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Op-Ed by R-CALF USA President Max Thornsberry, DVM, MBA** Fire Them All August 31, 2010 Billings, Mont. – Each editor for BEEF magazine, Drovers and Beef Today wrote a disparaging and immensely disrespectful editorial about the joint U.S. Department of Justice/U.S. Department of Agriculture hearing in Fort Collins, Colo., on Friday, Aug. 27, 2010. Joe Roybal, editor for BEEF magazine, allowed Troy Marshall to write, “…The meeting in Fort Collins will inevitably be looked back on as a colossal waste of time and energy; it will do nothing to effect real opportunities like building beef demand. The meeting will be a sideshow, but the rules and their effects are anything but.” Steve Cornett for Beef Today wrote on August 23, “…They seem, to me, to be shouting into the wind…I bet there’s some of that very kind of shooting at Ft. Collins next week.” Greg Henderson for Drovers wrote on August 26, “…The parade of cowboys from both sides to Fort Collins is wasted effort and wasted resources…” These quotes are just a few words from editorials or op-eds each editor utilized to attempt to discourage attendance or to draw attention away from the joint hearing on competition in animal agriculture. And all that, before the meeting even took place! Now an editor has a right to be biased, and these three are extremely biased, supporting the status quo, wanting no change in marketplace enforcement by USDA. That is obvious. But to be disrespectful in the process is beyond the pale of orthodoxy in journalism. To remove independent cattle producers from the picture with increasing consolidation and integration is suicide for a beef publication dependent upon circulation numbers to generate advertising income. My independent colleagues and I, engaged in independent beef production, have been disrespected by these men, and many times over by these same editors, but this blatant attempt to keep producers from exercising their citizen rights in the United States is appalling, and unforgivable, professionally. Steve Cornett has told me that he simply has a difference of opinion with me and with independent beef producers who want some refereeing in the marketing game. To write that producers exercising their citizen rights are shouting into the wind is not a difference in opinion. It is disrespect bordering on contempt. No one in my circles wants a handout – just a chance to market their cattle in an open and transparent market. Is that too much to ask of these editors, an open and transparent marketplace? Apparently so! I think to be an editor of one of these magazines it should be a requirement to have to feed two pens of fat cattle a year and to independently market them. How can they speak with such contempt to those of us who make a living in the beef production sector, without any real knowledge of how the business operates within the United States today? It would be like me being the editor of Cosmopolitan. How did we come to this? How have these beef industry publications come to the point where they simply want to appeal to the big, to those that represent the powerful? Do they not know what happened to Pork Magazine? I previously was a swine producer and trained to become a swine veterinarian. I always looked forward to receiving Pork Magazine because it was full of useful information: information about markets, current technologies, disease control and updates on the most current management practices. Pork Magazine today is a joke. The last issue I received was 12 pages thick, with nothing of substance. How can you have substance when no market exists for independent pork producers? How do they get advertisers to spend money with them, if their circulation goes out to no producers? Beef Today, BEEF magazine and Drovers are sent to producers free of cost, and the publishing companies use the circulation numbers to attract advertisers. If the very producers these magazines depend on for those circulation numbers are such fools, such baboons, as to really think they have the right to voice their opinion at a government hearing, why would the editors of those publications use them to sell advertising? Why do they disrespect the very ones they depend on to obtain income from advertisers? Disrespect is embedded in the writing of each of these men, and I for one think it is appalling. Put people in the editorial positions of these publications who respect agriculture and respect the hard-working men and women still on the farms and ranches of this free country. At the hearing on Friday, Aug.27, 2010, in Fort Collins, Colo., the concept of all men being created equal was exhibited to its fullest measure. Whether you have 30 cows or 30 million, you had the right and privilege to step up to the microphone and tell your government officials what you think should be done in the beef-marketing arena. Whether you are a multimillionaire or backyard farmer, you had 2 minutes to express your opinion. That is equality. Some did not like being equal, and by token of their numbers, felt the right to speak for longer than their allotted time, but citizen farmers and ranchers enforced the rules. That is all these many hard-working people, the foundation of Rural America, desire: Enforce the rules. I was amazed at the attendance, some estimating that more than 2,000 ranchers and farmers made their opinions known. No other hearing has had this kind of phenomenal attendance, and it says something about Rural America and the concern the Agriculture Department has about this country being capable of feeding itself in future years. For the editors of these magazines to disrespect these fine men and women for attending the hearing is beyond my ability to comprehend. Disrespect should not be rewarded. Fire them all. ** Contact R-CALF USA Communications Coordinator Shae Dodson-Chambers to request photo and/or bio information on R-CALF USA President/Region VI Director Max Thornsberry, DVM, MBA. # # # R-CALF USA (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America) is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the continued profitability and viability of the U.S. cattle industry. R-CALF USA represents thousands of U.S. cattle producers on trade and marketing issues. Members are located across 47 states and are primarily cow/calf operators, cattle backgrounders, and/or feedlot owners. R-CALF USA directors and committee chairs are extremely active unpaid volunteers. R-CALF USA has dozens of affiliate organizations and various main-street businesses are associate members. For more information, visit www.r-calfusa.com or, call 406-252-2516. |
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