Farm Bill Hope & Grocery Strike

Farm Bill Hope & Grocery Strike

Farm Bill Hope & Grocery Strike plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

We reported yesterday that there is hope that a new Farm Bill will get done in the very near future after the devastating loss of livestock in South Dakota. Members of the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee are on the farm bill conference committee. U.S. Cattlemen's Association Executive Vice President Jess Peterson doesn't think they will derail a compromise.

PETERSON: Typically your Farm Bill is worked out by principles in the Ag Committee. I would say it doesn't matter who the conferees are to some extent because if they don't get a bill that either body can support then they're not doing anything anyway. So I think there is such a reality that if they don't get something that's bi-partisan and has wide-spread support, it's dead on arrival. So I think every one of these conferees truly realizes if they don't they're going to get a reality pill pretty quick.

Unionized grocery workers just voted to authorize a strike against four major grocery store chains in the Puget Sound area. Executives at the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 21, with 30,000 members, are dissatisfied with company proposals for paying wages and providing health benefits for part-time workers. Union members say the companies want to reduce holiday pay, hold wages at current rates, and force part-time workers to get health benefits through the new government health care plan.

Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray.

It is getting pretty bad when postage stamps can be deemed a threat. Yes, I said postage stamps. An entire series of United States Postal Service stamps created in honor of First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign and aimed at getting children to be more active are being destroyed because three of the activities depicted on the stamp series have been deemed dangerous by the President's Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition. And just what were these dangerous activities? Well, the swimming stamp depicts a child doing a cannonball, one has a child skateboarding without knee pads, and one depicts a child doing a headstand without a helmet. First off, how many children actually will see these stamps. We as a nation are worried that our children are turning into immobile lumps and yet we have become so paranoid that we are basically bubble wrapping them for even the simplest of activities. I personally think the "Just Move" stamp series is cute and could, if actually seen by children, prompt them not only to participate in the represented activities, but perhaps become interested in stamp collecting as well. That's a nice safe activity, if you don't take into account the possibility of sticky fingers.

Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.

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