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Freedom to operate important to pork industry

The president of the National Pork Producers Council says freedom to operate is the biggest challenge facing the nation’s pork producers.

“If the pigs do well, we do well and that’s what drives us,” he says. “We need that choice.”

Scott Hays tells Brownfield federal and state regulations, including the Waters of the United States rule, makes farming more difficult.

“WOTUS is like that bad penny that keeps showing up. We used to get laws or rules and that was the end of it and now, we don’t know until the judges get done with it, which is unfortunate,” he says. “It makes it hard to know what we can or can’t do on the farm.”

A ruling on WOTUS from the U.S. Supreme Court for Sackett vs. EPA is still pending. Hays farms in northeastern Missouri and will be the president of NPPC for the next year.