Dr. Temple Grandin, a woman considered to be a national authority on humane livestock slaughtering who also spoke about practices at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, reviewed the undercover footage from Bushway Packing, Inc. in Grand Isle, Vermont that was obtained during August and September. She and one of her doctoral students at Colorado State University pronounced that “the conditions and acts shown in the videos that we received were not as severe as those shown in the Westland-Hallmark investigation in 20087-2008; however, the handling practices and attention to insensibility in this plant are unacceptable and must improve.”

Video footage shows veal calves, some with their umbilical cords still attached and yet unable to walk, being kicked, slapped, and repeatedly shocked with electric prods.

“The deplorable scenes recorded in the video … are unequivocally unacceptable,” said Tom Vilsack, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. “The callous behavior and attitudes displayed in the video clearly appear to be violations of USDA’s humane handling regulations.”

Vilsack indicated that the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has launched an investigation into the allegations against the business, and took immediate action.

“The Department fully supports the investigation of all those involved in these alleged violations of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act,” he added. “To this end, I have also called on our Inspector General to conduct a criminal investigation into the events in the video.

“FSIS has a rigorous program to train inspection personnel in verifying humane handling and slaughter at establishments. When an FSIS employee observes behaviors that are not in compliance with [regulations], they are obligated to take immediate action. The behavior of FSIS and establishment personnel witnessed in this video is inexcusable.”

Michael Markarian, operating officer for the Humane Society of the United States, praised Vilsack for his “decisive action to address the problems at this slaughter plant and for taking animal welfare concerns seriously.”

Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Roger Allbee said the alleged animal welfare practices are “disturbing.”  He was also quick to note that such practices are “not representative of the industry as a whole in Vermont and such actions will not be tolerated in our state.”

The calves shipped to the facility were primarily being prepared for slaughter for veal. Calves, especially male calves within the dairy industry, are often sold to veal manufacturers. Many such calves are confined to maintain low muscle growth and tenderness of the meat they provide.  Although Iowa has not passed laws to phase out the use of veal crate confinement systems, the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine and Michigan have passed such laws. Even so, those states still allow transport and slaughter of calves at any age.

Readers should be aware that the video posted below, provided by the Humane Society of the United States, contains graphic images:

A new Rasmussen Reports poll measures Grassley’s support at 56 percent against Democratic candidate Bob Krause, who earned 30 percent in the poll. Krause is a virtual unknown, and he will have to win a primary before he even faces off against Grassley.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (Photo: Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.com)

Sure, Grassley is still polling above 50 percentage points, and that’s never a really bad place to be, but Grassley won with a significantly higher percentage of actual votes in 2004. That his support has sunk this low without an opponent that most people have even heard of is pretty surprising.

Rasmussen’s numbers mirror the approval/disapproval numbers measured by the Des Moines Register’s poll last week.

At FiveThirtyEight.com, Nate Silver graphed all of Grassley’s approval numbers from the Register’s polls dating back to January 2003, and the trend lines are bad news for Iowa’s senior senator. Since January of this year alone, Grassley’s approval rating has dropped 18 percentage points, and his disapproval rating has increased by the same amount.

Last December, a Research 2000 poll found that in a head-to-head matchup against former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who had not yet been named U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Grassley was only ahead by four percentage points. Given his slide in the polls since then, it stands to reason that a high-profile challenger like Vilsack would actually defeat Grassley in a poll taken today.

Whether Grassley is truly in trouble remains to be seen, but his numbers are not headed in the right direction. Against a candidate with any name recognition at all, he could be in for a fight in 2010 unlike any he’s seen since winning his senate seat in 1980.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced Thursday that his agency intends to purchase an additional $30 million in pork products this fiscal year for federal food and nutrition assistance programs.

“These purchases will assist pork producers who are currently struggling due to depressed market conditions and reflects the Obama administration’s ongoing work to support struggling producers,” Vilsack said. “This action will help mitigate further downward prices, stabilize market conditions, stipulate the economy, and provide high quality, nutritious food to recipients of USDA’s nutrition programs.”

The move was immediately praised by U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.

“Today’s announcement comes at a crucial time,” Harkin said.

“[The] USDA’s purchase of pork products will not only help producers, it will also provide additional resources for our nation’s food assistance efforts. Many low-income and jobless families, children and seniors rely on this assistance to have access to quality, nutritious food. I believe we must respond to the need to provide adequate resources for food assistance.”

