Scientific evidence and home on the range

On Wednesday, February 21st, 2007, the Rules Committee of the Oklahoma State Senate passed out a bill that defined "Animal Waste as non-hazardous." Without spending time on what is hazardous or non hazardous I want to spend a little time on the scientific evidence that was presented and how that evidence must have been perceived by the members of the committee in order to reach the conclusion that they did in order to vote the way they did.
One member of the committee, the only dissenting vote asked the author of the bill, a former extension agent of the land grant school if he had "scientific evidence that animal waste was non-toxic and non-hazardous?"
The answer was classic. "These animals eat those things coming out of the soil, it goes into their systems and comes out as nutrients that go back into the soil."
Visions of cattle munching on pristine pastures of nutrient rich green grasses, chickens pecking around Grandma's barnyard pecking up bits of hay and pebbles, worms and ants for protein, hogs eating apples and sorghum, goats eating neckerchiefs; all this comes to mind.
But that is not the way it happens to our food today. A little calf may spend some time before it is sent to the feedlot to be fattened by je ne nes quois and slaughtered by immigrants poorly paid. Chickens are fed stuff by Laotian farmers in Northeast Oklahoma to make their breasts and thighs and legs meatier and given something else to eat so that their bones are strong enough to help them stand while they eat. Dairy cattle are computerized so that the best producers get the most food the fastest so they can be turned back out to rest a bit an produce more milk. Don't know much about goats.
Agriculture interests would like to make you think that agriculture is the heart and soul of Oklahoma and it may be, but it is in the low twenties in gross state product and lower than that in taxes paid by any industry, on property or sales or whatever else people pay taxes on.
Clean water is the big loser here and Oklahoman's better WAKE UP. Why? Because a lot, maybe most of the bad part of those "good nutrients" going on the ground, phosphourous, arsenic, mercury, are going into the creeks,streams,rivers and lakes of Oklahoma.
As the drought continues and our famed "shore lines" shrink, water and water quality will suffer exponentially. Like oil in an engine, the less there is the hotter it gets and the faster it gets burned up. That is what is going to happen to our water.