Sage Grouse Extension & OSHA Pledges Clarity

Sage Grouse Extension & OSHA Pledges Clarity plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

On Friday, Oregon Rep. Greg Walden announced he has urged the Bureau of Land Management to extend their comment period for their draft proposal for sage-grouse management.

WALDEN: We've got hundreds of people turning out night-after-night to find out what the DEIS really means to them and their life and you can't even get a copy of it. They send you to the web to download it, it's 1200 pages and takes you an hour or more if you have access to high-speed data downloads. So they need to do better than that. This is one of the most important issues facing the west.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has pledged to clarify its policies relating to regulating activities on small farms. Before Christmas - Nebraska Senator Mike Johanns led a group of Senators in writing a letter to direct OSHA to issue updated guidance correcting their misinterpretation of current law. Johanns said the agency had ignored 35-year old provisions in fining a small farm in his state for improper grain storage. The agency's recent interest in on-farm grain storage facilities - according to OSHA Deputy Assistant Secretary Jordan Barab - is motivated by safety.

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

This first month in 2014 has proven to be quite victorious for anti-animal ag groups who have pulled off some major coups, with both Smithfield Foods and Tyson Foods recently informing their farm suppliers that they will be taking new steps in their efforts to incorporate animal well-being programs; efforts such as third party farm audits and video monitoring. These two food giants both claim that they are not giving in to pressure tactics from the likes of HSUS or PETA but are merely responding to customer requests. Interestingly, their primary customer base is not you the consumer, but rather large food retailers that include major grocery and fast food chains - food retailers that have been crumbling to HSUS pressure tactics like so much old cheese. The bottom line - animal rights activists' main objective is not to restructure how farm animals are raised and make livestock farming better, it's to do away with animal agriculture all together. And in the mean time their antics will put livestock producers out of business and push grocery costs through the roof.

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