernest Morris,
NLSA
member and artist www.elvaquero.com
A message from the Chairman:
By NLSA Chairman Helen Chenoweth-Hage.
I’d like to take this opportunity to bring you up to speed on the many
fronts the NLSA is devoting time and energy to on your behalf. I know that COOL (Country of Origin Labeling) has been on the
front burner of late, but with that great victory under our belt, COOL now being
mandatory rather than voluntary, we still need to keep our eye on equally
important developments here in Nevada.
These great cattle prices must also be laid squarely at the door of
R-CALF USA and those affiliates, like the NLSA, who have kept the Canadian
border shut. It appears that supply
and demand does work! The question
is, why was our own industry for so many years saying the opposite?
The NLSA, for those of you who may not have heard, has been successful on
several other fronts. The first
being the Second Judicial District Court Judge Janet Berry’s ruling on August
26, 2004. (See article below.)
The NLSA was very pleased that the Judge Berry saw things our way and
even found the NV Department of Agriculture’s Petition unconstitutional on
other grounds.
Additionally, the NLSA has been involved in helping our NLSA Esmeralda County Director, Ben Colvin, and other concerned citizens from Esmeralda County impanel a Grand Jury to look into indicting Jim Connelley for allowing Mr. Colvin’s cattle to be seized with out due process of law. (Read about that in more detail below.) The Grand Jury has been in recess since October 2004. Obviously, they are up to something that takes deliberation. Mr. Colvin has filed a $30,000,000 takings claim for his property that was taken for public use without just compensation.
In
other litigation, my husband Wayne Hage, another NLSA member who has long been
fighting for property rights here in Nevada, had his final closing arguments to
his case in Reno, NV in November. That
chapter is now behind us. Judge
Smith urged settlement but negotiations were not successful so it is now and
finally in the hands of Judge Smith. We
rest.
The NLSA is also working on important issues having to do with Nevada
Brand Law and its vulnerability. There
is certainly some irony in the fact that many of those opposing COOL are now the
largest supporters of an even more heavily and costly regulatory scheme—a
mandatory ID program. It’s
important to remember that a national ID program won’t prevent disease. Our brand committee directors have come forth with their
statement of what should be done and what the insertion between federal and
state law should be on this issue. (See
report below.)
There is also important Nevada legislation involving ranching and water
coming up in the 2005 session. NLSA’s
legislative committee is now researching what should be done to protect and
further your interests.
Our Annual Meeting will be held March 12th, 2005 in Fallon, Nevada. Leave
room on your calendar for this important event.
Come join the fun!
Until next time, swing a wide loop.
With warmest regards,
Helen Chenoweth-Hage
Independent
U.S. Cattle Producers
November 30, 2004
(Billings, Mont.) –
U.S. cattle producers, led by R-CALF USA,
celebrated a sweet but hard-earned victory early Saturday morning after learning
Congress would not attach an amendment to the Omnibus Appropriations Bill for
fiscal year 2005 to kill the Mandatory Country-of-Origin Labeling (M-COOL) law
established in the 2002 Farm Bill.
“Our members – independent cattle producers from across the U.S. –
worked overtime this week to contact their congressional members and make it
crystal clear they wanted Mandatory Country-of-Origin Labeling to remain in
place,” said Bill Bullard, R-CALF USA CEO. “This is a significant victory,
and we can’t thank our members enough for pulling together to get a job like
this done.
Lee
Engelhardt, a cattle producer from Moses Lake, Wash., said this triumph is
extremely good news.
“It’s good for U.S. consumers and it’s good for independent cattle
producers,” Engelhardt said. “And it also should prove to every U.S.
consumer that the well-financed minority who fought Mandatory COOL has a total
disregard for consumers’ wishes.”
Jackie Holmgren, executive committee member of the Nevada Live Stock
Association, said as an Affiliate, her organization
made keeping COOL its No. 1 priority with its legislators.
“We were on the front lines with our legislators on COOL, as nothing
else was so important, so pressing, or so global,” Holmgren said.
“Because of these efforts, our legislators didn't fail us or waiver –
the reasoning was too sound, too common sense, too R-CALF USA!"
R-CALF USA Director of Governmental Relations Jess Peterson praised the
organization’s membership for the thousands of phone calls made to their
congressional members to preserve Mandatory COOL, but he also praised those same
congressional members who worked to keep M-COOL during the long hours of debate
surrounding the Omnibus Appropriations Bill.
