Denny Rehberg: “I have all the sympathy in the world for Wyoming losing its brucellosis status, because you know as well as I do it…”

“I have all the sympathy in the world for Wyoming losing its brucellosis status, because you know as well as I do it costs millions of dollars to prove to everyone again that you are brucellosis free. So you have got a situation that I do not envy and we do not want to happen. And that makes the point exactly. Why are we doing what we are doing with mad cow with the one case in Washington? Because of the devastating effect it could have. It is all a matter of preservation and prevention and protection of it occurring. Now, one of the points that was made is there is no proof. Well, that is part of the difficulty. We want Yellowstone Park to be as natural as possible. You have to actually physically, visually be there to see it occur. So we do not know where it is coming from. But we do know, through common sense, that it can be transferred from elk to cattle and bison to cattle. So rather than it even occurring, as my colleague from Wyoming clearly understands, you spend the money and you take the time and the effort to see that it does not happen. How can anybody argue with wanting to have the most healthy herd of bison in Yellowstone Park and ultimately the most healthy herd of elk in the greater Yellowstone area, which is what we are attempting to accomplish?”