Andy's Angle

Ohio is fortunate to have a strong Director of Agriculture in Robert Boggs. Director Boggs spoke with AgWeb.com Editor Greg Vincent earlier today about his reaction to the video released by Mercy For Animals depicting animal cruelty on a Plain City dairy. Director Boggs, after deploring the abuses shown in the widely distributed YouTube clip, was asked about how this situation relates to Ohio's new Livestock Care Standards Board, and by extension, the ongoing efforts of HSUS to force that Board to adopt its narrow set of standards on animal housing.

In relating this story to the HSUS agenda, Director Boggs pointed out something that is very obvious, but that HSUS and their accomplices as Mercy For Animals, Farm Sancturary, etc., will deny and/or hide: "The language in their ballot initiative would not have prevented this action from taking place at all."

Bingo.

The Director said, in 16 words, the most profound nugget of truth I've heard all day: animal abuse is size neutral. Activists at HSUS and their network of radical animal rights/vegan organizations continually claim that Ohio (and every other state) should adopt laws to prohibit certain animal housing practices because modern animal housing is somehow inhumane, and that "factory farms" are rife with animal abuse.

Flying in the face of that worn rhetoric is the Conklin situation. At this point in the investigation, a single employee has been charged with 12 acts of animal cruelty. If found guilty, he could face up to three years in prison and up to $9,000 in fines. And, since the investigation is ongoing, more charges are possible, perhaps even likely. The abuses depicted in the Mercy for Animals video did not take place on a "factory farm," but on a farm nowhere near large enough to be regulated by the Ohio Department of Agriculture's Livestock Environmental Permitting Program.

In other words, animal abuse is size neutral. The actions taken by Billy Joe Gregg in abusing the cows and calves at the Conklin Farm are the actions of an individual, not a community. To tar an entire segment of Ohio's economy through the actions of a single individual, or even a few individuals in a state of over 80,000 professional farmers is a gross injustice in and of itself.

Earlier this week, radical animal rights activist group Mercy for Animals (MFA) released an “undercover” video of animal abuses at a dairy near Plain City, Ohio. I watched the video. I was... well, to preserve the decorum of civil discourse, I’ll simply say I was highly inflamed by what I saw on the tape.

Video evidence of a farm employee savagely beating, stabbing, clubbing, and otherwise abusing both cows and calves sent my blood pressure to a medically unsuitable level. Which, as it turns out, is exactly what the animal rights’ activists were looking for.

“Immediately upon completion of the investigation,” the organization proclaimed on its website, “Mercy For Animals contacted the City Prosecutor's Office of Marysville regarding the ongoing pattern of abuse at Conklin Dairy Farms. MFA is pushing for employees of the facility to be criminally prosecuted for violating Ohio's animal cruelty laws.”

MFA, however, isn’t waiting on the Union County Sheriff or Prosecuting Attorney to do their jobs: “The deplorable conditions uncovered at Conklin Dairy Farms highlight the reality that animal agriculture is incapable of self-regulation and that meaningful federal and state laws must be implemented and strengthened to prevent egregious cruelty to farmed animals.”

Wait a minute. If MFA is hoping the abusers will be prosecuted under current animal cruelty laws, why the rush to declare that “meaningful federal and state laws must be implemented?”

Like the efforts of its frequent conspirator the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), MFA doesn’t want the legal process to work. Like MFA, HSUS immediately used the allegations of abuse at Conklin to push their own radical vegan agenda: “It is time for the Legislature to upgrade these [animal cruelty] statutes so judges and prosecutors have the tools to handle people who engage in malicious cruelty, including to farm animals,” said HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle in a statement.

Mr. Pacelle is in Ohio this week, touring the state with “family farmers” in support of the HSUS led and funded ballot initiative to force the newly appointed and functioning Livestock Care Standards Board to adopt HSUS-approved regulations for animal housing. Rather than allow the Board to do its constitutionally-mandated job, HSUS is working overtime to convince voters that an out of state activist organization should write the rules for Ohio’s livestock farming community.

For their part, Conklin immediately terminated the employee shown prominently in the video willfully abusing animals. The family says it is working with the authorities conducting the investigation, and are themselves investigating and evaluating how these abuses could happen on their farm.

As a cattleman, I’m “mad as hell” that anyone would think its okay to treat animals the way the MFA video showed an employee abusing cows. I’m overjoyed, however, that Ohio’s dairy leaders took strong and immediate stances against this type of behavior in any shape or form. Scott Higgins, Executive Director of the Ohio Dairy Producers’ Association said “It’s simply deplorable, it’s unacceptable behavior, and we support the efforts of the appropriate law enforcement officers investigating this swiftly and taking action immediately.”

