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Moving on up

It is moving day for the Brownfield newsroom. As part of a total remodel of the entire Learfield Communications headquarters, our “digs” will be updated. Later today, we’ll relocate to an area on the lower level of the building fondly referred to as “The Ghost Town.” Most of the other departments, including Accounting, Engineering and Internal Services did their time in the basement while their respective areas were being remodeled.

It’s funny the things you find while packing up for a move, even though the move I’m making today is just down the hall, down the stairs and around the corner. I found a cell phone under my desk that I thought had been lost in a corn field in central Illinois last summer. I’m afraid to look in the far corner of my office closet. Derry Brownfield moved out of this office more than a decade ago, leaving in same closet a brown suit and pair of well-worn cowboy boots.

This office has been mine since October of 2001. When I first moved in, I spent hours going through files, saving what needed saving and pitching what needed pitching. As I sort through files today, I realize some of what I thought needed saving 4 1/2 years ago hasn’t been touched since. Although our company is very forward-thinking and equipped with tools that do not require us to have hard copies (loose paper) I still like the idea of having something I can take a highlighter or red pen to when it’s time to edit or take notes. Many people I work with keep track of their calendars and to-do lists on a PDA or some sort of mobile-techno-pod-link-smart-cell-tooth-device. I prefer my beat-up, zip-up day planner.

While file-sorting this morning, I came across my first “BSE file.” I started it in May of 2001 with the discovery of a BSE-positive cow in Alberta, Canada. I remember attending a National Cattle Industry meeting later that summer and talking with Eric Davis, an Idaho rancher and then-president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. He said, “The earth shifted a bit” with that discovery.

It seems like only yesterday I received the telephone call that a cow in Washington State had been declared BSE-positive. Here we are, more than 2 years later and the beef industries in the U.S. and Canada have gone through more shifts than we thought were possible. One thing that has not shifted much is Japan’s acceptance of U.S. beef.

Early this week, another Canadian cow was confirmed BSE-positive. There wasn’t much earth-shifting involved in that announcement, other than concern that the cow was born after the country instituted its feed ban. Science is prevailing in North America. Science is not prevailing, however, in Japan. You know the story by now. In December, Japan eased a two-year-old ban on U.S. beef to allow imports from cows aged 20 months or younger which did not contain body parts thought at risk of the brain-wasting disease. In January, Japan halted trade because some veal bones were found in a U.S. veal shipment.

Here’s the kicker: Japan has confirmed a total of three cases of BSE THIS YEAR. There is a case under investigation right now. All counted, since 2001, Japan has confirmed 24 cases of BSE in its beef herd. There have been three confirmed cases of the disease in the United States.

Japan is a country known for its acceptance of technology. While visiting Tokyo a few years ago, I went to a bathroom and discovered a toilet stool that looked more like the pilot’s seat on a rocket ship. There were buttons for temperature control and seat height and who knows what else. It amazes me, that in a country where so many people carry a PDA or some sort of mobile-techno-pod-link-smart-cell-tooth-device, there should be such a disregard for science.
We should be in “The Ghost Town” for about 6 weeks. When I move back upstairs to this office, I will have new furniture, there will be new carpeting and walls will be a different color. They painted the hallway basketball orange. I am not kidding. The workstations and studios will feature the finest new technological gadgets. Who knows, maybe by that time our Asian trading partners will have opened their doors to U.S. beef and I can toss that BSE file in the big green dumpster with the rest of the trash.