DRY CRIK Journal

Though given ample time to subside, my anger persists over the irrefutable evidence of inhumane cattle handling at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Plant in Chino. Pete Crow’s objective editorial in the February 25th edition of Western Livestock Journal assuaged my indignant rage only slightly as he concluded, “it seems the dairy and beef cattle industries, as well as the meat packing industry, must start policing ourselves better.”

Yes, our congregation needs a good preaching to – that goes without saying. But where was the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, where was the film clip for the media to depict any number of the diverse and humane activities employed by beef producers? One would think that after the maelstrom of bad press for the past two decades, the NCBA might be prepared with some good news. A visit to their/our website for a statement was painfully political and disappointing. I recall several homemade videos from Elko that would have been more appropriate.

If honestly calculated, the NCBA dues are not cheap, but ever since the USDA’s Dairy Buy-Out debacle that put many beef producers out of business, I’ve wondered if the association officers were merely looking for another acronym to add to their obituaries. Though mistakenly, I also thought that adding the ‘B’ to NCA was to differentiate us from the dairy business, but apparently political correctness and a Farm Bill in limbo precluded any public comment to label ‘dairyburger’ for what it is: ground-up, burnt-out dairy cows with who knows what in their systems. Frankly, any real vision from our industry comes from the pure-bred breeders in the form of Certified Black Angus, Certified Hereford, or other certified beef breeds - good faith attempts to brand meat and offer consumers some clue as to what they’re eating. Unfortunately however, most folks think beef producers endorse the practices at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Plant.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I had hoped that even in the current environment of fear, political spins and misinformation about the food we eat, this latest incident would have simmered by now. Bill Maher’s latest lumping together of the beef and dairy business is disturbing even though most of 143 million pounds of hamburger subject to the recall has already been consumed (without any known ill-effects) over the past two years. It is a Class II recall, meaning that there is a “very, very remote possibility of adverse health consequences from consuming the product.”

At issue for me is the slaughter of ‘downer’ or ‘non-ambulatory’ cattle destined for the U.S. food supply. Disturbing video clips taken by a slaughterhouse employee depict dairy cows unable to travel on their own being dragged and moved by forklifts before slaughter. Apart from the inhumane practices depicted in the video clips, Federal regulations require that such ailing animals receive complete and proper inspection by Federal veterinarians. Health concerns, from my perspective, would be the amount of antibiotics in the ailing animals’ systems within the prescribed withdrawal periods before the much slighter chance of BSE (Mad Cow Disease).

But it’s time for the dairy industry to police its irresponsible practices. Though the meat packing plant is subject to the ‘voluntary’ recall, these animals did not become ‘non-ambulatory’ overnight, nor did they all become injured in the haul, some were undoubtedly loaded with forklifts. Unfortunately, this practice is all too common among frugal dairymen salvaging a few more milking days and a few more dollars from a ‘burnt-out’ dairy cow.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 7, 2007

The Honorable Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor
The State of California
State Capitol, First Floor             FAX: (916) 445-4633
Sacramento, CA 95814

RE: Williamson Act Subvention Program

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger:

Since 1971, California’s Williamson Act has successfully encouraged the maintenance and preservation of agricultural and grazing lands at a nominal fee, a relatively inexpensive means to ensure productive quietude and open space for future generations. At a cost to the State of only $36/acre for grazing land since inception, no other Federal or State agency can claim to be as effective or efficient in the conservation of lands in their charge.

Furthermore, elimination of the subvention program will not only accelerate changes to the landscape of California, it will discourage the remaining agricultural producers who are generating income for the State and helping to feed the world. As a fifth generation cattleman in Tulare County, I consider the Williamson Act the single most important piece of legislation to date to preserve California landscapes for the long term. Any erosion of this Act will surely take agricultural lands out of the hands of the very people who have cared for them best.

It takes no genius to develop ground and increase the tax base, but it’s a lifetime challenge to keep ground productive into the future with the renewable resources of sunshine and rain. I urge you to honor the commitment and foresight of the Williamson Act that has kept California unique.

                                              Very truly yours,

                                             John C. Dofflemyer

Continue reading "Williamson Act " »

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Springing an hour forward towards the end of April has always taken time to get used to after a week or two of changing clocks, being late and complaining. Like most farm kids, I was raised to believe that Daylight Savings Time was instituted to allow politicians an extra hour after quittin’ time to play golf. Older now, I can see the fallacy of that argument because politicians don’t punch a clock at either end of their workday.