“This was a great day for the U.S. cattle industry because Senators and
Representatives heard from their constituents and they fought for COOL,”
Peterson said.
Nevada Live Stock Association Thrilled Judge Says
"No"
Reno,
NV 9/1/04 Second Judicial District Court Judge, Janet Berry, on August 26,
2004 dismissed the Nevada Department of Agriculture's Petition for Judicial
Confirmation thereby denying the State's request to "retroactively confirm
its actions" in the highly publicized, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) para-military
style cattle impoundments in Nevada. Agriculture Department Director, Don
Henderson had petitioned the Court for the retroactive judicial blessing of the
Department's procedure for transferring ownership of cattle on the mere
signatures of an agent of the BLM.
"We
were delighted with the Court's dismissal of this case," commented Nevada
Live Stock Association Chairman and former U.S. Congressman Helen
Chenoweth-Hage. "It is clear there is no blessing from the Court for the
BLM or anyone to take property while avoiding proper due process of law, in
particular, the necessary step of seeking a court order before they seize and
sell a rancher's very livelihood in his live stock."
Nevada
Live Stock Association's (NLSA) defending attorneys, Michael Van Zandt, of San
Francisco, CA, and Joel Hansen of Las Vegas, were also pleased with the ruling.
David
Holmgren, NLSA Vice Chairman, his wife NLSA Mineral County Director Jackie
Holmgren and Bevan Lister, NLSA director and rancher from Pioche, Nevada,
testified for ranchers. Jim
Connelley, Nevada Brand Department head and Don Henderson, Director of the
Nevada Department of Agriculture ironically testified for the government.
The
statute under which the Department of Agriculture brought this case to hearing
was found unconstitutional and dismissed by Judge Berry.
NLSA had asked for dismissal of the case from the beginning.
ESMERALDA
GRAND JURY
STILL
OUT
The Esmeralda County Grand Jury that was called this
spring because of cattle seized from Esmeralda County rancher and NLSA Director
Ben Colvin of Goldfield, Nevada, is now in recess. The jury heard witnesses, evidence and testimony from Ben
Colvin and several NLSA members.
The controversy arose when the Nevada Brand Department, headed by Jim
Connolley, allowed an agent of the federal government to sign Nevada brand
inspection certificates in place of the cattle owner’s signature.
Mr. Connolley then, allowed the cattle to cross county lines, be sold,
and trucked into California.
Ben Colvin and citizens of Esmeralda County intervened and with the help
of the NLSA, successfully petitioned for a Grand Jury!
The grand jury will now do one of three things: indict Mr. Connelley,
write a report with actions to be taken, or do nothing.
The NLSA has defended the brand. We
await the jury’s decision.
NLSA’s
Brand Committee’s Report and Recommendations on the
National
Animal ID Program
The Nevada Live Stock Association’s objectives in establishing a
national animal identification program include the following:
1) Clarify the intended purpose and need for the ID program with measures
to prevent misuse and abuse of the proprietary information; 2) Evaluate the
costs and benefits of implementing such a program following the completion of a
comprehensive science based cost/benefit analysis.
Specifically who is going to pay and what for?; 3) Evaluate the current
state and regional animal identification methods such as our Nevada Brand Law
that already meet the intended purpose of the national ID program, or that may
be easily assimilated at little cost to no cost; 4) Ensure that if the overall cost of implementing a national
animal ID plan is considerable, which according to the United States Animal
Identification Plan (USAIP) is the case, those costs are not given to the U.S.
live cattle industry to foot the bill; 5) Ensure that if a network
infrastructure is needed for the national ID program, it is designed to
accomplish many other needed services in Rural America, rather than simply
maintaining information about livestock; 6)
Ensure that the current rush to implement a national ID program does not
distract the U.S. from its far more immediate responsibility, which is to
protect the United States’ cattle herd from the introduction of Foreign Animal
Diseases that may enter the U.S. through inadequate border controls; 7) To
maintain, as this nations highest priority, the highest standards of health and
safety for our cattle industry and to not compromise our ability to avoid and
prevent the introduction and spread of animal diseases by substituting our long
standing policy in the live cattle industry of “disease prevention” with a
new strategy of “disease management”; 8) To ensure that the U.S.
implements and enforces the measures already in place and readily available,
like the hot brand, which meet the objectives of preventing the introduction of
Foreign Diseases, differentiating cattle origin, and tracing beef and cattle as
to their origins.
