Editor:
I want to urge everyone to vote yes for Issue 2. It’s a shame that laws need to be created to protect us from outside minority interests who want to do away with animal agriculture.
So why not have someone who knows about agriculture help review the current standards and update them with any needed changes?
I have heard from many people about their concerns on how the board will work. From the legislators I have talked with, they say the board will be structured much like the other boards that are already formed under the state constitution.
Each board member would have a three-year term. The beginning terms would be staggered. This would not be a salary position, but a voluntary one reimbursed for expenses.
This way, when a new governor is elected there will not be a total change in the board right away. The expert people that are chosen for the board will most likely be recommended by industry leaders such as the pork, dairy and poultry producers.
Corn and soybean growers are among some of the others that may also have input. They will have to be approved by the legislators.
This is not a certainty, the ballot issue allows the General Assembly to enact laws that it deems necessary to carry out the purpose of Issue 2.
Other states are looking at what we do here in Ohio with Issue 2. We will be the first state to stand up against the minority interests. When Issue 2 passes, they will try to model their state programs after ours.
Let’s set the standard for the nation by voting yes on Issue 2.
Doug Martig
Berlin Center
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It’s flu season, and as The New York Times reports today, President Obama has declared the H1N1 flu outbreak a national emergency while supplies of H1N1 flu vaccines are lagging. People have even been camping out in front of doctors’ offices to get the in-demand injections. So what would happen if this shortage faced additional pressures — from animal rights groups? The possibility isn’t as far-fetched as you might think.
Scientists produce vaccines for the flu by using chicken eggs. It takes 3 eggs to make a single dose of flu vaccine. So with over 307 million people in the US, somewhere in the neighborhood of 920 million eggs would be required to make a vaccine for every American man, woman, and child. Why is this important? Because as we’re telling readers of the Cleveland Plain Dealer today, animal rights activists like those who run the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) are pushing efforts like across the U.S. (like California’s Proposition 2 last year) that threaten domestic egg production and our ability to respond to vaccine demand:
Complying with Proposition 2 is already proving prohibitively costly for Californian egg producers. And businesses are learning that this alleged “progress” for animal welfare has opened a Pandora’s box of activist-driven problems …
Once egg farmers tire of being hassled by chicken advocates, they can (and will) simply move abroad, mostly to Mexico, taking jobs (and eggs) with them. And as more U.S. producers relocate south of the border, our response to a future pandemic could hinge on the quality — and affordability — of a billion hastily imported huevos.
It’s clearly reckless to allow our national food policies to be written by animal activists who see chickens (and their eggs) as legal persons. Giving those same radicals the power to put public health at risk makes even less sense.
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm/h/4020-cracking-the-shell-of-animal-rights-activism
It may take 3 eggs to make a vaccine… But it only took one factory farmed pig to make create the whole problem to begin with.
Isn’t this the same Martig family that sold their large farm a few years back? The worry for most of us is just that! It will be run just like all the other boards are run all members being from Farm Bureau and therefore having no interest in either adhering to the laws to protect the neighbors or the animals. It will be more of the same Doug and that is not good for Ohio, in my opinion. Talk about outside money isn’t it pork money coming into Ohio trying to help promote this issue?
Honesty has never beem part of the equation in any issue dealing with the livestock industry in Ohio. I know this as I am a neighbor of the industrial farm owned by Park Farms. It was deliberately moved form where the permits were given on Preston to impact my property 500 feet east of it. Not a good place to live or die, as my husband did a few years back.
I attended all the meetings in Columbus and even in Indiana showed the pictures of what we were living with to everyone I could including Dave White, did they care, not a bit. The chickens were more important than people and that is why I became so involved in this issue.
Homeowners have rights too and that is what I am working to change. Create a two tier system Farm Bureau, those needing permits called commercial, having no zoning abatements, taxed as the businesses they are with the regulations enforced. One would have to ask why Farm Bureau continues to reject what most other states have already done. Read Neil Hamilton’s book on emvironmental laws adopted by most states. You may just learn something Jarrod!