Desert Farming
It’s called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. It’s spearheaded by the Pentagon and involves at least 10 other federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Its mission: Restore Iraq.
Teams of agricultural experts will be looking first-hand at the state of farms there, the irrigation systems, animal and plant health, and so forth. They’ll see where the greatest needs are and then go from there.
USDA’s Deputy Secretary Jim Moseley said that Iraqis will need to diversify their agriculture, pointing out that deposed leader Saddam Hussein had, several years ago, ordered farmers to grow wheat to the near exclusion of other products.
With irrigation, Moseley noted, Iraq’s agriculture “could be quite productive.”
Beware of the Lampreys
How to pay for the war in Iraq as well as any rebuilding efforts there brought out a Senatorial penchant for attaching “riders” – often totally unrelated – to the emergency spending legislation.
In the Senate version of the nearly $80 billion bill was language that said none of the funds could be paid to an air carrier “not effectively controlled by the U.S.” Critics saw this as an attempt to shelter FedEx and United Parcel Service from foreign competition.
Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) got in a provision to ensure that southern catfish farmers share in the $250 million in “disaster relief” for livestock producers hit by higher feed costs spurred by last year’s drought.
Even sea lampreys made it into the Senate version. A $500,000 chunk would go to help rid Lake Champlain of the non-native parasitic predators that have thrived to the detriment of other fish, such as lake trout.
Quipped Senator John McCain (R-AZ), “The sea lamprey does not, in my opinion, pose a clear and present danger to our national security.” McCain’s amendment in the Senate to strip the bill of some $250 million worth of such riders was soundly defeated.
Speaking of National Security
Operation Liberty Shield – The Department of Homeland Security is in charge of this plan to bolster America’s protection. USDA’s role, according to Secretary Ann Veneman, is to alert people throughout all the agricultural community “to take extra precautions.” In addition, USDA officials will be “encouraging state and private authorities to monitor feedlots, stockyards, and import and storage areas.”
The Bioterrorism Act – This law, which knights the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as the lead agency, aims to keep tack of virtually all food that is produced or imported into this country.
One of the proposed rules would require that all companies that manufacture, process, pack or hold food, animal feed products, beverages, or even dietary supplements, register with FDA. The idea, said FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan, is so that the government “can contact them if there is a terrorist threat against their product.”
Turkey Alert
It’s a bird…It’s a plane…It’s a…turkey?!
On one of those “high risk of terrorist attack” days, something crossed the monitoring screen at the Seabrook nuclear station in New Hampshire. At the same time, a guard patrolling the premises saw “a large bird with approximately a four-foot wing span” – probably a turkey – fly across the road in front of him.
The plant was “locked down” and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was called. The conclusion: A false alarm, but the “intrusion detection system” worked.
Stop the Food Fear
Ag interests here at home are clamoring for the Bush administration to haul the European Community before the World Trade Organization for its ban on any U.S. genetically modified food products. Even Ag Secretary Ann Veneman has called the European Union’s (EU) stand on biotechnology “plain wrong.”
Not only is such a stance hurting U.S. farmers, she maintains, but it is “spreading unnecessary fear” in the world. Just look at the South African countries, she says, which have rejected U.S. food aid because of such fear.
Note: Sentiments against some members of the EU were running high here in the United States after those countries refused to join the United States against Iraq. The New York Post even ran a series of articles asking readers to boycott anything made by “the beret-wearing escargot eaters” – i.e., the French.
There were also calls to boycott German cars. But, as one observer wryly pointed out, shunning a Mercedes could also hurt the Alabama worker who helped make it!
Working Out the Cloning Kinks
Mix a biotech company with the Zoological Society of San Diego and a cattle reproduction company in Iowa and what do you get? A couple of bantengs – rare Asian cattle that can grow to 1,800 pounds and have huge horns.
The bantengs were the result of taking single skin cells from tissue of a captive banteng that died in 1980 and injecting them into regular cow eggs. Forty-five embryos resulted and were implanted into 30 Iowa cows. Only two cows became pregnant.
One of the bantengs, however, was born twice the size of a normal banteng calf. It weighed almost 80 pounds instead of 40. The calf failed to thrive and was put down.
Cloning animals, as scientists have discovered, can have unintended effects on the offspring, showing there are still kinks to be worked out.
Briefly
• USDA now has $4 million more to grant states to fight chronic wasting disease (CWD). States known to have had recent cases of CWD in free-ranging cervids will have top priority.
• In a move that will allow more pork imports into the United States, USDA has deemed Austria, Belgium, Greece, The Netherlands, and Portugal as hog-cholera free. Parts of Germany and Italy have been so designated.
• Fido and Fluffy can make you sick so the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention has created a Web site to inform pet owners of the various health-related risks of owning and caring for animals. General information about the various diseases companion and wild animals carry is on the site along with tips on how owners can protect themselves and their loved ones against diseases animals may carry. The Healthy Pets, Healthy People Web site is at www.cdc.gov/healthypets.
• Jackrabbits and airports can be a hazardous mix.
The folks at Miami International Airport can tell you a lot about their abundance of blacktail jackrabbits – which are big even for jackrabbits and are found nowhere else in Florida – as well as the attendant vultures. They can also tell you about vultures colliding with planes and rabbits that are scared of nothing – not 747s, not sirens wailing to drive them away, not fireworks, not propane cannons.
They’re ready to go rabbit hunting – shoot the critters – but People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is making a fuss that the animals should be humanely trapped and resettled.
June 2003 Render