For the Craig Press
The PAUSE initiative is slated to go to voters in 2022. Ag producers, veterinarians, animal breeders and more are concerned about the potential consequences of the act. Getty images
Melody Villard doesn’t know whether to accuse the organizers of the PAUSE initiative of incompetence or resoluteness. Either way, if voters approved it, she believes the state’s agricultural industry as we know it would collapse.
“It’s either well thought out to cripple an industry,” Villard said, “or it’s not well thought out at all, and it cripples our industry.”
Villard is a Moffat County Commissioner, but she says “our” because she runs Villard Ranch, a Craig sheep operation that’s been in her family for a century. The ag industry is so rankled by ballot Initiative 16 that a coalition of livestock and farming groups protested before the state’s Title Board, stating that the name was a political catchphrase. The name, Protect Animals from Unnecessary Suff
Governors Wind Energy Coalition
Air pollution from farms leads to 17,900 U.S. deaths per year, study finds Source: By Sarah Kaplan, Washington Post • Posted: Monday, May 10, 2021
The first-of-its-kind report pinpoints meat production as the leading source of deadly pollution
A hog farm in Vanceboro, N.C., is surrounded by floodwater in the aftermath of 2018’s Hurricane Florence. (Alex Wroblewski/Bloomberg News)
The smell of hog feces was overwhelming, Elsie Herring said. The breezes that wafted from the hog farm next to her mother’s Duplin County, N.C., home carried hazardous gases: methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide.
“The odor is so offensive that we start gagging, we start coughing,” she told a congressional committee in November 2019. Herring, who died last week, said she and other residents developed headaches, breathing problems and heart conditions from the fumes.
-Breed Bash
BRUSH, Colo. Cheramie Viator of Texas will officiate the show and showmanship portion of the 2021 Breed Bash, a new multi-breed state field day to be June 5 and 6 in Brush.
Viator is a Louisiana native, who served on national junior Angus and Brangus boards growing up. She was a national showmanship champion and a member of the livestock judging team at Texas A&M.
Her background also includes working for large ranches, including Silver Spur Ranch where she was responsible for genetics, bull development, registered cattle marketing and all natural/age and source audits for the 15,000-head cowherd at ranch locations in Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Nebraska. Annually, she coordinated their AI program for 2,000 to 3,000 heifers and bull development for 250-plus bulls.