Taking pictures of cows is a food security issue?

[The Straight Story]

Photog up in air lands - in area jail
Trespass on Finney land cited; man paragliding for National Geographic.

GARDEN CITY - An early-morning photo shoot across a landscape of cattle landed a world-renowned freelance photographer for National Geographic in jail.

...

Steinmetz is known for photographing the world's deserts while piloting a motorized paraglider, which resembles a lawn chair with a motor behind the seat and a parachute on top for sailing through the air. Many of his photographs have landed in National Geographic magazine, including a series depicting post-Gadhafi Libya.

In that case, according to Steinmetz's website, he got an "unusual permit to fly his motorized paraglider over parts of the country that had been impossible four years earlier."

However, this time, Finney County Sheriff Kevin Bascue said, Steinmetz and Zhang didn't have permission to be on the private property where the paraglider launched. Nor did they tell anyone they were going to be taking photos from the air over a county feedlot filled with thousands of cattle, causing concern from industry officials that it could be a potential food security issue.

...

It does bring up an issue of what is trespassing in the air, said Kansas Livestock Association attorney Aaron Popelka.

After all, hundreds of thousands of cattle are fattening in a 100-mile radius around Garden City and such incidents could turn into a food security issue - especially in an era where agri-terrorism is a threat.

Steinmetz was circling around the feedlot and taking photographs - not flying straight across it, Popelka said. Criminal statute, however, Popelka said, doesn't define how far land goes - in this case, how far up. Moreover, while Congress has authorized flights and air travel, the photographer wasn't engaging in air travel to pass through on a public air highway.


http://hutchnews.com/Todaystop/Nat--Geographic-photog-arrested-in-GC

[AZ Progressive]

1. Seriously, American corporations and the rest of America's elite are bullshit pioneers

They out to write the definitive textbook on bullshitting.