from USA Today Online, September 17, 1998:
Slightly off center ...
Udderly stinky issue in Dairyland
MADISON, Wis. - There are those in the state of Wisconsin - America's Dairyland - who are mighty bothered about cow gas. Yep, cow gas. A television ad for U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann, a Republican running for U.S. Senate, has made it a campaign issue. In his ad featuring the noises of cow flatulence, Neumann attacks incumbent Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold for supporting a government-financed study on the subject. ''This smelled like government waste to me so I wrote a bill that killed the funding of this ridiculous program,'' Neumann says. ''Feingold doesn't get it.'' Feingold's campaign manager, Mike Wittenwyler, responded that for Neumann ''to imply that Senator Feingold supports this obscure cow gas study is 'udderly' ridiculous.'' Wittenwyler said Feingold did vote against legislation that would've cut funding for such a study, but because of what else was in the amendment. Scientists have studied how cows and other cud-chewing animals digest their feed because methane gas is produced during digestion the cows emit by belching. The methane produced by more than a billion cattle around the world is said to be a factor in the Earth-warming greenhouse effect.
