Farm Bureau Sticks A Political Knife In Governor Blunt

...doesn't change the fact that the purpose of Farm Bureau is to provide insurance for farmers and to lobby for farm policy, and a lot of the policies FB has has virtually nothing to do with farm policy, and fall under the category of "who gives a @#$% what your opinion is, FB, what does this have to do with farming and rural life?" They are just using their clout as FB to tout the GOP party line. Anyone who has followed or been a member of FB over the years also knows that becoming a delegate to the FB annual meeting isn't exactly the random democracy of a school club. There is a lot of prerequisite bowing, scraping, and toeing the FB party line involved coupled with making sure the right people show up at the meeting when the delegates are selected.

An opinion on embryonic stem cell research simply is not FARM POLICY and falls outside the mission of FB. Granted, they can vote on any policy they want at their meeting; in fact there are a ton of policies they adopted in 2006 that are simply the moral opinions of their delegates and board. It just shows FB delegates have too much time on their hands or are not working hard enough to make enough statements on farm policy. The 2006 FB policy contains a ridiculous amount of moral bloviating and topics that it is really really hard to see what this has to do with the business of running a farm. The entire document is quite a hoot to see what they seem to think IS their business, take a read with the link above. (Teacher tenure? Yeah, that has a lot to do with farming. Gay marriage? Does this mean there is a "don't ask, don't tell" FB membership policy? I'm sure two people living together in a same sex partnership are going to make soybean prices go to hell...or maybe we'll see chapters of "log cabin famers" pop up.)

Besides, the board is being somewhat disingenuous when they say it's based on their policy. Their policy states, "We are opposed to the cloning of human beings.
We support adult stem cell research. We are opposed to the creation and use of
human embryos or blastocysts for research purposes in which they are destroyed,
discarded or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death." Well, embryos used in stem cell research were not created and used for the purposes of research. Note that their policy does not say created OR used, it says created AND used, which links the two verbs together. Those embryos were created for in vitro fertilization, not for research.

Finally, Amendment 2 states it is illegal to clone a human being in Missouri right in the text of the amendment. SCNT is not "cloning a human being." It is putting your DNA in an empty egg and growing uncommitted stem cells when then can be manipulated to produce cells of one particular cell line. The FB Board is just espousing their GOP leanings while hiding behind their delegates....which gets back to my original statement. FB needs to mind the business of farmers and farming, not spend their time peeking under people's beds and practicing medicine. Farmers, ranchers, and rural folk would be much better served.