Beef Commission Senate Bill Pt 2

I'm Bob Larson. A bill passed in the Senate that would give the Washington Beef Commission new guidelines for promoting the health of cattle and improve transparency of its financial operations came about after more than a year of study.

Senator Tom Dent says with 70 percent of Americans choosing beef as their primary protein, it was time to change the message ...

TOM DENT ... "Ya know, the other 30 percent, a certain percentage of that are vegetarian, they'll never eat meat, And then some of them, you know, will eat some, you know they prefer maybe fish or chicken and then eat a little beef. So, seeing that, I didn't think that it was necessary to continue to try and sell beef as much as sell the industry because there's a lot of push-back from the environmental community. And, I think if we sell the industry and try and put it in the positive light that it should be in, because it's a positive industry, I think it will be money well spent."

Dent says he got a lot of great feedback from stakeholders ...

TOM DENT ... "When they very first saw, when the deal came out, there was a lot of push-back, you know, the first day so I just suggested everybody take it home over the weekend and read it, and we'll talk on Monday, right. And they checked back in on Monday and, "Hey Tom this looks pretty good, we like it!" Well, we had a couple of issues going on there, but we can work around that. So, really overall it's been pretty positive, you know, the feedback. Once they took it, sat down and read it, saw what was in there, they like it."

Senate Bill 2073 passed on a 91-7 vote and now moves on to the House of Representatives.