Harkin said it was his intention to continue to work with Vilsack to help struggling producers and low-income Americans in need of affordable and healthy food.

This year alone the USDA has purchased roughly $151 million in pork products for food and nutrition assistance programs using annual appropriation and stimulus funds.

The products scheduled for this purchase will support the school lunch and breakfast programs, the summer food service program, distribution on Indian reservations, supplemental food programs and The Emergency Food Assistance Program. The USDA also makes emergency food purchases for distribution to victims of disasters.

Suppliers interested in learning more about the purchase details should contact Duane Williams, contracting office in the Livestock and Seed Program at (202) 720-2650. Information is also available on the commodity procurement Web page.

Gross, who served as a top aide to former Republican Gov. Terry Branstad and was his party’s 2002 gubernatorial nominee, has been releasing the results of his latest round of surveys, conducted July 23-26, this week. Today, he released favorability numbers (pdf) for Gov. Chet Culver, former governors Tom Vilsack and Branstad, and a slew of Republicans who could be on the gubernatorial primary ballot next year.

While Branstad’s numbers look good, the rest of the GOP gubernatorial field continues to languish in relative obscurity. Culver, the incumbent, still appears to be in a decent position ahead of next year’s election.

The results, compiled by Republican pollsters at Hill Research Consultants, peg Culver’s favorability rating among likely Iowa voters at 52 percent. 38 percent view the current governor unfavorably, with a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.

Branstad, who was governor for four terms during the 1980s and 1990s and is rumored to be considering a return to politics, is viewed favorably by 68 percent and unfavorably by 15 percent of likely voters.

In between Culver and Branstad are Vilsack, who is viewed favorably by 55 percent and unfavorably by 25 percent, and President Barack Obama, who is viewed favorably by 56 percent and unfavorably by 38 percent.

Culver, Branstad, Vilsack, and Obama all enjoy high name recognition. Vilsack is known by 89 percent of likely voters, Branstad is known by 90 percent, Culver is known by 96 percent, and Obama is known by 99 percent.

None of the other names that the poll asked about — state Rep. Chris Rants (R-Sioux City), social conservative activist Bob Vander Plaats (R-Sioux City), state Sen. Paul McKinley (R-Chariton), Poweshiek County Attorney Mike Mahaffey (R-Montezuma), state Rep. Rod Roberts (R-Carroll), and business executive Christian Fong (R-Cedar Rapids) — has the same level of name recognition. Vander Plaats comes closest with 60 percent, followed by Rants and Mahaffey, who are hovering near 40 percent. None of the other candidates crack 30 percent. For that reason, the favorability numbers for those candidates probably don’t mean a lot, since voters still have a lot to learn about all of them.

Moreover, based on the way the question was phrased, I suspect all of the name recognition numbers are slightly inflated, because poll respondents had to volunteer the fact that they didn’t recognize a name while answering the favorable/unfavorable question in order for a “no” to register.

What is interesting, I think, is that Culver and Obama both achieve similar numbers in the poll. Obama seems to elicit more passionate responses from likely voters, as illustrated by the higher numbers of “very favorable” and “very unfavorable” opinions expressed by respondents, which is to be expected at a time when the country is focused on the national health reform debate rather than on state-level issues. Notably, both figures are rated favorably by more than 50 percent of the electorate, which is good news for Democrats.

It’s true, Branstad’s favorability numbers eclipse Culver’s (and everyone else’s), but that isn’t much of a surprise. When a four-term governor leaves politics for 11 years, voters’ memories can become pretty selective. In 1990, ten years after Jimmy Carter lost the 1980 presidential election, the Georgia Democrat enjoyed a 67 percent favorability rating nationwide, compared to 62 percent for Ronald Reagan, who defeated Carter and served two terms. Does that mean that Carter would have won if he had run again in 1992? Probably not.

In state-level politics, name recognition is arguably the most important indicator of a candidate’s strength, not favorability.

If a candidate like Fong, whose name recognition is at 26 percent, wins the primary and hopes to close the gap with Culver, he will have to buy a lot of expensive statewide advertising just to introduce himself. Culver, who doesn’t need to introduce himself to voters, will be free to spend his advertising budget defining Fong negatively to the three fourths of the electorate that does not yet know him.

This dynamic puts lesser-known candidates at a significant disadvantage, and it may help explain why incumbents win re-election so often.

Of course, the election is a long way away, and a lot can change in a year. But as things stand now, Culver’s chances of winning a second term don’t look so bad. Branstad is Culver’s biggest threat simply based on name recognition, but opinions of him are likely to shift over the course of a protracted Republican primary.

