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More crazy BS.
The suggestion you refer to was for local farmers and how to protect THEIR hay. The EPA never said anything about getting rid of hay.
Are you people unable to understand what you read, cannot research or just want to stir things up?
This is the kind of crap the JBS used to do to create scared folks afraid of their government. I'm glad I finally caught on to the game and wised up.
Show me anywhere the EPA suggest getting rid of hay for any reason.
As for the lead rules destroying the housing market, are you a sock puppet or just stupid?
If the rule applies to all feedlots (small to mega), and the mega lots are following it, then I think he should follow it, too. Does the small size of his lot exempt him?
[I wonder what he has to store his hay in]
Sheesh. The question is not whether mega feedlots are following the rule, the question is, just exactly how stupid is the rule in the first place?
The problem with your logic is that it inevitably favors the large over the small. We are seeing this in banking with the Dodd-Frank "Don't Blame Us" Act. Obama is further corporatizing America.
EPA is now destroying the housing market even more with the ridiculous "Lead" rules and regulations for contractors and lawyers who will have a field day to sue more people.
Obama leave now, give us the real hope and change!
There have been lead paint restrictions for decades. Are you referring to the most recent lead abatement law that affects remodelers? The one signed into law in April 2008?
The guy is not following the rules (sorry bud, but being small doesn't mean you are allowed to maintain a sloppy operation) and now some sites are cherry picking and slanting tryng to make the EP look silly. And of course there are always people who will say "It's all Obama's fault" and some who actually believe everything they read and nod their heads.
And BB sure you can cut your grass - unless you are mowing a football field the amount is very small. The issue is cutting / harvesting / spraying anything out in farming country where your stuff can get into the next guy's stuff. If you don't have proper storage for your hay, don't cut it. Or do you think your neighbors appreciate your dry hay seeds blowing into whatever it is that you're growing?
I think that our EPA can and will go too far. There should be compromise.
There is a small, two lane, country road close to my house. It has a culvert running under the road for a small trickle of a stream. Half of the roadway has been missing since last spring. The culvert collapsed. If my township follows the guidelines of our local EPA; it will cost the local taxpayers about $150,000 to replace the culvert. Our township could do the repair for just a fraction of the cost - without the EPA guidelines. So; the work has not been done. Sediment continues to go down stream because the pipe is damaged. Our township should have and ongoing dialog and there should be some give and take - from both sides.
For an example where the EPA should have been involved: We also had sewage contractor that recently poured concrete in one of our local streams. The lime, in the concrete, caused a substantial fish kill. This should have been pointed out before the concrete was ever poured.
I think that our EPA can and will go too far. There should be compromise.
There is a small, two lane, country road close to my house. It has a culvert running under the road for a small trickle of a stream. Half of the roadway has been missing since last spring. The culvert collapsed. If my township follows the guidelines of our local EPA; it will cost the local taxpayers about $150,000 to replace the culvert. Our township could do the repair for just a fraction of the cost - without the EPA guidelines. So; the work has not been done. Sediment continues to go down stream because the pipe is damaged. Our township should have and ongoing dialog and there should be some give and take - from both sides.
For an example where the EPA should have been involved: We also had sewage contractor that recently poured concrete in one of our local streams. The lime, in the concrete, caused a substantial fish kill. This should have been pointed out before the concrete was ever poured.
This is where your township should do what they want and screw the stupid laws that are preventing your community from repairs, that are not going to effect anyone, but the community it is in.
I get the feeling that some of you really don't know how ranchers raise cattle, or how they get to market, or what you are really buying.
Picture if you will...
