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Wisconsin’s swine health and water proposals approved at NASDA meeting

Wisconsin’s ag secretary says his agency’s swine health proposal was one of two Wisconsin initiatives supported by the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture this week.  Randy Romanski says winter policy meeting delegates support asking USDA to change how states respond to pigs with lesions.  “The first policy item that we submitted requests that USDA sets aside resources to reduce the incidents of swine lesions at slaughter, develop rapid methods to rule out foot and mouth disease, and develop resources to accelerate response to swine lesions.”

Romanski says the states want USDA to make the changes to improve how a potential animal health issue is handled.  “We want to make sure that food and mouth disease could be ruled out as soon as possible, and then also not utilize as many resources that are currently in place to set aside those animals and move them through the process as quickly as possible.”

Another Wisconsin initiative that had multi-state support relates to the Food Safety and Modernization Act.  Romanski says their proposal asks USDA to develop an offline tool for pre-harvest agricultural water assessments for the Plain community and other producers with no technology capabilities.