Wolf Issues & HEart Healthy Beef Cuts

Wolf Issues & Heart Healthy Beef Cuts plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

There is a lot of howling going on here in the northwest about the wolf predation issues. Whenever we do a story on wolves, regardless of what position the story takes, we get a lot of comments. Several bills in Washington State are aimed at the wolf issue and State Senator John Smith discusses why he has sponsored these measures.

SMITH: With eight of the twelve confirmed packs in the state right in our district, three of them within fifteen miles of my home, I understand the threats that this poses to our economy, to our culture, and to the public safety in our area. First of all making sure that our local people who live in the environments have their constitutional right to defend themselves. And then next, considering the massive economic impact that the cattle industry has in our area - the county commissioners need to have the right to declare a state of emergency and to protect our vital interests.

The Beef Checkoff Program has announced that three additional fresh beef cuts now are certified to display the American Heart Association’s Heart-Check mark. With that, retailers have the opportunity to market a total of six different extra-lean beef items to shoppers using one of the most trusted nutrition icons on food packaging today. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans and leading health organizations, including the American Heart Association, recognize lean meat as a nutritious food and a single serving of lean meat can be  part of a healthy diet and lifestyle.

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

Windfarms have received a lot of bad press lately, with things like “wind turbine syndrome” and “vibro-acoustic disease” being bandied about. But can any illness actually be attributed to wind turbines? A study done in Australia, where such claims have been on the steady rise, has found that the majority of complaints come from people living near windfarms that have been aggressively targeted by groups that are opposed to the giant wind turbines simply because they do not like the look of them. In essence, the more these people were told that they should be having health issues from living near wind farms, the more they complained of health and noise problems. Before such attention from anti-windfarm activists the study found that health or noise complaints from people living near these same wind farms were exceedingly rare, despite the fact that the wind turbines had been operating there for several years. Researchers did point out that some people living near wind turbines will feel genuinely ill, but they are the exception, not the norm, and that few claims of adverse health effects from turbines have been reported in communities that benefit financially from local wind farms.

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