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10/24/03
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1. Action Needed to Support the CSP!
2. Act Now:
Get COOL Today
3. Jaguar Photographed In Arizona
4.
Court Rules Checkoff is Unconstitutional
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1. ACTION NEEDED TO SUPPORT THE CSP!
A letter is
now circulating in the House of Representatives to support full
funding for the Conservation Security Program (CSP) in the FY 04
Agriculture Appropriations Bill. Even though this
innovative program was passed by Congress in the 2002 Farm Bill,
and the Senate Ag Appropriations Committee has fully funded the
CSP, the House version of the Bill eliminates all CSP funding.
The CSP is a win-win program that rewards good stewards of the
land for improving their management of wildlife habitat, water,
and soil resources on working lands.
Farmers across the
nation are eagerly anticipating the Program. You can help
ensure that Congress provides full funding for the CSP by
calling your state representatives and asking them to sign on to
a letter in support the program!
Please call your
representative today and ask them to sign on immediately to the
King-Holden letter in support of the Conservation Security
Program. Tell them they can do so by contacting Amy Lloyd
(King) at (202) 225-4426 or Nate Muniz (Holden) at (202)
225-5546. The deadline for your House Member to be added
to the King-Holden letter is Tuesday, October 28, 2003. Find your Representatives.
2. ACT NOW TO GET COOL!
Another important agricultural
program now in danger of "death by de-funding" is the
Country of Origin Labeling (COOL). This legislation was
passed by Congress to give consumers the right to choose the
origin of their food, while giving farmers and ranchers the
opportunity to market products to those consumers choosing to
buy domestic foods. This summer, in a end run mastermined
by the trans-national agribusiness lobby, the House Agriculture
Committee inserted a provision into the appropriations bill
de-funding the part of COOL that would label meat.
Senators Mike Enki R - Wyoming), Tom Daschle and Tim Johnson
(both D-South Dakota) and several cosponsors will now introduce
a nonbinding resolution that instructs the Senate's conferees to
insist on full funding for COOL in the final agriculture
appropriations bill.
For this resolution to pass the
Senate needs to hear from you! Call them today. Ask them
to vote for the Enki-Daschle-Johnson "Sense of the
Senate" Resolution urging full funding for Country of
Origin Labeling. Reach any Senator at the Congressional
Switchboard: 202-224-3121. Locate your Senators.
3. JAGUAR PHOTOGRAPHED IN ARIZONA
In Arizona a rare and
elusive jaguar has been captured on film at a remote area south
of Tucson. The photograph, released yesterday, was snapped
in August by a surveillance camera hidden in an area suspected
to be frequented by the endangered cat. A big cat
specialist believes it is the same jaguar photographed by a
surveillance camera in December 2001.
Jaguars once roamed
freely throughout parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, and
have been driven from the landscape in the last hundred years by
hunting, human encroachment and habitat loss. In the state
of Arizona jaguar conservation is headed up by a collaborative
and diverse group of conservationists, agencies and ranchers.
In 1996 long- time cattle rancher Warner Glenn photographed a
jaguar while out hunting. Since then, Glenn and a group of
ranchers comprising the Malpai Borderlands Association have
established a compensation fund that pays ranchers fair market
value for any cattle lost to jaguar predation. Get more information on the recent
sighting.
4. COURT RULES CHECKOFF UNCONSTITUTIONAL
In a huge victory
for family farmers, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in
Cincinatti has affirmed a federal judge's ruling that the
mandatory pork checkoff program is unconstitutional and should
end. In so ruling the court rejected USDA's spurious argument
that the pork checkoff is a government program.
The court
found that the pork checkoff "compels [farmers] to express
a message with which they do not agree," and struck down
the entire Pork Act. The check off money has in the past gone to
the National Pork Producers Council whose policies at the state
and federal level have consistantly supported large and
environmentally destructive factory animal farms. This ruling
supports the contention of the Campaign for Family Farms (CFF),
which since 1998 has argued that the pork checkoff forces
independent farmers to support a system that hurts them.
"This is a huge victory for independent family
farmers," said Rhonda Perry, a member of the Missouri Rural
Crisis Center and CFF spokesperson. Read the
decision.
Cultivating a vision where
rural and urban communities join together
to ensure abundant family farms, healthy critters, clean water and
a wild Earth.
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Rural Updates!
Scotty Johnson and Aimee Delach
National Rural Community Outreach Campaign
sjohnson@defenders.org
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