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November 15,
2007 November 15,
2007
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The Prairie Mail Box, by Rufus Zogbaum (1887)
Hey, Johnny,
Congratulations on your five-year birthday/anniversary! As usually happens with good things, the time has gone by all too quickly.
I can count on TNO to give a straight-up, no BS view of the current issues facing our great state. While I don't always agree with some of the editorials (especially on education - hey, I come from the other side remember?), they are always well researched and well presented.
Keep up the good work.
Buckey Gandolfo, Retired Teacher, Battle Mountain
•••
Hey John,
Another outstanding issue. Glad to see the article on COOL. Excellent!
As for the implementation of COOL, I believe it's Linda Grosskoph, now the editor of Western Ag Reporter, who asked readers to check their local markets to see if meat departments are adhering to COOL requirements. I've looked during our last two shopping trips to WinCo on north McCarran and Northtowne, and can't find any COOL labeling on their meat products. I asked one of the butchers about it, and he said he knew nothing about COOL.
In your article on NAIS you mentioned "premise identification" being voluntary. Agri News has been combined with Western Livestock Reporter, and is called the Western Ag Reporter. According to reports in Agri News a while back, states are insisting 4H and FFA kids take part in NAIS, or they can't show their sheep, goats, calves, horses, pigs, whatever... in state fairs. I don't have a link to the article, and it'd be impossible to find it in the stack of the papers I still have. But, I thought you might want to know that "voluntary" doesn't seem to be a part of some of the states' vocabulary.
Here's a poem Tami Jo Blake may have published once, I don't have my files handy at the moment to check.
Hal Swift, Sparks, Nevada
Waco Walmsley and the N.A.I.S. (National Animal Identification System)
by Hal Swift
The U. S. Congress in Washington
once again is havin' its say.
They want all our animals to be ID'd,
but it's gotta be done their way.
It'll be scientific accordin' to them,
with computers doin' the work.
But Waco Walmsley takes exception
to becomin' a cattle clerk.
It's Mad Cow Disease that's got 'em upset,
they wanta know what cow's got it.
But once it's been eaten all this thing'll tell you
is where it was that you bought it.
"I know every cow I've got," says Waco,
"and the goats and chickens, too.
I can tell you the names of ever last one,
which is somethin' them clowns can't do."
"They's just no need to tag everything,
on some mad bureaucrat's whim.
Goats just don't have Mad Cow Disease,
and neither does my horse, Jim.
"Now, the Senate has to approve this plan,
before folks use it at all.
So, to head it off at the pass, so to speak,
your senator's who you should call.
"Look in your phonebook, under 'U.S.'
Your senator's number is there.
But be polite, don't speak with spite,
'cause I know our senators care.
"Say that you understand the concern,
and when the Senate gets to it,
go ahead and identify ever'one's cows,
but find another way to do it."
•••