Jeff Flake: “I rise to prohibit funding for an earmark for the Ruminant Nutrition Consortium. This earmark would provide $489,000 for…”

“I rise to prohibit funding for an earmark for the Ruminant Nutrition Consortium. This earmark would provide $489,000 for ruminant livestock production research, rangeland integration and other livestock resources. A press release issued from this earmark in a previous year described it as an effort in the northern plains to further develop beef, dairy and sheep finish-feeding, which may lead to more jobs and more value-added agriculture. Mr. Chairman, I know a little about cattle nutrition. I spent a lot of years on a ranch and a farm; and, in fact, I spent years on what we call bloat watch, where we'd sit at the edge of a field and have to watch while cattle, being the type of ruminant digestive system that they have, might bloat. And you'd have to run and stab the left side and hopefully relieve the suffering and relieve the certain death that comes. I think this is an effort to relieve a little bloat that is here in this Agricultural appropriation bill and certainly in this budget. There is simply no reason we should continue to fund research like this when we have, as mentioned already many times tonight, we have an account over at the Department of Agriculture that is for this purpose to dispense research dollars based on competition, where there are groups that are out there will compete for grants. We've told the Department of Agriculture to set up that program, and here we're saying it's not good enough.”