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’m going to post his speech at this morning’s opening general session as well as his press conference. You can download and/or listen in.

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.

You can listen to Secretary Schafer’s speech here: cic-08-schafer-stage.mp3

Or you can download the speech by using this direct link to the mp3 file: Secretary Schafer Speech (24 min)

You can listen to Secretary Schafer’s press conference here: cic-08-schafer-press.mp3

Or you can download the press conference by using this direct link to the mp3 file: Secretary Schafer Press Conference (33 min)

My online photo album is up to 179 photos and counting. Feel free to visit and use them if you’d like. There’s quite a few from this morning’s session including the awards as well as the Secretary.