Scott, and his colleagues throughout the agriculture community, are right to strongly and immediately condemn these abuses, but more importantly, it’s obvious that all of us in the farm community were outraged not about the continued assaults on animal agriculture from the radical vegan community, but that the abuses happened in the first place. To quote Scott, we “have a moral and ethical obligation to provide excellent care for our herds every day.”

It’s no coincidence that Mercy For Animals released this footage shortly before HSUS is due to turn in signatures for its proposed ballot measure, nor that Pacelle was in Columbus for a “panel discussion” on the very day the video was released. HSUS signature gathering efforts have fallen far short of their expectations, according to their published reports, and it gives me pause to consider that the “undercover investigation” at Conklin started just over a month ago.

Nonetheless, those of us who choose to be involved in the production and care of food animals do so because we love the animals, we love the people, and we love the end product. We’re defensive of our community, both from the attackers on the outside, and as importantly from those on the inside who do us harm by ignoring their own moral and ethical responsibilities.

I'm in the studio in the midst of the morning show, but I wanted to share a few links that crossed my radar this morning:

National Debt Tops $13 TRILLION: From Drudge - AMERICA'S NATIONAL DEBT TOPS $13,000,000,000,000; DEBT PER TAXPAYER - $117,975; US DEBT TO GDP RATIO - 90.3% - Sobering stuff...

Who's Really Lying in the Sestak Case? From Blackfive via InstaPundit: Most of the Navy guys I know would not let themselves be called a liar by a sad sack like Robert Gibbs if they weren’t, you know, lying...So here’s what I think. I think the fact that Joe Sestak — even after being called a liar by Robert Gibbs — has not come forward and made a statement to the authorities about felony corruption he claims to have witnessed says something about Joe Sestak. And what it says is this: Joe Sestak is either a coward, a liar, a political sycophant or — and this is where I’d put my money — all three of these things.

Perhaps the truth is that BOTH Sestak AND the White House are obfuscating the truth... Imagine that: politicians bending the truth? Nah, couldn't be...

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain... My favorite econ/policy blogger Tom Blumer takes a trip down memory lane comparing Obama Press Secretary Gibbs to Bush Press Secretaries: Doesn’t everyone remember in 2005 when George W. Bush’s Press Secretary Scott McClellan (bless his back-stabbing heart) called reporters into the West Wing of the White House and scolded them for asking too many questions about Hurricane Katrina? That following a similar admonishment earlier in the year about the press’s obsession with anything and everything to do with the Iraq War.

In fact, as Blumer points out, Gibbs "beatdown" of the West Wing press pool was a blatant effort to squash the dissension among the press: Don’t even think about how intense the firestorm would have been if any Republican or conservative administration ever tried to intimidate reporters like this. And yes, it’s intimidation, as in, “If you as an individual reporter keep on asking questions about BP, I’m going to lose interest in taking questions from you on any subject. It will get mighty lonely in here for you.”

Plain City Farm Subject of Latest "Undercover Video:" Mercy for Animals, the HSUS' aligned extremist animal rights organization, released its latest undercover video this week alleging animal abuses at a Plain City Dairy. We'll have more reporting on the issue throughout the day on your local ABN Radio station and on our website, but here is the AP story from CBS News, and here is a thoughtful response from dairy girl and AgChatter Michele Payn-Knoper. Michele's key message: Above all, please know these videos represent a few bad actors and are an insult to those of us who have worked with cattle since we were old enough to be in the barn. Are all babysitters or teachers bad because there are a few who abuse children? No – and the same holds true for farmers. Regardless of whether the video was staged or real, the individuals who treated animals with such disrespect should have been reported to the authorities immediately. Well said.

I love being a cattleman. As much as anything I do, I derive a lot of joy out of working with my cows, and this time of year is especially exciting. The calves are growing and developing in the fields, I'm starting to get some ideas about which bulls and heifers may make someone's showstring, and the fields are green and lush.

Today we started the breeding season, another one of my favorite things about this time of year. I've spent the last few weeks really studying the various matings that will produce next year's calf crop. We'll utilize artificial insemination, embryo transfer, and a great herd sire to cover our cows this year.

SULL Achiever 8129, a bull in which we own partial semen interest, will play a significant role in our AI plans this year, as will great sires like JSF Capiche from Select Sires, and JSF Sir Patrick from Paint Valley Farms. Given that our new herd sire, Byland Reload 9R45, is a son of JSF Reload, you may have noticed that Jungels Shorthorn Farms' sires will play a heavy influence in our herd over the next few years. Derrick and his team have done a tremendous job in building a top shelf program, and their bulls work for some of the best in the business.

