Editor:
As president/CEO of a grain marketing and farm supply cooperative in Ohio, I want to make sure people understand the importance of passing State Issue 2.
Agriculture is Ohio’s No. 1 industry and could be in jeopardy if we, Ohio citizens, allow out-of-state interest groups to come into Ohio and tell us how to raise livestock and ultimately how and if we can continue to produce the safe, affordable food that both your family and mine enjoy every day.
Ohio grain farmers rely on livestock farmers to be their No. 1 customer. Both grain and livestock farmers would be negatively impacted if we allow special interest groups to dictate how Ohio farmers raise their animals.
Our farmer customers are among some of the most conscientious, responsible animal caregivers that I know of. Issue 2 is the right approach to set a statewide, comprehensive framework that sets animal care policy for our livestock — that’s regulation farmers can support.
It will assure Ohio families have a safe, reasonably priced, locally grown food supply and will ensure excellent animal care.
Creating an Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board through the passage of Issue 2 just makes sense. It’s meaningful, it’s reasonable and it will consider everything that impacts farming and food production.
Fellow Ohio citizens: we must take a stand against these activists groups and let them know Ohio experts are the ones we want making decisions on how our food is produced and who is producing it — not out-of-state activists. We won’t be another California.
Please join me in this stance by voting YES for State Issue 2 on Nov. 3.
George D. Secor
Fremont, Ohio
(The author is president/CEO of Sunrise Cooperative.)
Perhaps of George had as a Farm Bureau member the lifetime investment in his property destroyed by the entrance into the neighborhood of Park Farms poultry operation, he might think differently on this issue. Farm Bureau did nothing to protect my personal property rights which they contend they do for all their members, instead going to bat for the poultry operation and in my opinion, protecting it to the nth degree. Fair? Not in my opinion, I therefore welcome an agency with clout such as the HSUS as my perception is they will do what they say and have the moral integrity which Farm Bureau in my opinion, appears to lack. My home is presently on the market and the realtor tells me the stench from Park Farms is unreal, it has been since they moved in. In 2002 after the major clean-up, my husband became ill and passed away on 12/2/02. The following year the same major clean-up went into effect and the debris coming east from this effected my neighbor to the north of this industrial farm. A coincidence, I don’t think so. I called the EMS to come and take her to the hospital, she spent over two months there fighting a bacterial infection. There are real reasons Farm Bureau should have closed this operation down but chose to protect the poultry operatio of Park Farms.
There’s a whole lot of misinformation being spread about Issue 2 also. Opponents are saying it gives the new Board exclusive power to pass rules on how we raise livestock. It doesn’t do that; all it does is set up the Board. There is “enabling legislation” that must pass the General Assembly, that gives the Board their power. That is when everyone can participate in the legislative process, to make sure the enabling legislation is what we want it to be.
For all of you ANTI ISSUE 2 read this http://www.wlwt.com/politics/21310814/detail.html
http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/4048
This tactic sound familiar:
We are going to use the ballot box and the democratic process to stop all hunting in the United States…We will take it species by species until all hunting is stopped in California. Then we will take it state by state.
– Humane Society of the United States Executive Director Wayne Pacelle
“That legislation was no sooner on the books than the animal rights organizations were back in the halls of our statehouse, lobbying for yet more changes to [Revised Code] Sec. 959, still claiming Ohio doesn’t do enough to protect its animals,” said Polly Britton of the Ohio Association of Animal Owners (OAAO). “This substitute bill…is an undisguised work of the animal rights contingent, and one which the OAAO, and hopefully this committee, must oppose….”