Our Secretary of Agriculture, Ed Schafer, made his first major public policy speech today at the Cattle Industry Convention. Thanks to Andy Vance, Buckeye Ag Network, for snapping a picture for me. It was a pleasure for the ag media to get to meet Schafer. For many of us, it’s our first opportunity and I’m sure not our last.

I don’t think he made any major announcements. He made it very clear that he’s a “free trade guy” and fully supports the President on the farm bill that’s in conference. I was happy to hear him address renewable fuels and the RFS head on with this group. Basically, he said that with the growth of cellulosic ethanol production there should be an easing of feed price pressure within a short time as the technology and non-food stocks form of ethanol production continues to rapidly develop.

He did talk about the Humane Society mess over their video of animal handling atrocities at the Hallmark Meat Packing Co. I think USDA has handled this quite well and the plant was shut down. What I thought was interesting was the Secretary in the press conference making a very good point about how this whacko (my word) organization withheld the video for months so they could release it to the media in a sensational way instead of bringing it immediately to the proper legal authorities so that the situation could have been halted immediately. In effect, the Humane Society prolonged animal suffering and I think the people who support them ought to know that they really don’t care about animals, only their political agenda and raising money.

He also talked about animal id which I know is a touchy subject with a lot of you. He did say though that it’s voluntary and he does not support making it mandatory.

You can listen to Secretary Schafer’s speech here: [audio:http://zimmcomm.biz/cbb/cic-08-schafer-stage.mp3]