The ever lovely Executive Director of the Livestock Publications Council, Diane Johnson, has been here at the Cattle Industry Convention interacting with her peeps.
I caught her outside the convention center at the end of the day with Todd Johnson, Executive Director of the Kansas Beef Council. No, they’re not related.
Diane does a lot more than just run LPC. She’s very actively involved in the Ag Media Summit and the IFAJ Congress that will be taking place in Ft. Worth next year.
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.
The Beef Ambassadors sure do a good job of getting out and promoting beef. I know passion about the product is necessary to be chosen and Jennifer Rassler, Kempton, PA is one of them.
She decided to get involved since there are so many people in her area who are not educated about where their food comes from. She says they’ve already been on the road at several meetings interacting with consumers.
She says that the program is coordinated by the American National Cattle Women and funded by the Beef Checkoff. She wants consumers to know that the beef industry is here for them and that they’re here to provide a safe and nutritious product for their family to eat.
You can listen to a short interview I did with Jennifer here: cic-08-rassler.mp3
It’s time once again for a Guess Who’s Boots post.
So here’s how it works. The first person to correctly identify Whose Boots these are and post it in a comment here will win a ZimmComm Logo speaker for their iPod.
Go ahead and give it a try. If needed I can post clues.
Let’s see how you do first though.
Baxter Black has nothing to do with shining boots. He was just signing books at the booth next door while I got by boots shined.
I got that done today at the Zinpro booth.
While there I learned a lot about the art of shining boots from Mary Sawyers who is a professional and has been doing this for a number of years, 28 to be exact. As you’ll see she doesn’t need to go to the gym to work out.
She says the first step in shining boots is to clean them. If you don’t it’s kind of like waxing your car without washing it first.
This morning I got together with Dave Mehlhaff, American Hereford Association, and we took a tour of the NCBA Trade Show. Actually we didn’t make it very far but we found a few friends you may know as we made our way down the aisles.
You might want to follow along as we explore some of the booths starting out with Dave’s.
The Livestock Publications Council held their annual lunch today and the featured speaker was Andy Groseta, incoming NCBA President. Andy welcomed everyone and told the group how import their efforts were in delivering information vital to American cattlemen. The luncheon is actually still going on. I had to leave to attend a different one and am posting this in between.
I asked him if/how he uses the internet and he admits that it’s taken him some time to get used to it. He proudly pulled out a Blackberry and held it up and said that today it’s all about getting information quickly. He said that although the older folks may be hesitant to get too involved with computers the younger generation is having no problem with it.
You can listen to Andy’s remarks here: cic-08-groseta.mp3
The NCBA Trade Show kicked off yesterday. There was some beef sampling going on. That was tough for this Catholic boy since it was Ash Wednesday. I could only enjoy the sites and smells. I thought it was interesting to hear from a Beef Board member who’s in the meat business say that it’s one of the most important days in the beef business, a day when millions of people abstain from eating meat. I never thought of it that way.
I’ve heard we’ve got a little under 5,000 people attending this year’s convention which is a strong showing. Not as big as last year in Nashville but I’m sure location has something to do with that.
Pequea is helping prove that sometimes you’ve got to use video and in this case YouTube. Gotta love a company that’s willing to put the manure on the line in online communications and use some of the new media tools out there!
I love the comments that are already being posted. Thanks to Lorena at Schubert Communications for sharing.
