State derails farm registration program
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By Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau - Published: August 18, 2006
MONTPELIER — The state's controversial mandatory farm registration program is effectively dead, or at least in a coma.
Secretary of Agriculture Steve Kerr told a crowd of nearly 100 at a Montpelier hearing Thursday that the agency would let its proposed rule that would require those keeping livestock to register with the state to expire.
His agency likely will begin working on a new program to aid in disease management sometime in the next few months, but that proposal could be different in several key aspects, in part because of objections by small farmers and activists.
"The concept was grounded in sharing information with the feds," Kerr said. "Obviously that is out the window."
When a new program is devised it also will go through a series of public hearings like those which have just concluded, he said.
Most of the roughly two dozen people who spoke at the final public hearing on the proposed rule Thursday vigorously opposed it. Speakers called it unconstitutional, an invasion of privacy and the first step toward a federal program to identify and track individual animals.
Among them were Larry and Linda Faillace of East Warren, whose sheep flock was destroyed by federal authorities who suspected the animals had scrapie.
Their participation in the scrapie control program aided that action, and federal authorities have yet to produce test results showing the sheep ever had the illness, said Linda Faillace. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has denied that is the case in the past.
The family now is in a lawsuit against the federal government over the matter, Faillace added.
"It's time our government listens to the people of Vermont, not federal authorities," she said.
State officials decided this week to effectively drop the rule requiring farm registration after USDA officials said they could not guarantee that data collected by the state and shared with federal authorities would not be released publicly, Kerr said.
But the potential dangers of avian influenza and other animal diseases like hoof and mouth disease and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or mad cow disease remain real, Kerr said.
That means the state will start work on a new proposal, perhaps a registry independent of the federal system or one that exempts some small livestock operations that do not frequently move or add animals and are therefore a lower risk, he said.
That does little to soothe the fears of those objecting to the program at the meeting in the Pavilion office building.
In the case of her sheep federal authorities quickly took over from the state and would just as easily take over the state registry if there was a disease outbreak, Faillace said.
Karl Hammer, who raises 1,500 free-range chickens as part of his composting operation, said state officials should be protecting farmers from the federal authorities — not helping them.
"I would expect our Agency of Agriculture to defend our sovereignty from the federal Department of Agriculture," he said.
It may be some time before the question about the privacy of the federal database is answered.
"USDA is investigating various options to protect the confidentiality of the information," said Larry Cooper, a spokesman with the agency. "The national repositories will include information only for animal and disease tracking purposes. Proprietary production data will remain in private databases."
But that may be of little comfort to the Vermonters who oppose the idea of registering their farms.
And it may be years before the question is settled at to whether the federal database can be opened through a freedom of information request — probably in court, Kerr said.
However, the state should not wait until that problem is straightened out to begin work on its own program, Kerr said.
Several members of the audience said they suspected political, rather than privacy, concerns for shelving the proposed rule and, presumably, opposition to it. That is something officials in the administration of Gov. James Douglas have said is untrue, especially given that some version of the program still is in the works.
Scudder Parker, the Democratic candidate for governor, also testified against the proposed rule at Thursday's hearing.
The rule "as proposed represents an unwarranted intrusion into farmer's lives," he said. "The program should be wholly abandoned."
Parker echoed many of those objecting to the registration program by saying that it endangered rather than strengthened local food production.
But not everyone at the hearing opposed the rule.
Julie Smith, an assistant professor with the University of Vermont's Agriculture Extension service, said the registration rule is warranted.
"I am disappointed we are not further along in Vermont in protecting our livestock," she said.
Many dairy farmers already provide herd records to the state and have little objection to the proposed rule. And dealing with diseases like Brucellosis in the past has shown the need for such a system, state agriculture officials said.
But more prevalent at the hearing were voices of those, like Fletcher Dean, a board member of Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, who said the rule is the result of "exaggerated fear" spread by the federal government about diseases like avian influenza.
"This will only serve to drive more family farms out of business, exactly the opposite of what Vermont needs," he said.
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