The Senate Ag Committee Chair released his farm bill framework, and there were several positive provisions for cattle producers. Ethan Lane, the senior vice president of government affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said the chairman avoided a lot of controversial provisions in the text.
“Well, a relatively non-controversial draft text was released. A lot of provisions in there that are beneficial to folks throughout agriculture, certainly to the cattle industry. We were glad to see inclusion of the Direct Act, a piece of legislation we’ve been working on for years now, trying to increase marketing opportunities for small, state-inspected packing facilities to be able to market their product across state lines through e-commerce. A lot of good, solid policy provisions like that in that base text.”
Lane was disappointed at what didn’t get included in the initial release.
“What this bill didn’t do was take on any of the big pivotal issues that we know are front and center right now, particularly in animal agriculture, things like ensuring the Save Our Bacon Act moves forward to fix the California Prop 12 situation. We’ve seen $30 million in animal rights advertising pretending to be farmers in ag states with pivotal elections right now, trying to bully Republican members of Congress away from saving producers from California dictating how they raise their animals. We’re going to continue to see that kind of intense, high-dollar pressure on the members of the Senate Agriculture Committee as we go through this process. You know, this is the most elevated animal rights activity we’ve seen in a very, very long time.”
He said animal agriculture seems to be coming together to push this over the finish line.
“Well, you know, I think they’ve really galvanized on this, particularly in the last few days. We saw Senator Roger Marshall from Kansas, who was a co-sponsor of the Save Our Bacon Act, pull his name from that bill because of pressure from animal rights activists, and quite frankly, that has riled up animal agriculture more than anything else could. Watching a once champion of the livestock industry turn his back on cattle producers and hog producers across the country and in Kansas in favor of animal rights activists is quite frankly really disappointing. We’re really, I think, marching as a unit right now and focused on making sure that we don’t let these animal rights activists hijack American livestock interests.”