Talking about...Corn, Hot dogs, Food inspection, JBS bank

"We're hemorrhaging. Whether it's beef, pork, turkey, or chicken, we're hemorrhaging right now. The economics have just turned completely upside down because of corn prices."
(Source: U.S. News & World Report, July 15, 2008)
Daniel Bluntzer, a livestock analyst for Frontier Risk Management, talking about the state of animal agriculture.

“The industry is going to implode. Politicians were in a rush to do something, and it became a terrible snowball.”
(Source: New York Times, July 18, 2008)
Dick Stevens, President, Consolidated Catfish Producers, blaming the government’s ethanol mandates for the impending demise of catfish farming.
>PS: His friend, Keith King of Dillard & Company, says for every dollar spent raising catfish, the return is just 75 cents when they take them to market.

“A girl from PETA called me a while back, asking if we were going to be having the hot dog lunch this year. I asked what office she was calling from, and she kept saying, ‘my office, my office.’ Eventually I said, ‘you’re from PETA, right?’ and she sort of sheepishly said that she was. But she never asked what the date was. I think she got nervous and hung up. You know, the funny thing about it is, every year we’re having this event that is jam-packed, and we are turning people away because hot dogs are so popular. And outside they have to have people in lettuce leaf bikinis trying to entice people to eat their food because everyone prefers hot dogs.”
(Source: Washington City Paper, July 16, 2008)
Janet Riley, senior vice president of public affairs and professional development for the American Meat Institute, explaining how PETA managed to jump the gun on AMI’s annual Hot Dog Lunch at the Rayburn Building.
>PS: Careful, Janet. PETA just might ramp it up with ladies dressed in less than lettuce leaves.
>PPS: Save me a Kosher dog with mustard and (horrors) ketchup. No faux doggies, please.
>PPPS: To set the record straight, those PETA babes don’t really wear lettuce leaf bikinis. They wear lettuce leaf PRINT bikinis, stitched together from whole cloth, like many of the organization’s claims.

"They're moving towards the U.S. model, where the inspectors don't actually do the inspection, they just oversee and the companies actually do the inspection. That's a really dangerous thing.”
(Source: Edmonton Journal, July 12, 2008)
Michael Hansen, senior scientist with Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, warning about pitfalls in Canada’s plan to turn over food inspection to the food industry.
>PS: I’m a big fan of third party inspection. If you don’t have an iron in the fire, you’re less likely to flinch when the heat rises.

"We created this bank with products and services directed toward cattle breeding. Clients that will have accounts in this bank will need to prove to be a cattle producer."
(Source: Meatingplace, July 18, 2008)
Joesley Batista, JBS President, telling a Meatingplace.com reporter that they plan to back the world’s cattle industry with specialized banking services.
>PS: They’re starting out in Brazil with $18.7 million in starting capital to help Brazilian farmers “develop production of bulls and cows.”