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More M-COOL Support

Tex

Well-known member
They are worried because they have run their business so dishonest for so long and this legislation, at least legislatively, stops that.

I am so tired of hearing that we have to have dishonest business practices to be able to compete in the world market.

At least with this bill, we will see who the real crooks are in D.C. by the amendments that are offered in the Senate.

The House still has its problems and that is the next hurdle.

Then the Prez.

This legislation will show us who the crooks are.
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Farm Bill provisions high priority for Maryland State Grange
Originally published October 29, 2007


By Ike Wilson
News-Post Staff

Maryland State Grange Youth Director Richard Stonebraker, left, presented the first-ever Youth Award to Brandon Reese, of the Linganore Grange.


The Maryland State Grange exists to deliberate upon and devise means for the welfare of the country, of mankind and the Order of Patrons of Husbandry. That’s a vague purpose to someone looking in from the outside. But to Grange members, there’s nothing unclear about what they do. Some of the Grange’s priorities were highlighted at their recent 133rd Annual Session in Frederick, including stipulations of the 2007 Farm Bill being discussed by the Senate Agriculture Committee.
Farm bill

Discussion of the five-year, $284 billion bill took up a lot of time at the three-day event, said Alan Stiles, the Grange’s agriculture and legislative committee chairman.

“Until you sit down and study it, you don’t realize how complicated the thing is,” Stiles said. “The current bill right now is not bad, it just needs to be improved.”

Stiles said the committee members have a problem with the bill’s commodities program. If the price for corn, wheat or soybeans drops too low, he said, the bill offers money to compensate farmers for losses.

“Due to the drought this year, there’s nothing to sell so the farm program doesn’t help us there,” Stiles said.

Discussion also focused on an eligibility cap for financial assistance.

Stiles said a farm that grosses $2.5 million is not eligible for financial assistance in the current bill, but he questions what happens if the farm has $2.6 million in expenses.

Stiles said farm prices have been good this year but he said operating costs for fuel, fertilizer and corn and wheat for feed, even crop insurance, have also been higher.

“One thing the public doesn’t realize is that the biggest part of the Farm Bill is for nutrition,” Stiles said.

He said about 75 percent of the bill or more is spent on school breakfasts and lunches, the WIC (Women and Children) program and food stamps.

“Yes, farmers will benefit if someone is eating, but we sure don’t get rich off it,” Stiles said.

Country of origin

Stiles said the farm bill’s Country of Origin provision is wrongly placed in the document’s “miscellaneous” section.


With all the problems we’re having with things coming in the country,” Country of Origin requirement is too important to be designated a miscellaneous item, Stiles said.

Maryland State Grange Master Roger Troxell refused to drink apple juice that was given to him in the hospital. The bottle’s label indicated the apples were grown in China, Stiles said.

“You’re not sure what pesticides are being used in other countries,” Stiles said. “We’re dependent on other countries for oil. We don’t need to be dependent on them for our food.”

Regarding taxes, Stiles said the Grange believes that government should live within its means.

“Reduce growth and spending instead of increasing taxes,” he said. “Living within our own means is what we have to do as individuals, why not the country?”

Resolutions

The Grange approved these resolutions:


Support for crop insurance; Ag land preservation; sale of raw milk with proper permits; production and sale of some hard cheeses by Maryland dairy farmers; adequate funding of extension programs and University of Maryland Agriculture programs; a comprehensive immigration policy.

Opposition to increasing taxes and use of eminent domain for economic purposes.

Opposition to distribution of contraceptives to middle school students.

Implementation of stricter rules by the Board of Education to ensure the safety of young children on school buses due to more frequent accidents and children being put off buses without supervision.

Ensuring the safety of food products by adequate funding of programs and inspections.

More public education of good health practices due to the increase of serious infections and communicable diseases.

Transportation funds to be used for road and bridge construction or repair and not for pork-barrel earmarks, and for reasonable, yet aggressive fuel economy standards within each vehicle class.
The Grange and farming tradition The Grange is the nation’s oldest national agricultural organization and Frederick County Pomona Grange is Maryland’s largest Grange organization.

It consists of community Granges from Ballenger Creek, Braddock Heights, Adamstown, Walkersville, Jefferson, Unionville, Middletown, New Market and Thurmont.

