Banning Names & Proposed BSE Changes

Banning Names & Proposed BSE Changes plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

If Oregon has their way public high school names like the Indians and the Braves will have to be changed. The State Board of Education is planning to hear testimony on Native American mascots and nicknames in Oregon's public high schools and could eventually vote to ban those names. 15 public high schools in Oregon have them. The board will continue to take public testimony. Supporters say the names can pay tribute to Native Americans, and it would be expensive to change them.

The USDA wants to change its BSE related rules on beef and cattle imports to put them more in line with international standards. Dr. John Clifford, USDA Chief Veterinarian explains.

CLIFFORD: We are proposing to make our beef and beed import decisions based on an exporting countries risk level for the disease including any mitigations or steps they have taken to reduce that risk. Our requirements for imported products will then be directly linked to the risk level of the exporting country, placing the tightest restrictions on countries with the highest risk. It is also important to emphasis the control of imports is only one of several interlocking safeguards against BSE.

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

For the most part, the majority of the population doesn’t buy in to all the “end of the world - Mayan calendar” doomsday talk. We do however seem to enjoy watching worst case scenario movies, or reading the latest book where the author claims to be able to pin point the exact time and place of the world’s demise. There’s a new book coming out next month however that doesn’t quite fit the typical doomsday mold. A WSU professor and his British astronomer cohort have collaborated in writing “Megacatastrophes!: Nine Strange Ways the World Could End”. In their book the authors visit various scientifically valid earth destroying scenarios, using their own “catastrophometer” to rate each of their nine possible calamities according to likelihood and severity. They’re quick to point out that, while we don’t need to get our houses in order right this minute, it is a possibility that in our children’s children’s children’s lifetimes the possibility of a manmade or natural apocalyptic threat is very real, and suggest that “as our science and technology expand some of the potentially stickiest threats come not from the vast beyond but from within”. So, new, but not so new.

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