can these idiots be serious

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December 9, 2008 Farmers could face tax on gaseous cows EPA concerned about methane gas from livestock By ERIN KELLY Gannett News Service WASHINGTON -- Belching and gaseous cows could cost Southern Tier and other upstate dairy farmers big bucks if the Environmental Protection Agency moves forward with a tax on farmers for the climate-changing methane gas created by their livestock. The New York Farm Bureau, local farmers and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., think the idea stinks and have vowed to fight it. "It's hard to believe they would consider such a thing," said Sid Miller, co-owner of Miller Farms, a 250-cow dairy farm in Windsor. Schumer weighed in on the battle over bovine burping and flatulence Tuesday. He has written a letter to EPA Administrator Steve Johnson calling on him to scrap any proposal to impose a $175-per-cow tax on dairy cattle, which create methane gas as part of their digestive process when they burp or pass gas. Cows silently burp every 40 seconds or so, emitting about 600 liters of methane a day, according to researchers. Such a regulation would cost a medium-size dairy farm with 75 to 125 cows between $13,000 and $22,000 a year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. Based on estimates from the farm bureau, Schumer said a cow tax would hit the Southern Tier and the Rochester-Finger Lakes region especially hard. But EPA officials said talk of a tax on cow flatulence is hot air. The agency has no intention of imposing any such tax and could not do so without the approval of Congress even if they wanted to, said EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar. The concerns by farm groups stem from a comment made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture last summer when the EPA asked for response to its preliminary efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, he said. The agriculture department wondered whether those efforts should include regulation of methane gas from livestock. But the EPA never made any such proposal, Shradar said. "We're going to focus, at least for the remaining ... days of the Bush administration, on human-created pollution from power plants and automobiles," Shradar said. "After that, Senator Schumer can take it up with the Obama administration." Schumer acknowledged that there is no formal plan by the EPA to impose a cow tax, but he said he wants to wipe out any possibility of it happening since the idea did come up. "I've been around politics long enough to know that a lot of absurd things happen when people say it's never going to happen," he said. Any cow tax would put an economic strain on dairy farmers across the Southern Tier and state, Miller said, adding he learned of the possibility of such a tax through a national Web site for dairy farmers. "I was shocked by the whole thing," he said. There are 99,500 dairy cows and 16,000 beef cattle in the Rochester-Finger Lakes region and more than 90,000 dairy cows and 30,000 beef cows in the Southern Tier. If a tax were imposed, Rochester-area farmers would be hit with taxes of nearly $19 million a year while Southern Tier farmers would have to pay more than $18 million a year, Schumer said. "There aren't too many farms that could afford to do that," Miller said. Lawmakers "don't want to beat up on farmers when we're feeding most of the world," he added. The tax would put many family farms out of business if enacted, said Eric Ooms, the owner of a 400-cow dairy farm in Chatham and chairman of the New York State Farm Bureau's dairy committee. Some of the misinformation about the cow tax issue stem are "scare tactics" from groups adamantly opposed to any regulation of carbon emissions, said Shrader, of the EPA. But, Schumer said, he takes the fight against global warming seriously. He just doesn't want regulations to wipe out family farms. Schumer said he would support federally funded research into ways to change the diet of dairy cows to make them less gassy. Scientists throughout the world are working on "burpless" grass to feed cows to reduce their methane production. Schumer has received no formal notice from the EPA that a cow tax proposal is off the table, Deirdre Murphy, a spokeswoman for the senator said. Until then, Schumer will continue to fight the idea, she said.