So why then are we moving the time change up to the middle of March and extending it to the first of November to leave us only 4 ½ months each year on Standard Time? Are we moving closer towards a year-round standard of Daylight Savings Time? I hope so – let’s quit this nonsense of changing all the clocks!

The current record-breaking heat wave in California has made the time change even more difficult to accept with 84 degrees at 5:00 p.m. yesterday. After acclimation to summer temperatures, we embrace the mid-80s, but with snow and frost on the ground less than 2 weeks ago, it feels the same as 110 degrees in July. With our apparent short spring here, there’s also an unparalleled sense of urgency and impatience as if we’re even farther behind on the ranch. It’s enough to make you consider all the ramifications of Global Warming.

Likewise, the argument that Daylight Savings Time reduces energy consumption doesn’t fly with me. Changing the time doesn’t change the hours of darkness or the time required for electric lights. However, pundits of the financial world welcome the change, having already calculated the increase in projected revenue from the recreational sector. That, of course, spells more energy consumption to me. You can’t have it both ways, unless the American people want to believe one thing and practice another. Imagine that!

It’s like leaving the lights on in the hen house: business as usual!

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Revisiting the proposed Animal ID, Robbin suggests that the program might be more palatable for producers that if in return for all the tagging and record keeping, we would be informed as to how our beef carcasses graded. Such information would be invaluable when it comes to the retention of cows and the selection of bulls – information beneficial, hopefully, to the entire industry – perhaps even an edge as we compete in a world beef market.

Failure of proponents to mention or offer this obvious and potential benefit for producers, feeders, packers, consumers and exporters implies that something else is driving this train, that political tunnel vision has, once again, missed the hands-on application of this program.

I believe the driving wheel is FEAR. Congress has been thoroughly briefed on our vulnerability to terrorist attacks, and the ID program would theoretically make isolating and quarantining segments of the industry quicker and easier. I don’t know how to quantify and graph FEAR, but in the bigger picture, I’m confident that we’re at an all-time high in this country, surpassing Nikita Khrushchev’s table-pounding episode in the 60s when backyard bomb shelters were in vogue.

Herders and horsemen know how fear works, how it centers and builds and how difficult it is to overcome. Used only as a last resort, most work towards a foundation of trust instead. Employing the metaphor of a herd of citizens, little wonder that our political cowboys have the populace so wild-eyed today. Afraid of our food and water, one might consider that we’re being baited into a new corral.

O!
How vain and vile a passion is this fear!
What base uncomely things it makes men do.
         - Ben Johnson, 1603 (“Sejanus His Fall”)

Dry Creek Sunset
December 28, 2006

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

                Let the boys want pleasure, and men
                Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
                And the servile to serve a Leader, and the dupes to be duped.
                Yours is not theirs.
                           - Robinson Jeffers, (“Be Angry at the Sun”)

Let them spend their way to Washington –
to alabaster banquets of buttered lobster
garnished with garlic and parsley, let them

sip ambrosial nectar like hummingbirds
from golden thimbles with their initials
at every convocation of re-elected intellect

they might muster – let them play
like deities at the reflection pool
braiding one another’s hair between affairs

with mortals, let them trade half-truths
for half-deception, half-a-heart
for half an ego’s bounty, let them parade,

pontificate and claim the stage
of Mt. Olympus – but let them believe
that threads are invisible, that we cannot see

the web that moves the limbs and lips
of politics, that we cannot follow
and eventually connect them.

BARNYARD

                We are at war
                with Mexico – to
                please her fancy –
                        -William Carlos Williams, (“Another Old Woman”)

It’s hard on the heart
to keep the blood up –

                flexing like Banties
                in the barnyard –

yet she enlists us
to crow and wake the troops
from the roost of trees.

Battles brief,
the old bulls bluff
or claim a distant oak –
they walk to work
as the young ones run
one after another.

Is it fair to question
the gray hairs who
manage her affairs,
has she grown senile?
What favors left
has she to offer
but the insatiable
nightmare?

Perhaps she has hooked us
to bigger fish
than we can land.

Williams’ poem, as follows, triggered my take-off on a familiar theme, yet I tried to maintain the sense of native patriotism common to both Williams and Jeffers. - J

Continue reading "MARIONETTES, 2006" »

Posted by Robbin at 4:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

TRANSPARENCY

Only a politician could
borrow a beaver lid
for a photograph
to receive an award
in a roomful of cattlemen,
look good and grin
before he retires
to the California coast.

