With the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to hear Nebraska's appeal of I-300, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., is supporting a strong competition provision in the next farm bill.
Nelson, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, will be participating in a field hearing of the committee on Saturday in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Several Nebraskans will be testifying at the hearing, which is being chaired by the committee chairman, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it would not review a decision last year by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that declared the state's corporate farming ban unconstitutional.
The appeals court ruled that the ban, passed by state voters in 1982, violates the federal commerce clause and unfairly burdens out-of-state interests, a decision that upheld an earlier, federal court decision.
Nelson said that now that I-300 has been ruled unconstitutional, he believes, "...it is important that we don't have a concentration of ag interest.
"I'm very concerned about that, because without Initiative 300, you now have the opportunity for outside corporations to own large tracts of land in Nebraska," he said.
Nelson had expressed concern about wealthy individuals, such as Ted Turner, buying up huge tracts of land in Nebraska even when I-300 was in effect.
"I have supported I-300 in the past and I will continue to look at other ways to make sure that we don't have Nebraska farmland end up all in corporate hands," Nelson said.
Along with a strong competition title in the farm bill, Nelson is also supporting legislation that would prohibit the ownership of livestock by large packing houses 14 days prior to slaughter.
Under I-300, packer ownership of cattle 14 days prior to slaughter was prohibited.
"Obviously, we all want competition, but the problem we have is that if we don't watch the competition and it all falls into one, two or three hands, then competition ceases to exist," Nelson said.
He also supports strong, renewed calls for Congress and President Bush to enact an effective country-of-origin food labeling bill, especially as imported Chinese wheat is being blamed for the recent deaths of dozens of American pets.
It's reported that the Chinese wheat gluten in pet food contained a toxic chemical, aminopterin, commonly used in China as rat poison.
According to a recent story by The Associated Press, the Food and Drug Administration, under the Bush administration, has reduced its inspections of foreign food and now physically examines only 1.3 percent of all food imported into the United States.
Also, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported this week that a heifer imported into the United States in 2002 was born in the same Canadian herd as a bull diagnosed in February with mad cow disease.
USDA said the cow was slaughtered in an undisclosed slaughterhouse in Nebraska.
While COOL was part of the 2002 farm bill, Congress has yet to implement the bill because of strong opposition from the packing industry and the Bush administration.
Nelson said he would like to see COOL implemented this year.
"The administration doesn't support country-of-origin labeling," he said. "They have made that very clear. I want to make sure that they don't do anything to thwart its implementation."Grand Island Independent