“The price increase announced today will provide immediate relief to dairy farmer around the country and keep many on the farm while they weather one of the worst dairy crisis in decades,” Vilsack said in a prepared statement.

The price paid for nonfat dry milk will increase from roughly 80 cents per pound to 92 cents per pound. Cheddar blocks are expected to rise from $1.13 per pound to $1.31 per pound, while cheddar barrels will move from $1.10 per pound to $1.28 per pound. Temporarily raising the price of these dairy products typically increases the price that dairy farmers receive for the milk they produce.

Under the Dairy Product Price Support Program, the USDA serves as a buyer of last resort to help clear commodity dairy markets during periods of exceptionally low farm-level prices. For instance, if cheddar barrels sell for $1.20 per pound in the private market, the government provides the difference to dairy farmers up to the guaranteed price it has set.

Today’s news is the latest attempt by the USDA to aid struggling dairy farmers who are receiving the lowest payments for raw milk the industry has seen since the 1970s, and a move praised by the National Milk Producers Federation.

“This step by the USDA to raise farm-level milk prices comes at a critical time, and is yet another important effort the agency has made to help dairy farmers survive the worst recession in their lifetimes,” said Jerry Kozak, president and chief executive of NMPF.

Federal action was also praised by U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA) who said that Iowa’s “2,390 dairy farms will benefit directly” from the additional government assistance.

“I applaud Secretary Vilsack for taking action on behalf of the country’s dairy farmers and for responding so immediately to the concerns voiced by myself and other members of Congress,” he said.

The USDA has already boosted purchases through the support program and resurrected a subsidy program that pays to export non-fat dry milk.

Vilsack also indicated that he and other federal officials are reviewing dairy policies to determine what changes are needed to reduce price volatility and enhance farmer profitability. Federal and private banks are being encouraged by Vilsack to be lenient with dairy farmers who have outstanding loans, although the USDA has offered no details as to the extent or tone of the encouragement.

During a conference call Thursday, the authors said the report, Raids on Workers: Destroying Our Rights, is the culmination of nearly two years of regional hearings, interviews with victims and analysis of immigration enforcement tactics. The commission writing the report was comprised of former elected officials, labor leaders, academics and immigration and legal experts. The group not only documented past raids, but provided recommendations for reforming the immigration system.

“The commission was formed to examine allegations of abuse and misconduct by the Bush administration during the course of immigration raids,” Joe Hansen, chairman of the commission and president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, said during a conference call Thursday to formally announce the report. “In particular, it was created in response to a 2006 raid of six meatpacking plants in America’s heartland, conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. During that raid more than 12,000 workers, most of them U.S. citizens and legal residents, were herded together at gunpoint and denied access to phones, bathrooms, families and legal counsel.”

Mary Bauer, director of the Immigrant Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the report is the most comprehensive of its kind.

“It shows a law enforcement agency with really the most profound disrespect for the law and our nation’s Constitution,” she said. “In reading this report, I am particularly struck how profoundly unconstitutional most these raids were as they were carried out as a practice. What we saw again and again and heard about again and again were agents coming in and seizing all the workers without a legal basis, entering into people’s homes without warrants and separating people based on their race and ethnicity. … These were wanton violations of the fourth and fifth amendments.”

The commission, at the conclusion of its investigation, determined that ICE, under the direction of the Bush administration, repeatedly trampled on workers’ constitutional rights.

“These were not isolated incidents,” said Hansen, “but systemic problems that occurred in nearly every region of the country.”

Even those commissioners who held basic knowledge of the raids were shocked at what they heard during the course of the investigation.

“When I [joined the commission], of course, I had read about the raids and had even talked with some of the raid victims here in the Bay area,” said Bill Ong Hing, commissioner and a professor of law and Asian American studies at the University of California at Davis. “But when we traveled around the country, I was totally shocked at the level of abuse that ICE visited upon the victims of the various sites that we went to, including the Swift plants.”

Hing said that the only act committed by the workers was going to their job site. In response, ICE agents entered the sites, “weapons drawn and with no warrants for the individuals” that were detained.

“What we saw was the deprivation of prescription drugs and other medical care that a lot of these workers needed, the separation of newborns from nursing mothers, mocking of many of the people who were arrested and on and on,” he said. “What we also saw was that the communities themselves were also devastated. … Not only did the raid occur nearby, but the town was basically made into a ghost town after that.  People were chased into the woods. Families were afraid of coming back into town. … The racism we saw that was inherent in these raids was awful.”

