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Not long ago media outlets were reporting that the United States government plans to levy a “flatulence tax” on farmers and ranchers who raise and keep farting, belching herds of sheep and cattle. Turns out, the story is nothing but a loud, stinking rumor.
Nobody knows how these things get started. It’s only certain that this particular rumor somehow found its way to Northeast Oregon, causing great concern. By now, we feel an urgent need to clear the air.
It was said the government plans the tax because livestock emissions contribute to a buildup of greenhouse gasses. A lot of people took the story at face value — failed to give it the sniff test, as it were — so naturally panic spread.
Though many were alarmed, few were surprised. The idea for such a tax, after all, isn’t new. Blow us down if politicians in New Zealand didn’t try to pass one in 2003.
It’s hard to say how much money the levy would have cost each individual New Zealand farmer, but it would have been a lot. Altogether, the farmers stood to pay $4.9 million a year.
As might be imagined, the proposal raised quite a stink.
Shane Arden, a leader in New Zealand’s National Party, took the bull by the horns. As a way of protest, he mounted a tractor and drove it up the steps of Parliament.
Political debate was noxious and windy. Federated Farmers President Tom Lambie asserted that the tax was “another example of the government’s desire to act in the public interest but expecting rural New Zealand to pay for its largess.”
Wisely, the Wellington government backed off, deciding instead to create the Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium to address the problem of greenhouse gasses, and to meet commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. Scientists are now at work in their labs, presumably seeking the ever-elusive
formula for Bovine Beano.
Here at home on Jan. 15, Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Jonathon Schrader decided it was time to put a cork in the rumor. He affirmed the EPA has no plans to penalize farmers for their livestock’s crude, rude emissions.
As a newspaper deeply concerned with the economic health of agriculture, we take comfort from Schrader’s statement. But Joe Gonzalez, a cattle rancher from El Paso, Texas, isn’t convinced. He told KFOX-TV he remains worried that someday, somehow, the government will yet impose a flatulence tax. He reckoned he would lose 80 percent of his net profit per cow. Instead of making $216 a head, he’d get about $40.
What a cut!
And grossly unfair, we might add. When cattle break wind, they’re only doing what comes naturally. They’re a lot like people, after all. They just can’t help themselves.
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Opinion 
