Idaho Farm Bureau has beef with FOI ad

By The Associated Press

12.21.02

Printer-friendly page

POCATELLO, Idaho — The Idaho Farm Bureau Federation has asked Attorney General Al Lance and the state Agriculture Department to investigate the legitimacy of a newspaper industry advertisement involving a cattle disease.

The head of the Freedom of Information Committee for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which is circulating the ad as part of a campaign on the importance of public records, says it is based on an actual case in California.

Lance spokesman Bob Cooper said on Dec. 18 that the office had not received the Farm Bureau's request, and Julie Pipal of the Agriculture Department said that agency had no authority to investigate the ad that appeared in the Dec. 15 edition of the Idaho State Journal in Pocatello.

Farm Bureau President Frank Priestley said the ad attempts to frighten and mislead consumers about the safety of beef, potentially damaging the livelihood of Idaho ranchers.

"If it appears we have legal recourse we intend to pursue it," Priestley said. "In our view it is libelous."

The advertisement, one of 11 the society is circulating in its open-records campaign, shows two steers in a feedlot under the statement: "That they have bovine tuberculosis is scary. That nobody's allowed to know is even scarier. Every day throughout the United States, newspapers are working to present information that is important to you on critical subjects ranging from the health of the nation's food supply to the disciplinary records of local police."

The open-records campaign is also backed by the Associated Press Managing Editors Association.

Pipal said that Idaho has been free of bovine tuberculosis for 12 years, and state veterinarian Bob Hillman said all cattle slaughtered in Idaho are inspected for the disease and those records are public.

Freedom of Information Committee Chairman Doug Clifton of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer said representatives of the American Farm Bureau Federation and the cattle industry have expressed concern about the ad although he has not talked directly with them yet.

"But I don't see any need to" pull the advertisement, Clifton said. "I don't see the libel."

He said the ad was based on a case in which reporters for the Visalia Times-Delta in central California were denied records on cattle thought to have bovine tuberculosis for reasons of "biosecurity."

But Clifton also said the choice of which ads in the campaign to publish is up to the individual newspapers.

Chris Hunt, city editor at the Idaho State Journal, said the paper apologized to readers on Dec. 17 for publishing the ad that left the wrong impression about the safety of Idaho beef.

"We pulled the ad," Hunt said. "It was a bad idea to run it. It slipped through the process. It didn't get reviewed as it should have."