01/31/07 Farm Bill, E. Coli & Power Outage

Unveiling the Farm Bill, Possible E. Coli Death & Strange Power Outage. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Agriculture Mike Johanns will soon begin making the rounds to promote the Bush Administration's new farm bill proposal. Johanns will announce the details of the proposal during a morning press conference Wednesday. Following the official announcement - Secretary Johanns begins touring the country to share the details with various commodity groups and farmers. An 83 year old Richland, Washington woman's death is being questioned as to whether it can be linked to the E. Coli bacteria. The woman had eaten contaminated spinach in September and was checked into a local hospital. She died this last Friday of heart failure. Even if the coroner does not list the bacteria as the cause of death, family members feel that the infection was a factor in the decline of her health. The coroners ruling is not expected for several days. Residents in Juneau, Alaska had their power knocked out by an eagle trying to get his supper home. Local authorities found the dead eagle and a deer's head. It appears the eagle, weighed down by the deer head, failed to clear power line. Some 10 thousand people were without power for about 45 minutes. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Susan Allen. While I love to hype the hypocrisy of PETA I often find myself walking a very grey line when it comes to protecting the rights of animals and I do appreciate the efforts of ethical animal aide associations. For the sake of animal welfare I have found myself in some uncompromising positions, I have rescued many a dog from a highway not to mention one mean chicken and several abused horses. The latest Allen animal saga involves a bunny. While out shooting skeet with my family in knee-deep snow we watched in disbelief a black rabbit hop along oblivious to shotgun blasts. Naturally I walked over for a closer look and darned if the little bugger didn't hop right up to me. Naturally, I picked her up and & Naturally I brought her home. So the past few weeks Olivia the rabbit has accompanied me to the office where she revels in her job as chief paper shredder, so much so that she became an overzealous employee shredding the phone and computer cords and that doesn't bode well for a radio network. I am told it is time Olivia finds a new position, so if anyone knows of an opening, other then rabbit stew&I'm all, bunny ears. Thanks Susan. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.