In Nebraska, the legislature’s appropriations committee is heard testimony Friday on proposed cuts to the Department of Agriculture’s budget. The legislature is meeting in special session to deal with the state’s 334 million dollar budget shortfall.
One of the
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proposals is to take money from special cash funds coordinated by the Bureau of Animal Industries. Some of those funds are used to deal with emergency disease outbreaks in livestock. In his testimony, Nebraska Pork Producers Association executive director Larry Sitzman criticized the proposal.
“You’ve all heard of H1N1,” Sitzman said. “Not if, but when, H1N1 hits a swine farm in this state, who is going to be able to respond if you take the cash funds from BAI—and they don’t have inspectors to go out and test, certify, verify and institute movement control?”
And Sitzman said that could lead to even bigger problems for the state’s livestock industry.
“What happens if we have a major foreign animal (disease) outbreak in this state and we cannot have the people or funds to respond to it,” he said. “I’ll tell you what will happen—we will lose state certification, our packers will be in dire trouble, and we will lose foreign markets.”
Sitzman said raiding the special cash funds would cause additional fees to be levied. “Now I’ve heard a lot of talk in the past few weeks about ‘no new taxes’,” he said. “(If) you take these funds that have been developed and paid specifically in fees by individuals for these respective cash funds, you’re taking new taxes out of them and putting them into the general fund.”
Sitzman also served as Nebraska director of agriculture from 1991 to 1999.
AUDIO: Excerpts from Larry Sitzman’s testimony (1 min MP3)
Terry James of the Nebraska Radio Network also contributed to this story.
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