News Update
March 3, 2010

Panel Briefs House and Senate on Antibiotic Use in Farm Animals

On Tuesday, Feb. 23, a panel of experts organized by livestock and poultry organizations briefed the House and Senate on the judicious use of antibiotics in animal agriculture. The briefings were co-hosted by a bipartisan group of members of Congress and designed to provide insight into the science and practice of antibiotic use in farm animals. Read more.

NCBA, PLC Support Bill to Restore Oversight of Federal Funds under EAJA

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and Public Lands Council (PLC) are urging members of Congress to support the Open EAJA Act of 2010 (H.R. 4717) introduced March 2 by Reps. Cynthia Lummis, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and Rob Bishop. H.R. 4717 would require oversight of federal funds awarded under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA).

“Because the government has neglected to provide oversight, EAJA has become a breeding ground for abuse by radical environmental groups,” Steve Foglesong, NCBA president, said. “The fact that millions of dollars in taxpayer funds have been awarded with virtually no accounting of who received the payments is unacceptable.”

Although EAJA was originally intended by Congress to help private citizens seek judicial redress from unreasonable government actions, it has been manipulated by environmental activist groups as a means to use taxpayer dollars to target federal-lands agencies, and ultimately the family-farmers and ranchers who use the lands. Any nonprofit, regardless of its net worth, is eligible for reimbursement. Environmental activist groups (some worth in excess of $50 million) have used EAJA to fund more than 1,500 cases in a recent six-year period.

When environmental activist groups file suit against a government agency, farmers and ranchers affected by the suit are often forced to join the government case simply to defend their land, business, or way of life.

“Farmers and ranchers are often forced to pay crippling legal fees to fight these special interest attacks. And, at the same time, their own, hard-earned tax dollars are being used to help pay the attorney fees for the very groups that are attacking them,” Skye Krebs, PLC president, said.

While the Act as originally passed required the Department of Justice (DOJ) to report to Congress where and how EAJA funds were being spent, those requirements ended with the passage of the Federal Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. H.R. 4717 would restore much-needed accountability, by requiring an accounting of all attorney fees spent under the Act; an annual report to Congress detailing the use of EAJA funds; and a Government Accountability Office audit of EAJA funding during the past 15 years.

“The Lummis bill will help close the loopholes to ensure EAJA is serving its intended purpose: leveling the playing field between private citizens and the vast resources of the federal government; not furthering the political agendas of special interest groups,” Foglesong continued.

For more information visit http://lummis.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=44&sectiontree=6,8,44&itemid=463.

— Release by NCBA.

AMI Voices Support of Administration’s Goal to Double U.S. Exports Within Five Years

The American Meat Institute (AMI), along with more than 50 other food/feed agricultural organizations is urging Congress to strongly support President Obama’s pledge to double U.S. exports within five years as a way to create millions of new jobs in the United States.

“International trade is critically important to the farmers, ranchers, food processors and exporters that our organizations represent. Exports of the goods we produce generate more than 8,000 U.S. jobs for every billion dollars we ship overseas. The economic benefits flow not only to rural communities but also to people working in transportation, processing and at our ports,” the organizations state in a letter to House and Senate leaders.

In an effort to reach this five-year objective, the organizations are urging Congress to move quickly to ensure the prompt passage of the pending free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.

“It is critically important to our industries that Congress heed the President’s call to aggressively expand market access opportunities, as our competitors are doing. The president focused on the need to create new jobs. But if our best markets are lost to our competitors, U.S. jobs will be lost not gained,” the letter states.

The organizations note that the World Trade Organization (WTO) estimates that there will be more than 600 bilateral or regional trade agreements in place by 2010. As of the end of 2008, 230 were in force, and of those, the U.S. was a party to only 17 of these agreements. The WTO also estimates that about 400 new agreements are either pending notification to the WTO, are being negotiated or are in the proposal stage. Of those, the U.S. is a party only to the three pending agreements and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

In the letter, the organizations also express deep concern with legislation recently introduced in the House and Senate (H.R. 3012 and S. 2821), which would require the Administration to demand the re-negotiation of all current or pending trade agreements to modify provisions to permit inclusion of certain requirements.

