Proclamation 5834—National Dairy Goat Awareness Week, 1988

For many centuries, dating perhaps to prehistoric times, dairy goats have provided mankind with a reliable and abundant source of milk and milk products, meat, and clothing. Here in the United States, goats have been valued throughout our history primarily as dairy animals. Because of their ability to thrive in either lush or arid country, efficiently converting a wide variety of vegetation into nutritious milk and meat, these animals often accompanied American pioneer families in the days of westward expansion. Goats have long been a part of the typical mix of animals on farms in every region of the United States.

Today, among the contributions of dairy goat farming to our Nation's economy is an impressive array of dairy products. The interest of both domestic and foreign consumers in U.S. domestic goat cheeses, or Chevre, continues to increase, as does awareness of all dairy goat products. These trends deserve every encouragement.

The Congress, by House Joint Resolution 423, has designated the period beginning the second Saturday and ending the third Saturday of June 1988 as "National Dairy Goat Awareness Week" and has authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation in its observance.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the period beginning the second Saturday and ending the third Saturday of June 1988 as National Dairy Goat Awareness Week. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this week with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this seventeenth day of June, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twelfth.

RONALD REAGAN