In addition to the family trauma documented in the report, commissioners also spoke with local officials and law enforcement who reported that the raids disrupted and sometimes destroyed relationships carefully crafted between immigrant populations and government.

Several personal stories from workers at the Swift plant in Marshalltown are included in the report. Michael Graves, shown above, was the only worker to participate in a conference call announcing the report. (Photo courtesy of the commission.)

Mike Graves, a worker at the JBS-Swift plant in Marshalltown at the time of the raid, also joined the commissioners on the conference call to provide a personal narrative of what happened to him on the morning of the federal immigration raid at Swift.

“December 12, 2006 started off as a normal day,” Graves, a U.S. citizen born and raised in Waterloo, said. “As we started our production at 6 o’clock, our supervisors came out to the floor and instructed us to go to the cafeteria. So we took our equipment off, our knives and everything, and hung them up on the rack. Me and two other Hispanic people proceeded to go to the cafeteria. But as we took our normal route to the cafeteria, it was ICE agents that met up with us.”

The agents, according to Graves, had guns drawn and requested the workers show identification. The workers explained their their IDs were in their lockers. So the trio was searched for weapons, handcuffed with hands behind their backs and taken to the locker room.

“[An ICE agent] asked me where I lived [and I told him],” Graves said. “Then he asked me where my parents lived and I told him ‘Mississippi.’ He asked if I knew the way to Mississippi. I told him that I did, that we traveled there every summer. He started laughing.”

Handcuffed, Graves was left to sit on a bench in the locker room for about a half hour while agents took his identification to another part of the plant. When the agent returned, Graves was given his identification back and asked to place it back in his pants pocket in his locker. Two agents spoke in Spanish and laughed, but Graves didn’t understand what they were saying. When he requested to use the bathroom, they denied his request, and left him sitting on the bench for roughly an hour longer.

“He finally came back and told me that I needed to go to the cafeteria,” Graves said.

“This cafeteria only holds 50 people on a normal day, but there were about 200 people in there. The food supply was cut off. The water supply was cut off. There was a pay phone in there, but an ICE agent had been posted in front of it so that we couldn’t phone anyone. They also wouldn’t let us use cell phones. Anyone who requested to go to the bathroom were told ‘no’ and that they had to wait until they were processed.”

Processing was done in groups of 10. Workers were escorted, without coats in 20-degree snowy weather, from the cafeteria to another section of the plant that Graves said was also overcrowded with roughly 800 workers.

“As we were walking, there were ICE agents along the perimeter with guns drawn… watching the outsides of the building to make sure nobody would run or try to get away,” he said. “When they took us in the other building and we stood there for awhile — up to eight hours — before we were allowed to go home. We weren’t fed anything until this was all over and done with.”

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack agreed to serve on the commission, but he was later appointed U.S. Secretary of Agriculture by President Obama. He did not participate in the conference call announcing the report. To date, his office has released no formal statement on the matter.

In 2001, while speaking before the Iowa Legislature, then-Gov. Vilsack touted the benefits of immigrants to the state’s economy, while pushing for an initiative he named “New Iowans Project.”

“[Our state] was built by people who came here from all over the world,” he said. “From the beginning, immigrants have come to our state and helped it prosper. As they became new Iowans, and added to our economic wealth, their diversity also brought strength and cultural richness to our state.”

The initiative began with pilots in three Iowa communities — Mason City, Fort Dodge and Marshalltown — intended to lure immigrant populations into Iowa. Vilsack, who was publicly upset with how the Swift raid in Marshalltown was handled, penned a letter to Michael Chertoff, head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, indicating that state officials would no longer cooperate with federal immigration officials.

“[Federal immigration officials] chose to pursue to alitary path that limited the operation’s effectiveness, created undue hardship for many not at fault, and led to resentment and further mistrust of government,” Vilsack wrote in the letter.

“These systemic failures to communicate with the public and news organizations created an information vacuum that was filled with unreliable and unverifiable rumors that further undermined the public’s trust and confidence in both the state and federal government.”

Gov. Chet Culver held a press conference in Cedar Rapids Wednesday that featured (from left) Rebuild Iowa Office Executive Director Maj. Gen. Ron Dardis, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack and U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

CEDAR RAPIDS — State and federal officials held a joint press conference Wednesday and pledged both to cut government red tape tangling flood recovery funding and to promote a new climate of natural disaster prevention.