“We stand ready to assist the Administration and the Congress to meet this critically important goal by 2015,” the letter concludes.
 

To view this letter in its entirety, visit www.meatami.com/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/57591.

— Release by AMI.

NMSU Engineering Professors Patent Novel Process for Converting Waste to Useful Products

A New Mexico State University (NMSU) professor is working to revolutionize the way we dispose of our waste.

In December 2009, civil engineering professors Zohrab Samani and Adrian Hanson received a patent for a process that economically coverts municipal and organic waste into methane gas and a soil amendment.

Samani said although converting waste into fuel is nothing new, creating a functional and cost-efficient device to achieve this is new. “Our accomplishment has been the simplicity of the design. We can build something that is functional and economical,” Samani said.

The machinery acts as a dry digester. The patent, received in 2009, is for the design of a digester that would convert organic waste, such as food waste, municipal waste or household garbage, into an energy source and soil amendment.

Utilizing alternative means of waste disposal is important, and Samani provided insight into how our current methods negatively impact the environment and our quality of life.

“The problem with landfills is that landfills are a major source of contamination. They are major expenses and have to be monitored for 30 years after they are closed down because they release methane into the atmosphere, and methane is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide,” as a greenhouse gas, Samani said. Landfills also have the potential to contaminate groundwater, Samani added.

Based on the design of the technology, the researchers have developed a process to convert the waste in existing landfills. A landfill can then be recycled and used continuously.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in 2008, 250 million tons of municipal waste were generated by Americans. Less than half of that was recycled and composted. Samani and his fellow researchers view these figures as a potential source of energy that is not being effectively utilized.

Hanson, professor and current interim department head of civil engineering at NMSU, and former graduate student Maritza Macias-Corral worked alongside Samani to construct a pilot scale system, or prototype, of the digester and are listed with him on the patent.

For 12 years Hanson collaborated with Samani on the project and contributed his environmental expertise to the development of the process. “From our perspective there is potential in the Southwest to reduce the volume of solid waste,” Hanson said of the contributions the digester would make to the state.

One agricultural industry in New Mexico could provide an ample source of energy for the state. Recently, New Mexico dairy farmers have come under scrutiny over their disposal methods for manure. The industry itself is a vital source of income for the state, which ranks seventh in the nation for milk production and first in herd size.

To put this into perspective, New Mexico has more than 300,000 cows. With the average cow producing 18 gallons of manure a day, New Mexico alone accumulates roughly 5.5 million gallons of manure a day.

Samani’s dry digester has the potential to utilize the tremendous amount of waste accumulated and dispose of it in a manner that would be clean and energy efficient. These benefits include the production of pathogen-free compost, high nitrogen compost, no odor, and the capture and use of methane.

Receiving the patent will now provide Samani with the opportunity to build an intermediate system within a year that will be used primarily for developing design scale up relationships. It will act as a model for large-scale production that would have the capacity to convert tremendous amounts of waste.

Funding for the decade-long research came from numerous sources, including the U.S. Department of Energy through WERC: A Consortium for Environmental Education and Technology, part of the College of Engineering, and the U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA).

One surprising source of funding came from the Japanese government, which is searching for an alternative way to dispose of their waste, because they are running out of land for landfills.

“They are interested in finding a technology where they can convert waste into a useful product that won’t tie up the land,” Samani explained.

Metropolitan areas and the dairy industry are what Samani considers ideal customers for his technology.

“We think it could be used on a relatively small scale,” Hanson said. “However, it is at a large scale that it becomes most profitable.”

Some additional benefits come in the form of educating NMSU engineering students who Samani said will have the opportunity to train and have access to technology that no one else has.

“It provides a unique opportunity for our graduates to benefit from and understand technology, and use it in their jobs once they graduate,” Samani said.

— Release by NMSU.

— Compiled by Mathew Elliott, assistant editor, Angus Productions Inc.