Thousands of acres of fenced range, where literally thousands of cattle are herded from one pasture to the next to prevent overgrazing. This month they are in this quadrant, next month they'l be in that quadrant. The quadrant where they were in May is now in high grass, and is being hayed. Come winter, the cattle have to be herded to the pasture closest to home, because when the snow flies and the ice is thick, you don't want to lose them. If your property is huge, you still have to load a bale (one of those giant round ones that weigh 1500 lbs) onto the back of a flatbed pickup, and take the hay to them. Every morning. Rain mud ice snow doesn't matter - the cattle must be fed or they die. Ranchers strategically place their hay in the most accessible place; on the side of a windswept hill, near a cowpath, near the barns from whre they start out; wherever it is most convenient. This is not one or two bales of hay. I have 7 head and have ordered 20 bales for the winter. Ranchers with hundreds of head have long long double, sometimes triple-stacked rows of hay. Without a single complaint from neighbors, an EPA bureaucrat can come in and fine both me and my neighbors for storing hay. And it is not likely that my neighbors would complain - we are all either raising cattle or retired ranchers or have family and friends working on ranches who pay their bills and keep others employed with money earned from ranching. (I live on the edge of a tiny tiny town where my pasture surrounds the entire north edge.) Common pactice for larger family ranchers is to raise the cattle en pasture until they are of a good size and weight, and then to sell them at auction to feedlot buyers who then ship the cattle to feedlots where they are held and fed without much space for moving for 6-10 weeks so that they put on weight (fat, not muscle) and then processed (butchered) and sold to stores and restaurant chains.
“Now that EPA has declared hay a pollutant, every farmer and rancher that stores hay, or that leaves a broken hay bale in the field is potentially violating EPA rules and subject to an EPA enforcement action,” Callicrate said. “How far are we going to let this agency go before we stand up and do something about it?”
Now, understand this - the big feedlots are corporate-owned, and many of the ranches on the Great Plains are being bought by foreign corporations... who are not bound by these regulations, apparently, nor are they being gone after by the EPA. Those of you who complain about the 'chicken ranches' - where the chickens that you eat are packed into huge quonset huts so tightly that they never move from birth to ship-out, who have to be kept highly medicated and whose treatment transcends into chicken meat that is soft, less nutritious, and full of chemicals - will be treated to the same type of beef if only the large feedlots are allowed to promulgate. Not only that, but the larger feedlots are already artificially setting prices far higher than necessary or realistic (some are under legal sanction out here ) to run the smaller feedlots out of business; and if they are or become the only game in town, that means that the end price - the price YOU pay - will be artificially raised to keep up.
How much do you pay for cow? When I buy it from a neighbor, I pay $.92 a pound - that's everything from steaks to burger, and is not only the price of the meat but the price from the processor, who cuts it into selections of my choosing. It is all grass-fed, non-feedlot beef. For every hand through which that cow or steer passes - the price - goes up. In the market, once auctioned off, the prices start to climb exponentially. For every treatment or week of feeding that cow goes thru - the price - goes up. If you are buying from a family feedlot, they must have a higher turnover of cattle to processors, or they start to lose money. When you put the family feedlot out of business, you allow the corporate feedlots to produce a beef that is of far less quality and yet a higher price, because they have no competition.
The rules from the EPA make absolutely no sense. Those who live around cattle and feedlots already know that hay seeds spread. Most professional ranchers and local feedlots only buy alfalfa, a sweet-smelling and highly nutritious hay, because it puts more weight on cattle, keeps them healthier, and -even though it costs a little more - is worth the price, pound for pound. Anyone who knows alfalfa knows that its seeds are valuable, and anyone who finds a patch of 'volunteer' alfalfa growing would likely have no complaints at all... You can grow corn or vegies next to a feedlot; the fertilizer is useful - seeds and all! - for true organic growing.
This year we start eating our own cow; we are fattening a steer born last year for slaughter. Part of the reason we came out to Nebraska was that we wanted our own farm in a place where farming and ranching are historically acceptable, where the land and animals are carefully cared for by the owners, not supervised by government, because a sick or overmedicated cow, or one stuffed with hundreds of thousands of others in a feedlot is not as healthy, not as nutritious, and not as delicious as one raised on grass. But... it WILL BE more expensive.
For all of you folks who think that the EPA is protecting you, they are not. They are protecting corporations. Believe whatever you need to, to buy into the whole "We're from the government and we are here to help you!" - if 70 years of BS bureaucracy hasn't proven otherwise to you, there is no hope for either you or your drained pocketbooks. Maybe you can eat some of that volunteer alfalfa.
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For Those who are Ignorant