Achiever's first calf crop, by the way, looks excellent. They are some of the best prospect steers I've seen this season. Look for them in the showring later this Fall! We were thrilled that Achiever was named an All American Honoree by the American Shorthorn Association at the conclusion of the PACE season. Congrats to our partners Greenhorn Cattle Company on a great campaign of this outstanding AI sire.

I mentioned our new herd sire, Byland Reload 9R45. Reload is my selection from an outstanding visit to Byland Polled Shorthorns of Loudonville, Ohio earlier this month. Dr. Jeff and Jon Byers have certainly carried the tradition of Byland excellence to new heights in recent years. Our herd is built around some of their genetics, most notably our lead donor Byland Cathy 2RD7, a 2002 daughter of Mel-Bar Rodeo Drive 347.

Speaking of Rodeo Drive 347, we have a fair bit of his sire's influence walking our pastures as well, with two daughters of HS Rodeo Drive 062S in the lineup, one of whom might make Donor status this year. I'm pretty well convinced we'll flush BSG Cherry Ruby 228 this year along with our great donor BSG Corona Queen FT102. Corona, as we call her, is a tremendous daughter of the great CF 4 Queens donor, and is sired by CF Orion. Cates' Queens cow family is perhaps the most storied in the breed, and we were thrilled to acquire Corona from our friends at Bowman Superior Genetics in Greens Fork, Indiana.

We brought home quite a few cows, including Corona and Cherry Ruby, as well as Ruby's flushmate BSG Cherry Rae 223. I mentioned our Byland Cathy donor; we love this cow. She means so much to us, in fact, that we purchased her 2008 heifer sired by JSF Real World 16R from Byland, and retained the full sib 2009 heifer as well.

In total we have 17 cows walking the fields in Hillsboro, and we started our estrus synchronization program this morning. Next Tuesday, give or take a day, we'll be inseminating ten of them. Four are currently bred to calve this fall, including the Cathy donor and another donor Bern A Dale Phoebe 4, another HS Rodeo Drive 062S daughter. The other three cows calved fairly recently, so they'll most likely be exposed solely to Reload because I want to "move them up" in the calving season next Spring.

If you'd like to see some pictures of our lovely ladies, visit our Facebook page at BuckeyeCattle.com. And, feel free to become a "fan" while you're there

As always, if you're interested in accessing our genetics at Buckeye Cattle Company, drop me a line or give me a call. I love to talk cows.

Farm writer/television host John Phipps shares some comments he's reading this morning about USDA's Office of Communications in light of the growing assumption that farm programs will be gutted even further in the 2012 Farm Bill:

Here’s an example: the Department of Agriculture’s $10 million Office of Communications. Of the total, $9 million is spent on wages and benefits for its 77 employees, which equals $116,333 per employee. This almost matches perfectly the overall average annual federal employee compensation of $120,000, which is twice the average in the private sector.

I particularly like Phipps' comments about the article: "This may seem like just a cheap shot at a relatively tiny piece of government, but until it dawns on us how we will really have to reduce spending - i.e. eliminate thousands of tiny bureaucracies/programs for penny-by-penny savings - we won't make any progress at all."

Perhaps even more insightful is this from a commenter named Virginia: "While PR is a tiny piece of government as you say, it is bigger than you think. The data you cite is just from the Secretary's Office of Communication. On top of that, each of the 26 agencies within USDA also have their own PR shops. Multiply this across government and it adds up."

In other words, look at each Cabinet-level office or Department, assume it has a much bigger PR arm than USDA (think the State Department doesn't have more PR flacks than USDA? Doubtful...), and start doing the math in your head.

Now, before my friends at USDA's radio shop think I'm throwing them under the bus, there are a couple of really good reporters on staff who supply us with in-person audio from USDA folks like the Secretary that we wouldn't otherwise have on a daily basis. That is a useful function that helps our business save money (since we don't generally have the resources to employ a full-time DC reporter). The positions that soak up the most dough in the Communications budget however, I'm assuming, are going not to the rank and file reporters, but to the political appointees to whom they report.

The only caveat to the disparity between government wage and private pay, in my mind, is the cost of living in the DC metro. Knowing some close friends who work on Capitol Hill, DC is one of the most expensive places in the country in which to live. In the context of getting our budget back in order, however, perhaps fewer folks working in the DC metro would send the cost of living in a supply/demand induced decline, making it cheaper to live and work in the District...