07/13/06 Moving Cattle to Market

Moving Cattle to Market. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Over the past several weeks cattlemen in the Pacific Northwest have been keeping an eye on the Midwest and South as wildfires and drought conditions have prompted some ranchers to send far more cattle to the slaughterhouse. But according the Mike Miller with Colorado based CattleFax it's more of a wait and see attitude. MILLER: We've seen a little bit of early movement. Hasn't been probably a big enough factor to really impact cattle prices yet. But you get a lot of people nervous and a lot of people worried about what it might mean if we don't have some rains in certain parts of the country for maybe having cattle weaned a little bit early and moving a little bit early this fall. Federally inspected beef cow slaughter in April was up 17 percent from the same time last year, May beef cow slaughter is estimated to be up 9.4 percent. But Miller said it's best to adopt the wait and see attitude. MILLER: We're sitting here watching one of the videos today and it looks like preices are still holding up pretty well. There was some forced movement out of certain parts of Texas earlier this year but that's kind of slowed down, they got some rain in some spots and so I think that slowed that thing down. I think people are probably going to be concerned about what it might mean for this fall but nothing that we've really heard of or that has been talked about here in the last couple of weeks. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Susan Allen. I recently experienced the frustration of a delayed flight so the story about a discourteous passenger in the pages of the environmental paper, High Country News caught my attention. Seems this rude fellow would not curtail his cell phone conversation on the runway prior to take off, despite numerous requests from flight attendants and disgruntled passengers. At last resort, before taxing back to the gate, an attendant stood over the man firmly stating that there would be a count to three, one& two...and he finally complied with regulations and hung up his cell but not before insisting on five more seconds. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle the rude passenger was non other than Jerry Brown the Democratic candidate for state attorney general and Oakland's esteemed mayor. I wonder if Mr. Brown's cell phone antics will harm the democratic campaign platform of social justice? The staff at High Country news thinks his behavior might have cost him more than one vote. Source; High Country News June 27 2006. Thanks Susan. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.