It’s a lifelong art
to ignore the details,
to wring your hands
with pensive deliberation:
         squeezing phrases
         to stay in office –
to keep focused and believe
someone else will
implement your indecision.
But only the best
get showers of applause
before leaving the scene
of the accident.

Continue reading "THE NATURE OF POLITICS: 4 POEMS" »

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The outbreaks have sparked demands to create a new federal agency in charge of food safety. Sens. Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, both New York Democrats, are sponsoring legislation authored by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., to create the unified Food Safety Agency.

"This recent outbreak must be a wake-up call to get our food safety house in order, because right now it's in pure disarray," Schumer said at his Manhattan office. "We need to have one agency take charge to ensure the next outbreak isn't far worse." - CNN.com

Once popular cartoon characters, Popeye and Wimpy are virtually unemployed.

Farm workers in the Salinas Valley have been laid off as farmers plow fields of spinach under. As this week’s E.coli “suspects,” hamburger and lettuce, drive “food-fear” into the political arena, one can be sure of legislation that will propose to “take charge” of agriculture. Excuse my skepticism, but the distance between Manhattan and the dirt we raise our food from seems more than geographic.

This is, of course, the crux of It – whether cattle or crops, independence or serfdom, the necessity for more control over producers’ lives is driven mostly by fear and convenience. Culturally, we resist control and live in places a long ways from Manhattan for a number of good reasons, but in reality, our space is getting smaller as we plant houses, mine and develop ground that once produced food. That foreign countries claim more shelf space at the supermarket seems consistent with the ongoing economic colonization of the planet, however contrary it may be to the welfare and good sense of US citizens. Early congressional response to these latest E.coli possibilities runs parallel with the NAIS as agriculture may become the next political football.

But promoting fear is like crying “wolf": poor platform for professional politicians.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Though heavily promoted, no one’s yet sold me on the necessity for National ID. Though my brand is only registered in California and may be duplicated in other states, it’s not as if this year’s calves shipped to an Iowa feedlot were without brand inspection papers and Health Certificate, the originals of which are on file in Sacramento. I’ve heard the argument that we need the program because most cattle east of the Mississippi aren’t branded. Frankly, that’s not my problem – and that may be a good place to test the NAIS – but at least give producers the choice to brand their cattle instead.

The recent spinach E-coli outbreak had me wondering if we needed an All-Flex ID button for each leaf, because apparently there weren’t enough plastic bags with enough information available to not kill spinach sales across the USA. I’ve lost count of the Mad Cow incidents over the past three or four years, most all traced back to dairy cows, which have had very little impact on the market for beef. Any argument that the NAIS could better maintain cattle prices by quickly quarantining the target of a terrorist attack or other contagious disease has yet to be proven.

What we do know is that this program is going to cost a lot of money – not just for the ID buttons and high-tech wands that wirelessly read them as they file through every auction ring and loading chute in America, but to administer it. We know how these government bureaucracies work, the offices and enforcement reps they’ll need, the additional paperwork and forms that we will probably have to file with the USDA. Once Washington has that information, I can guarantee that there will be more forms to fill-out, and some with penalties for forgetting or failing to do so. And once included in the USDA databank, this information would be accessible to friend and foe alike under the Freedom of Information Act.

Millions? No, billions of dollars to start and no one seems to care with trillions in Federal deficits. Is the consumer picking-up the tab? I can’t think of a single agricultural commodity where the consumer pays a surcharge for the extra costs that come with increased regulations, accountability and paperwork.

Maybe I’m wrong-headed, but what do we get in return? I plan to contact the feedlot in Remsem to see if the VAC 45 program helped keep our calves from getting sick, to learn what percentage of carcasses graded Choice or Prime, and most importantly, would they buy our calves again? I don’t need the NAIS for that.

As an incentive for voluntary compliance, McDonald’s and Wal-Mart are offering $20 for each head with an NAIS ID button in an ear. However, most of the beef that they might trace would be from cull dairy cows, a good many of which are never branded anyway. With the regime of hormones and antibiotics in a dairy cow’s short life, I don’t blame McDonald’s or Wal-Mart, but I’m not looking to pick a fight with the Dairy Industry either – it just is what it is.

Currently, the NAIS is voluntary and proposed to be mandatory by 2008-2009. According to the latest issue of the Western Livestock Journal, “U.S. Senator Jim Talent, R-MO, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, recently introduced legislation that would prohibit USDA from developing a mandatory National Animal Identification System (NAIS).”

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)