Although the event was attended primarily by reporters and local elected officials, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, who visited flood-impacted areas of Iowa for the first time since accepting his post earlier this year, said he both felt and understood the frustration of local residents.

“That’s exactly why I’m here today, doing this press conference and spending many hours walking the streets of these communities and hearing from local leaders and residents about the barriers to moving more swiftly,” Donovan said.

“We have a system that’s been built through the Community Development Block Grant that wasn’t designed for disaster assistance. We need, in addition to this help that President Obama and I are delivering today, to go the next step and reform the way that disaster assistance is provided.”

Donovan said that largely because of the conversations he’s had with Iowa officials —conversations that were compounded today when he spoke directly with flood victims while touring the area — discussions on how such reform should look have already begun in Washington, D.C.

“[My department] has tried to work during these first few months to speed things up,” he said. “We are evaluating waivers that I’m allowed to grant that could help the state move forward, but there are some things that have to be changed in the law. We are in the process of doing that and, over this summer, we will be working with the Congress to try to get fundamental changes so that we can rebuild more quickly. That’s exactly the message I heard in Cedar Rapids today, and that’s exactly the message I’ll carry back to President Obama.”

Of the $3.7 billion in block grant monies that will be distributed by the federal government to 11 states hit by natural disaster during 2008, Iowa will receive $516.7 million. Cedar Rapids, the hardest hit of Iowa’s cities, had more than 10-square miles including the city’s downtown and cultural district devoured by flood waters. The latest figures show nearly $6 billion in total damage for the city — well over half the damage estimates for the entire state.

“This announcement is great as far as us taking the next step of rebuilding,” said Shannon Meyer, president and chief executive of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce. “Everyone needs to keep that in mind: This is just another step in the rebuilding process. We’re grateful for the announcement coming from HUD, but realizing that we’ve got $5.7 billion of damage in Cedar Rapids alone, we know we need to push for additional funding.”

Meyer and the Chamber of Commerce are especially concerned about the local economy, and the ability of many of the city’s re-opened businesses to remain solvent.

“Most small businesses have leveraged everything they possibly can to reopen their doors,” she said, noting that 78 percent of the city’s businesses have reopened since being devastated in last June’s floods. “While that statistic may be true at this moment in time, none of the circumstances surrounding those businesses are the same as they were before the flood. … They probably don’t employ the 35 people they employed before the flood. Their debt load is high, and many have no cash flow. The overall economic impact is not good.”

Maj. Gen. Ron Dardis, executive director of the Rebuild Iowa Office, indicated that distribution of the newly available government funds should be announced within a week. Although it took state agencies about a month to plan the distribution of $125 million in federal recovery plans last fall, Dardis said that state officials have had months to plan while they waited for the exact figure that would be granted to Iowa.

Donovan added that Iowans shouldn’t just think of what’s happening as flood recovery, but as overall recovery that can be directly addressed by the federal stimulus.

“The measure of our success will not be whether we help Iowa communities rebuild and recover. We will. It is whether we have the courage and the wisdom to do things differently, and to take steps today that ensure our successors do not have to be here rebuilding from the next storm 10, 15 or 20 years from now,” he said.

To that end, Donovan announced the creation of a $312 million Disaster Recovery Enhancement Fund aimed at helping communities prevent or mitigate future natural disasters. Localities will need to compete for funds from this new program, which would provide up to a 1-to-1 match.

Politico’s Josh Gerstein reports that the former Iowa governor at first did not offer any details about the canceled contract or what it may have entailed, but later said it involved Stan Johnson, a former vice provost of Iowa State University who now serves as assistant to the dean at the University of Nevada at Reno’s College of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources.

“I didn’t see any value to USDA from it. I will tell you it was rather startling to see that a substantial amount of money had already been spent on foreign travel under circumstances we did not think was appropriate,” [Vilsack] said.

Johnson reportedly did not return Politico’s email seeking a comment.

John Norris

Former Gov. Tom Vilsack, who was confirmed as U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tuesday, has named John Norris as his his chief of staff, sources close to Vilsack said today.

Norris served as Vilsack’s chief of staff during his first two years as governor. He also served as chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party in 1998, ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House in 2002 and was a national field director for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. He currently serves as chairman of the Iowa Utilities Board.

His wife, Jackie Norris, was named in November as First Lady Michelle Obama’s chief of staff.

Vilsack has said that his first task at the helm of USDA will be to implement the 2008 Farm Bill.