Free Republic

PLATTSBURGH — U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer is taking measures to kill, once and for all, a plan that would be burdensome on dairy farmers. The Environmental Protection Agency has been considering implementing a fee to combat methane emissions from dairy and beef cows. The fee would be about $175 per dairy cow and about $87.50 per beef cow each year. A dairy farm with 400 cows would pay about $70,000 a year for this fee. In all, New York farms could be forced to pay about $120 million per year. The North Country is home to about 146,600 dairy cows...

Farmers Panic About a ‘Cow Tax’ By Kate Galbraith Should their greenhouse gases be taxed? (Photo: Steve Ruark for The New York Times) The comment period for the Environmental Protection Agency’s exploration of greenhouse gas regulation ended last Friday, with farmers lobbying furiously against the notion of a “cow tax” on methane, a potent greenhouse gas emitted by livestock. The New York Farm Bureau issued a statement last week (PDF) saying it feared that a tax could reach $175 per cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and upward of $20 for each hog. Such a tax would represent a...

“With the economy in bad shape and the possibility of a deep recession looming, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to levy new taxes—on cows and pigs,” American Farm Bureau Federation Director of Regulatory Relations Rick Krause told Wyoming Farm Bureau members at their annual meeting. Krause spoke in Sheridan on Nov. 7. “This is no laughing matter,” Krause said. “The cow tax and the pig tax are parts of a larger scheme by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.” “Under the proposal, if a state charged the “presumptive minimum rate” from...