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copied from http://www.americansportingdogalliance
Pocketbook Animal Rights - The `Fart Tax' and You



by JOHN YATES
American Sporting Dog Alliance
http://www.americansportingdogalliance.org
asda@...


As if there isn't enough to worry about, the federal Environmental
Protection Agency is telling us that cow farts are hurting the
atmosphere and contributing to global warming.

You can stop laughing now.

It's true! No kidding! EPA actually is proposing to regulate farmers
and ranchers to protect us from emissions from flatulent hogs and
cows.

The deadline for comments on the proposed anti-fart regulations
passed quietly a week ago.

If the regulations are approved, farmers and ranchers with at least
25 head of livestock will be taxed at $175 per dairy cow, $87.50 per
beef cow and $20 per hog.

Preposterous, you might say, and you're right.

But we would call it something else. We would call it calculated and
deliberate.

It stems directly from the animal rights agenda, which is aimed at
eliminating animals from American life, including animals that
produce meat, milk, eggs and wool. The goal is to reinvent America as
a vegan vegetarian society.

We imagine that many of you are still laughing, and some of you might
be wondering if we're nuts.

It is preposterous! America loves a good t-bone, Big Macs, milkshakes
and eggs fried in sausage drippings. Yum.

You are correct in thinking that Americans will not allow meat, eggs
and dairy products to be removed from our lives. Surveys show that
more than 95-percent of us eat meat and love every bite we can get,
and we would never agree to give it up.

What you may not be thinking is that no one is planning to give us
that choice. In fact, the animal rights groups' strategy is to not
even bring up the subject.

The following analysis can be seen as a case study of one major way
that the animal rights agenda actually is being implemented in
America today. While this example is about the planned elimination of
meat, eggs and dairy products from our lives, slight variations in
the same strategy also are being used to eliminate companion animals,
circuses, rodeos and hunting.

The animal rights groups may be evil personified, but their leaders
aren't dumb. They know that Americans will not give up animal
products voluntarily, and they aren't going to try the direct
approach. They'd lose, and they know it.

Their tactic is to indirectly and gradually take away our ability to
choose to eat meat.

The strategy is to make animal products too expensive for people to
use and enjoy regularly, and also to make farming unprofitable and
more hassle than it's worth.

Did you notice how the price of beef skyrocketed after the "mad cow
disease" scare a couple of years ago? In about a month, most cuts of
beef went up by about two dollars a pound.

The reason is that meat producers were assessed for the cost of a
massive federal inspection and regulatory program, and for developing
a way to track each animal from the slaughterhouse back in time to
the place of its birth.


Suddenly, a halfway decent steak costs $10 a pound. If you're lucky,
you can find it on sale for $6.99 or so. Maybe.

How many people can afford that?

For most people, a juicy t-bone steak probably always has been only
an occasional treat, perhaps once or twice a month. Now, it has
become once or twice a year.

Have you noticed how small the meat section has become in most
grocery stores? Have you noticed how small the portions have become?

I define a good steak as one pound or larger and marbled with fat.
Most steaks in the grocery store are a little more than half that
size today. The meat looks like the cow was anorexic and it takes a
chainsaw to cut it.

Part of the reason is the artificially high price of beef, which
we'll document below. Another part of it is the health scare about
cholesterol.

While cholesterol is a valid health concern for many people, the
animal rights groups are exploiting this and other health issues to
try to make people afraid to eat much meat.

I recall a billboard along I-35 in Dallas that was a photo of former
President Ronald Reagan, linking his meat eating preferences with
Alzheimer's disease. Guess who sponsored this crude and tasteless
billboard? It wasn't the American Medical Association. People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) paid for the billboard. If
Alzheimer's doesn't get you, "mad cow" disease or cholesterol will.
That's the message.

Meat already is being heavily taxed because of the brief "mad cow"
disease scare. Now, EPA wants to tax it more because of cow fart
emissions.

What's next? A tax on meat because of its health risks similar to the
extra taxes on cigarettes?

Yep. Give `em time. It won't be long before some governmental agency
proposes a big tax on every pound of meat to pay for "prevention"
programs in the schools and social services agencies, mirrored after
the tobacco use prevention campaigns. You'll know the time has come
when you start to see news reports about meat eaters driving up the
cost of health insurance.

Enter the $20 a pound t-bone steak.

Exit meat from many people's budgets.

That's the plan, but it doesn't stop here. Another big step is the
National Animal Identification System (NAIS), which currently
is "voluntary" but is expected to become mandatory soon.

The NAIS plan is to license every location that produces poultry and
livestock, and to assign each farm or ranch owner a unique
identification number (that also applies to someone who owns a horse,
or a couple of 4H goats). Then, at some point, every domestic animal
and bird on American farms will be microchipped to identify its place
of birth, and it will be tracked on computer all the way from the
farm to the grocery store.

Guess how much that is going to cost? Guess who will pay for it?

Microchips can be purchased in bulk today for about $1.50 apiece.
Suddenly the $3 frying chicken sold at the grocery store for $1.39 a
pound has become a $4.50 chicken.

Add in the cost of bureaucracy and additional expenses for farmers,
shippers and slaughterhouses, and it becomes a $6.50 chicken.

A lot of Americans won't be able to afford to eat much chicken at
those prices. It looks like a good time to invest your money in bean
burrito company stock.

And that is precisely the plan!

The bureaucratic and compliance costs of NAIA will be enormous.
Imagine what it will take to constantly track a truckload of 10,000
chickens individually on computers!

