The Legislature’s agriculture committee has backed off plans to recommend rules this session on the tagging of farm animals to help track such diseases as mad cow – a case of which was just confirmed in Alabama – after protestors threw manure at state agriculture officials during a hearing in Ellsworth recently.
That vote, which was 10 to 2, has divided the chairmen on the Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee over whether it sends the right message.
Rep. John Piotti, D-Unity, the House chairman, said, “it was clear after this weekend that the department has not done a very good job on outreach,” in terms of explaining the proposed rules to the public. He wants everything to slow down to give the public, particularly small farmers, time to catch up with what regulators have in mind.
Sen. John Nutting, D-Androscoggin, the Senate co-chairman of the committee, said he voted against backing off from rule changes now for two reasons.
“I didn’t want to send a message to terrorists,” that their tactics worked, he said, and a cow in Alabama has just tested positive for mad cow disease.
“We don’t have a tracking system in the United States,” he said, to figure out where the cow was born and raised and what other animals it had come in contact with. He would like to see Maine out in front on the issue, and “have the federal government adopt Maine’s plans rather than give us a bureaucratic solution from the top.”
The committee was in the process of reviewing state Department of Agriculture guidelines on how to tag and track livestock and poultry in case of a disease outbreak. Piotti said Maine wants to be ahead of U.S. Department of Agriculture rules that are expected to go into effect in 2008.
“We wanted to move ahead, because we wanted to be out in front of the feds,” he said, to give the state more flexibility.
Representatives of the state Department of Agriculture were out explaining those rules on Saturday at an informational meeting in Ellsworth when two protestors threw aluminum pie tins of manure and wood shavings at them.
Piotti said the attacks took the department and committee by surprise, since the Farm Bureau and the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association had supported the rules changes at a public hearing.
“We thought there was nothing going on,” in terms of opposition, Piotti said.
As a result of the protests, Piotti said the majority of his committee decided to put the rules on hold for now and pass a resolve “directing the Department of Agriculture to do more outreach” and then come back in January with a proposal.
The committee already had amended the rules to exclude non-commercial farm operations – such as a family raising chickens for its own use – and the aquaculture industry.
“It seemed ridiculous,” he said, “to tag every oyster with a 75-cent tag,” when the oysters themselves only sell for 50-cents a piece.
Piotti said he doesn’t want to send the wrong message to whomever attacked the state officials in Ellsworth, but based on his committee’s vote “most of us feel there is a truly legitimate need for additional outreach.”
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