Troxell, who lives in Thurmont, said the Grange, like other groups, is competing for young people’s time and interest. It’s unfortunate, but the Grange is seen as a group for older people, he said.

“But we’re constantly working to change that,” Troxell said. “We’re a contemporary organization as well.”

John L. Thompson Sr., Master of the Frederick County Pomona Grange, said the organization speaks for agriculture and speaks out on agricultural legislative matters.

“We also work to bring the farm producer and the consumer into the most direct and friendly relationship possible,” Thompson said.

In his report to the conference, Troxell called for redoubling efforts to increase membership in state Granges.

Troxell said Dodie Mullen, the Grange’s new family activities chairwoman, is gung-ho about increasing participation.
 

Tex

Well-known member
The Bad
Establish an Office of Special Counsel for livestock competition issues.
Restrict certain business practices related to contracts between packers and producers.
Prohibit arbitration clauses in contracts between packers and producers.


And The Ugly
Ban packer ownership of hogs and marketing contracts.
NPPC supports the Farm Bill approved in July by the House. It includes increases in investments in renewable energy, nutrition and conservation programs, as well as much-needed changes to the Mandatory Country-of-Origin Labeling law. It has no competition or animal welfare provisions.



What I want to know is who wrote this article? I see it was from the Pig Site.

The bad and the ugly are provisions that protect producers. Does the pig site represent producers or is it another packer group?
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Read this story about COOL overseas ,This may happen here!
Published: (24-10-2007)

The Food Standards Agency must look at retail display, as well as pack labelling, if it is to reduce country of origin confusion. This is the verdict of the National Beef Association.

The NBA has told the FSA that new revisions to improve consumer guidance through clear food labelling should include strong advice on the display of similarly packaged products from different countries of origin.

The NBA said it was pleased that the FSA has included improvement to country of origin labelling among the proposals in its new consultation on developments needed to ensure clear food labelling for consumers – which was opened earlier this month.

But it is worried that the Agency appears not to think that questionable display techniques, as well as poor labelling, must also be covered if it is to be sure consumers are not being misled about the true origin of their food when they are making a purchase.

“It is obvious that the FSA wishes to make it more difficult for retailers, or manufacturers, to mislead consumers about country of origin because it has recommended that particulars about the place of origin must be included on the label if failure to do so might mislead the purchaser to a material degree,” explained NBA director, Kim Haywood.

“However the NBA is very well aware that fresh beef from different countries is labelled by supermarkets in a similar way, that this beef is not clearly separated by country of origin on supermarket shelves, and as a result many consumers pick up packs of beef from the wrong country by mistake.”

“This being the case the Association will argue very strongly that many disappointed consumers are routinely misled by poor country of origin display, otherwise known as co-mingling, and that the FSA will fall short of its own high standards if it continues to concentrate exclusively on labelling as a means of reducing confusion created by poor country of origin identification.

According to the NBA supermarkets routinely offer beef packages, especially steak and value meal offers, that have to be examined extremely carefully before country of origin is identified on the label.

And many consumers, who have a clear preference for home produced, British, are also deceived into picking up imported beef, because British beef is not physically separated from packs of Irish or South American beef which look almost exactly the same.

“Legislation under Article 16 of EU regulation 178/2002 clearly indicates that there must be no country of origin confusion in retail labelling or display,” said Haywood.

“Unfortunately supermarkets, for their own reasons, continue to ignore Trading Standards advice that beef from different countries of origin should be physically separated by at least a plastic strip and identification of country of origin should be reinforced by prominent shelf edge signage.

“The NBA would like the FSA to reinforce EU legislation by advising that beef from different countries of origin should be in differently coloured packs with colour coded labels and that beef from different countries of origin must be physically separated too.”

She added: “There is clear popular backing for the latter. Late last year over 100 MPs signed an Early Day Motion calling for the physical separation of retail beef from different countries and consumers regularly complain to us that they want to buy home produced beef but when they got home found they had picked up imported beef instead.”

“If an organisation of the FSA’s standing was able to take a stronger position on country of origin which reduced confusion by covering display (co-mingling) as well as product labelling it would, without doubt, help to reduce the number of purchasers that are currently being misled to a material degree.”
 

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