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Enough is enough

Spring certainly wants to make sure we know she’s arrived this year. Striking a severe blow as Winter made a relatively peaceful exit; Spring blew in from all directions. Parts of the middle Mississippi to northern Ohio Valleys are cleaning up from last Sunday’s severe weather outbreak, which spawned more than five dozen tornadoes and over 700 additional severe weather reports. That clean up comes on the heels of another severe weather outbreak just a couple weeks earlier.

Spring is not the only one trying to get more than her fair share of attention lately.

Japan has thrown up yet another flaming hoop for us to jump through before it will open its border to U.S. beef.

It looks like U.S. beef producers will face yet another round of audits by the U.S. government before trade can resume with Japan. And of course, Japanese government officials will need to further examine the situation. USDA is working up an official checklist of new beef production safety steps for beef packing plants. Once that checklist is in place, a Japanese delegation will come to the U.S. to inspect the facilities themselves.

How long will that take? Your guess is as good as mine.

Meanwhile, as I read through the most recent American Farm Bureau Federation Marketbasket Survey, I see there was a three percent increase in the retail price for food during the first quarter of 2006 compared to the same time period one year ago. The survey showed the total cost for 16 basic grocery items was $40.73, up three percent ($1.20) from one year ago. Two of those items were beef: ground chuck, up 30 cents to $2.84 per pound and Sirloin tip roast, up 20 cents to $3.85 per pound.

I would personally like to see less effort focused on flaming hoop jumping and see more effort going to educate those who might fall under the spell of the likes of Yale psychologist Kelly Brownell. He demonizes restaurants and food producers, hoping that they will one day face “the same social climate that has enveloped the tobacco companies.”

Brownwell has been trying for ten years to convince lawmakers that government should regulate all food advertisements seen by children, ban high-calorie and high-fat foods (and all soda pop) from schools, and to pay for it all. He has admitted, however, that the real motive behind such taxes is to increase the cost of high-calorie foods to the point where they will be priced out of the public’s reach.

The frightening truth is that people like Brownwell (let’s just call him the anti-Brownfield) are being heard in Statehouses and on Capitol Hill. According to a recent Washington Post article, legislatures in at least 25 states are currently debating more than 140 bills aimed at curbing obesity. CNN on-line reports in Washington, DC, the word “obesity” appears in 56 bills introduced into the current session of Congress.

New state laws currently under consideration would restrict the sale of soda and candy in public schools, require fast-food chains to post fat and sugar content directly on all menu boards, and even attempt to tax the fat away. Some insurance industry officials have suggested charging obese persons higher premiums

When our own lawmakers are spending so much time (which equates to taxpayer money) debating frivolous bills, how in the world do we expect the rest of the world to trust in the healthiness of the food our farmers and ranchers produce?

In the end, however, the law of supply and demand rules the day. American consumers are willing to pay more for beef than they did a year ago. When are we going to say “enough is enough” and stop jumping through flaming hoops and considering ridiculous legislation?