What's the justification for these costs? "Bird flu," of course, even
though no form of this poultry disease that is communicable to humans
has ever been found in the Americas.

The animal rights groups know exactly what they are doing. They find
something scary about meat (Alzheimer's disease, cholesterol, "Mad
Cow" disease or "bird flu") and then work quietly behind the scenes
to exploit it. They have a lot of flunky newspaper and TV reporters
in their pockets, and a lot of bureaucrats are smelling a lot of job
security.

And soon a frying chicken will cost $6.50.for a small one.

The other side to NAIS is the burden to farmers and the rest of the
food industry. Can you imagine the cost to a farmer of microchipping
100,000 chickens a month! How many employees will the farmer have to
hire? How many fines will farmers face for microchips that come out?
How many people will the trucking companies and slaughterhouses have
to employ to scan a few million chickens a day for microchips?

Maybe it will be a $7.50 chicken, if we're lucky.

"What's for supper, Honey?"

"Two chicken McNuggets and beans, Sweetheart."

That's the plan.

NAIS will be applied first to cattle, hogs and poultry, but also to
horses. A person who owns a couple of pleasure horses would have to
report to the federal computer anytime they take a ride off of their
property. Lord help them if they want to travel with their horses!

Many people believe dogs and cats will be next for NAIS.

Another prong in the animal rights plan is to regulate or eliminate
what they allege are cruel "factory farming" practices, such as
raising hens for egg production in battery cages. Farmers defend
these practices, saying that all of the known needs of chickens are
being met, and also that these methods keep the cost of food
reasonable so that poor and working class people can afford to have
better diets.

But the farmers lost a big battle last month with the overwhelming
voter approval of Proposition 2 in California. Following this
referendum, almost every egg farm in California will be put out of
business.

Only free range chickens, or chickens kept in traditional henhouses,
will be permissible. Expect the cost of a dozen eggs to jump to $3 or
so. Make it $4 when you factor in NAIS, and $5 when you add the cost
of "bird flu" insurance.

Don't worry. You'll enjoy bean McMuffins.

Look for a law resembling Proposition 2 to become nationwide within
the next few years.

Of course, you can't have a law without also having cops to enforce
it. Every one of these programs will open up every farm in America to
unannounced inspections, visits by animal cruelty officers and even
vigilante spies from animal rights groups.

How much money will farmers have to spend on attorney fees, paying
fines for technical violations (the chicken that lost its microchip),
or rebuilding facilities, upgrading computer systems and hiring new
employees?

How many farmers will say "enough is enough" and throw in the towel?

How many people will be able to afford to buy milk at $8 a gallon,
eggs at $5 a dozen, steaks at $20 a pounds, hamburger at $10 or
sausage at $12?

We saw the same thing happen in a different form this year, when HSUS
exposed cruelty at a California slaughterhouse. A video showed a
downer cow being pushed with a loader. It was a cruel act by a
callous employee.

But the firestorm of protest over that incident brought a host of new
federal regulations and increased inspections of slaughterhouses,
even though the incident was a clear violation of existing laws and
regulations by a single employee. The problem could have been solved
easily and simply, but it wasn't.

Instead, your steak went up another 50-cents a pound.

"Dollars-and-cents" is the most effective strategy the animal rights
groups have discovered. Who cares if you want to eat meat if you
can't afford to buy it!

Your choices become a moot point.

No matter where you look, activists and social reformers want to use
money to limit your choices.

Environmentalists want gasoline to cost $20 a gallon, so you'll use
less of it.

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) wants a hamburger to
cost $15 at McDonalds, so that you'll eat your veggie burgers and
shut up.

They want gasoline to be expensive, because this will drive up the
price of corn used for animal feed and fuel to transport all of
America's foodstuffs, and thus the price of meat for consumers. If
gasoline rises to $10 a gallon, you won't be eating much meat.

HSUS wants to make you pay a few thousand dollars for liability
insurance to own a gun, so that you won't be able to afford to go
hunting. Thus, hunting can be eliminated without any politician ever
having to cast a vote to do it.

And they also want the price of a puppy to be about $5,000, so that
only rich people will be able to afford one and the vast majority of
Americans will forget what it is like to love and be loved by a dog.

Wars have been won without ever firing a shot.

And the animal rights war will be won in your pocketbook, if you
don't wise up.

The American Sporting Dog Alliance represents owners, breeders and
professionals who work with breeds of dogs that are used for hunting.
We welcome people who work with other breeds, too, as legislative
issues affect all of us. We are a grassroots movement working to
protect the rights of dog owners, and to assure that the traditional
relationships between dogs and humans maintains its rightful place in
American society and life.

The American Sporting Dog Alliance also needs your help so that we
can continue to work to protect the rights of dog owners. Your
membership, participation and support are truly essential to the
success of our mission. We are funded solely by the donations of our
members, and maintain strict independence.

Please visit us on the web at
http://www.americansportingdogalliance.org. Our email is ASDA@...

8:51 AM Dec 12th

Kent Wagoner
The comment period is indeed over. However, EPA does still accept what they call "late comments" which become part of the docket when they actually go to write the final regulation. You can email them to a-and-r-Docket@epa.gov and be sure to reference Docket ID Number: EPA-HQ-OAR-2008-0318. Remember, folks, if you like to eat meat or drink milk, this WILL have an effect on you, so let's make sure EPA knows where we stand!
12:35 PM Dec 11th

Anonymous
It looks like the comment period ended on Nov 28. Why is agday just now doing a story on this?
9:37 AM Dec 11th