So. they could lessen the time in feed lots, but it would cost them some profit, cut out some middlemen. People would have to get used to a more flavorful but less fatty cuts of meat. Grass fed cows have a higher percentage of a good fat, in addition to lack of drugs, so it is better in a nutritious sense. I never eat feed lot or factory meat now, it does not taste good to me.

i have a pdf of the ’scoping meeting’ materials for the proposed NBAF facility, lists the diseases they want to study at the new facilities–some are bsl-4 level, kirk….forget exposing cows, this stuff shouldn’t be anywhere near populated areas.

like i said, the exposing cows thing is a smokescreen. watch the birdie over here.

email me at the p— at frognet address if you want it, didn’t want to just send it, i know, like me, you’re on dial-up

the pdf has ALL of the nuts and bolts of the proposed facility. and lays out the process involved for approval.

can’t figure out where i got it, it’s an official DHS document, but can’t find the html link to post it. don’t know how to figure that out if it can be done. tried to google to find a link, but no luck.

you really need to read it.

After a couple years, he had to give it up because rhinitis became so devastating, his hogs couldn’t reach market weight.

So he did give it up, and acknowledged, old-time Republican that he was, that no farmer should raise that many head of ANYTHING on a small piece of ground.

That was back in the days when every farmer had a few head of cattle, hogs, a flock of chickens and acres of row crops and some silage, usually corn, soybeans, milo, alfalfa and a few other crops. And if one crop or livestock failed, the others made up for it.

But then, greedy corporations started pumping those hogs full of antibiotics, particularly penicillin, so they could pack the animals into tiny pens, and feed them en masse with one crop, corn.

At the same time the beef industry went corporate, too, and finished most of the cattle on feed lots, often feeding their own manure back to them along with CORN, and that is where the e-coli problems really started.

So while the hogs, so similar to us in their metabolism that we use some of their parts as organ transplants, were culturing penicillin resistant starins of influenza and other diseases that can readily adapt to kill us, the cattle were building up e-coli in the feedlots.

No one sounded a warning, then, except for a very few, and they were considered antagonists to the new, corporate way of farming, and were called pariahs even in their own academic circles.

Now, with so much of this snowballing into a morass of poison, disease and profits, we look back and wonder at the lack of oversight that led to our current contemptible situation.

Factory farms have taken over some of the best soil in the world, and filled the streams, rivers and wells of Iowa with biohazards galore. But ths profiteers are rarely near those places, they live in cities far from the smell.

SO now I live in Kansas, in one of the most popular tourist towns in the state. Yet you can’t drive in any direction without having to hold your nose, because we are surrounded by a whole new generation of feedlots, thousands of acres covered by hundreds of thousands of cattle, all packed together and growing fat and rancid while wading in their own toxic wastes.

Local county and city ballot measures that try to address these factory farms (and there have been many) are summarily dismissed by state lawmakers, in exchage for campaign contributions and less-savory contributions of many varieties.

It is the essence of “What’s the Matter with Kansas”, that we continue to be so discouraged by our inability to control our own destiny, that so few voters show up to the polls in the past, they have for so long felt that they are not included in this process. But is is also “what’s the matter with Iowa” and Illinois, and Missouri and Arkansas and every other state where the greedy legislatures depend on apathetic citizens not voting to remain in control of the state laws, so they can enable their factory-farm benefactors to remain in business.

Like everything else that we have allowed the greedy to manage and mangle, from our war machine to our manufacturing base, this all comes down to bottom line politics, and a Republican-controlled state legislature that ignores the needs and the well-being and the will of the people, in exchange for their profane bribes and campaign contributions.

I hope the new awakening in public involvement that we have seen across the land bleeds over to these states, and We, the People, get back our state governments, adn begin to reverse this poison legacy. For the good of our children, and their children, and future generations to come.

BobbyG – Moyers did a great job of covering such a complex mess – was really wacked out about how the Dems in the House wanna keep on keepin’ on with the current subsidy structure – and don’t even get me started with the Senate !

here is Dr Beckmann’s website -Bread for the World – it has a page of simple actions we can all do wrt Farm Bill

ends up my link at 69 is the proposed site in georgia…..

decision expected in fall of 2008

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http://www.ncc-nbaf.org/NBAF_s…..script.cfm

interview with dean in north carolina about it

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san antonio
http://www.uthscsa.edu/hscnews…..newID=2441
”What’s next?
“Now there will be a yearlong environmental impact study of each of the sites,” Dr. Herman said. “The Department of Homeland Security site selection committee will take the output of those environmental impact studies, in addition to all the previous work that has been done, and make a recommendation as to which of the five sites should be selected.”
=

http://www.nbafsanantonio.org/aboutTBAC.html

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this is an interesting list
http://gulfstates-nbaf.org/consortium.html

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http://64.233.167.104/search?q…..ent=safari

”U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, said,

“I am pleased the Madison County, Mississippi – Gulf State Bio proposal has advanced to the

next phase in the competitive process to select the location of the proposed National Bio and

Agro-Defense Facility. This is significant for the 2

nd

Congressional District and the State of

Mississippi. The diverse array of community and university involvement, without question,

strengthens the Mississippi proposal.”
–

****now THIS is interesting! HOmeland Security project, mississippi is a finalist, and Mississippi’s rep is Chairman of the committee on homeland security…..

Actually there is an interisting feedback loop that (I recall) Lynn Margolis wrote about. Anthrax spores can live in dirt for a long time. The only time sheep get anthrax is when they expose a lot of dirt. So in some sense this is a defense of overgrazing because overgrazing sheep will be killed off.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.