Brownfield's Ken Anderson is in Washington, D.C. this week participating in the annual National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) Washington Watch program. He's been very busy:
There’s certainly no shortage of issues to discuss here in Washington. Of course, the H1N1 flu virus has become the number one topic, but several others are close behind, including animal rights, climate, ethanol and animal ID, just to name a few.
On Monday night, we heard from Wayne Pacelle, head of the HSUS. He was just as advertised—articulate, smooth and a bit evasive on HSUS’s real objectives. Pacelle bemoaned what he considers unfair ag media coverage of HSUS. He says his group wants to work with agriculture to find solutions to animal welfare and animal abuse issues, and he thinks it’s a mistake for the livestock industry to “draw a line in the sand” on negotiations with HSUS. It’s obvious that Pacelle and HSUS are feeling their oats after their ballot initiative victories in California and Arizona, and Pacelle make it clear that they plan to go state-by-state with their reforms.
We spent Wednesday morning at the USDA. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack spent 30 minutes with us, followed by a parade of other top USDA officials. Vilsack addressed the flu virus issue, but we were told that other officials would not be commenting on the topic. It was clear that Washington officials are carefully controlling what is being said about it. Vilsack covered many other issues with us, which we look forward to sharing with our listeners and web visitors over the next few days.
Tomorrow we head to Capitol Hill, where we will hear from several key Senator and Representatives, including the heads of the Senate (Harkin) and House (Peterson) Agriculture Committees.