Billings, Mont. In an Oct. 25, 2010, opinion/editorial issued by NCBA President Steve Foglesong, Foglesong accuses R-CALFUSA CEO Bill Bullard, within an article published by the Associated Press (AP) on Oct. 19, 2010, of engaging "in an effort to undermine public confidence in the safety of beef." Below is Bullard's response.
"Foglesong is lying. I challenge him to provide even a shred of proof that there is anything in the Associated Press article that in any way attributes any concerns over food safety to either me or to R-CALFUSA. I made no such statements during my interviews with the investigative reporter, and the article contains no such statement made by or attributed to me or to R-CALFUSA. This was the AP's story, and R-CALFUSA had no more control over what was written by AP than did Mark Dopp, Senior Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for the American Meat Institute, also quoted in the AP article.
This is serious. Foglesong and NCBA are resorting to outright lies and deceit and are making unwarranted and false accusations against R-CALFUSA and against me personally. NCBA is acting unethically and immorally.
The debate over the merits of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) proposed rule must be handled civilly and professionally. NCBA has jumped into the gutter, and we're not following it there.
R-CALF USA accepted a recent invitation by a Nebraska radio station to publicly debate the proposed GIPSA rule with NCBA in a forum that would provide livestock producers the opportunity to hear firsthand the competition-related positions of each organization. However, NCBA declined to debate R-CALFUSA.
NCBA's strategy obviously is not to generate facts or report the truth regarding the GIPSA rule. Instead, NCBA's strategy is to use any and all means including unethical and immoral means to denigrate R-CALFUSA in an effort to eliminate R-CALFUSA from the GIPSA rule debate. This is why NCBA refuses to debate R-CALFUSA in public because such a public forum would immediately reveal their unethical and immoral conduct and disclose their unethical deceit."
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