Just when you think the federal government people who work for us are doing a fine job, they come up with even more ways to drive up food prices. Increasing corn output for inefficient and expensive ethanol didn’t quite do it for them. Now they think the north forty just may be too farty.
The EPA has proposed requiring dairy cows, beef cattle, and hogs to pay a tax for belching and emitting flatulence. It’s not clear as to how the livestock will come up with the money, or who will measure the output. I can think of a number of elected officials well-suited for the task.
On a more serious note, farms with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle, or 200 hogs would pay an annual fee of about $175 for each dairy cow, $87.50 for each beef steer, and $20 per hog. Apparently sheep and other farm animals get a free ride, so we’ll probably see a lot of mooing, snorting, and oinking, as the others try to make the claim that it wasn’t them, looking around innocently.
Farmers are turning desperately to industry to develop catalytic converters for their livestock, to avoid paying the emissions tax, but it’s possible that the new equipment could cost far more than just paying the fees. Executives for Bean-O expressed concerns that they may have to open more plants to meet the anticipated increase in demand for their product.
A spokesman for one group of farmers stated that it would cost the owners of a modest-sized cattle ranch about $30,000 to $40,000 a year, and would probably bankrupt them. Another farmer said he thought that those people running the EPA were nothing but a bunch of old farts, so why weren’t they taxing themselves?
Other beef ranchers suggested that this was nothing more than an ongoing effort initiated by the cows themselves. “They’ve been carrying those Eat mor chikin signs around for a number of years now, and it’s mighty suspicious that the chickens are conveniently exempt from these taxes. It looks as if their campaign is finally starting to gain some ground in Washington. You’d think they’d learn how to spell, though!”
An outspoken agricultural commissioner for one southern state feared that the tax could lead to an increase in Americans consuming meat from foreign countries, which have considerably lower health standards than the U.S. “We can’t even stop the illegal aliens from coming into this country,” he said, “and now we have to worry about cows and pigs sneaking across the border? Then they’ll probably give them an exemption from the flatulence tax! Anchor calves are just what this country needs at this time!”
A spokesman for PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals) stated that the proposal makes perfect sense. “I’m tired of people acting like that Japanese Kobe steak is so hoity-toity! I think our steaks are just as good, and the consumers should pay just as much for home-grown beef. The Japanese ranchers don’t have any fancy scrubbers on their barns, and they still charge above-market prices for their product.” When asked if he was willing to feed the cows rice beer and perform daily massages on the animals, as they do in Japan, he said, “They do that?”
It’s not certain how seriously the EPA considers this proposal, but for an agency that still promotes the concept of man-made global warming, or climate change, or whatever the catch phrase of the day happens to be, anything is possible. Personally, I think the whole idea stinks to high Heaven!