It
is disconcerting to the Nevada Cattle Industry and U.S. cattle industry that
while mandatory country-of-origin-labeling has been passed by Congress and is
now available to both immediately determine the country-of-origin of cattle and
to trace the origins of beef, at least with respect to foreign cattle and
foreign meat, Congress itself has attempted to postpone its implementation.
It is equally disconcerting that while our current regulations provide
the U.S. cattle industry with the most complete protection against the
introduction of
Foreign Animal Diseases from countries where such diseases are known to exist,
the USDA is working aggressively to relax and weaken these regulations.
This is counter-productive and very dangerous to our industry.
A hot brand is the only truly permanent mark of identification.
A brand cannot be removed until an animal’s hide is removed.
Electronic tags and microchips can either be removed or they can shift
under the skin until they are no longer readable by a scanner.
While electronic tags may sound like a great use of new technology, they
are actually very impractical in Nevada. Ranchers
like many in the NLSA who operate on open range have found that ear tags are
very difficult use, let alone to keep in place and/or read over the years. In addition, many Nevada stockmen do not have our livestock
in a confined area where they can be easily accessed for tagging or scanning.
Implementation of such a program would be prohibitive to our members
cost-wise as well as logistically impossible.
Until very recently, concerns regarding how market participants could
potentially misuse and abuse information that a national ID system would be
capable of transmitting were largely speculative.
However, Cargill’s recent announcement in Canada that it would refuse
to knowingly purchase cattle owned by members of R-CALF USA has turned this
speculation into a genuine threat with huge economic implications.
Meat packers and commodity groups need to be screened from access to
proprietary information, which could be used discriminatorily and would increase
corporate control over producers.
In general the role of state and/or federal government in developing and
administering a national ID program will be dependent on the amount of funding
these government entities are willing to provide.
Also, once implemented federal law will prevail and government agencies
such as the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management will no doubt want full
compliance with whatever type of ID the Congress comes up with.
In essence, Congress is asking how much independent cattle producers are
willing to pay to implement a program, which is expressly aimed at control and
eradication of Foreign Animal Diseases like Foot and Mouth (FMD) and Mad Cow (BSE),
diseases that are not in the U.S. cow herd!
But, these diseases may be introduced because of our current importation
and border control policies. We are
basically free of these diseases and this is an economic boon worth billions to
our industry.
Therefore, the best thing to do is:
1) Mark all imported cattle with a permanent mark of origin; 2) Identify
all imported cattle already in the U.S. with a permanent mark of origin; 3)
Implement country-of-origin labeling so that in the event of a disease outbreak
in a foreign herd, all foreign cattle and foreign meat can be immediately
identified and quarantined; 4) Maintain current regulations that prohibit the
importation of cattle or beef from any country where BSE and FMD are known to
exist. This must be our first line
of defense!
If this primary line of defense against introduction of Foreign Diseases
were implemented and enforced, cattle producers might be receptive to
considering additional costs associated with the secondary line of defense – a
national ID program. However, at
this time we do not need to implement such a program, which is designed to
eradicate diseases that we have already eradicated or do not exist in the U.S.
until they are brought here! It is
counter productive to implement the secondary line of defense before the
primary! We must have border
control and we must mark imported cattle so they can be traced.
U.S. cattle do not need to be traced other than by the excellent plan
already in place through state and local brand laws.
Additionally, the hot brand is already in place with recording,
transferring, and accessing trace ability information.
A study commissioned by R-CALF USA has shown that the value to the U.S.
cattle industry of tracking foreign cattle that enter the U.S. is, $80,000,000
per year. If a BSE case is detected in a foreign animal that has been
tracked in the U.S., the value is over $500,000,000 per year to our live cattle
industry!
Let’s get the ID program going, but on the right cattle, foreign
cattle, and the sooner the better.
Join the Nevada Live Stock
Association today!
NEVADA LIVE STOCK ASSOCIATION
9732 State Route 445 #305 Sparks, Nevada 89436 775-424-0570 or 775-577-9120
“The three great rights are so
bound together as to be essentially one right.
To give a man his life but deny him his liberty is to take from him all
that makes his life worth living. To
give him his liberty but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge
of his liberty is to still leave him a slave.”
Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland, 1921
MEMBERSHIPS DUE JANUARY 2005!
The NLSA Board of Director’s has voted to change the date of membership to renewals to January of year year. Please use the enclosed envelope to renew your pledge and support of the NLSA. We don’t eat dust, we make dust! See you on the trail…