Key Congressman Uncertain on USDA's Requested Lacey Act Plus-Up
Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies, on March 3 said (here) he is reluctant to support the Agriculture Department’s request for a $4.5 million increase in Lacey Act enforcement funding for fiscal 2017. “I have trouble supporting such an increase at the expense of higher priority and more effective animal and plant health programs, many of which the agency has proposed to decrease,” Aderholt said during a subcommittee hearing on USDA’s fiscal 2017 budget request for its Marketing and Regulatory Programs. “It is this subcommittee’s responsibility to ensure that the additional funds being requested for several initiatives are not to the detriment of critical and successful programs.” The additional funds would be used to support electronic filing of Lacey Act declarations, providing law enforcement agencies improved access to declarations and helping prevent the importation of products derived from illegally harvested timber (see 1602100038).
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During the hearing, Animal Plant Health Inspection Service Administrator Kevin Shea said his agency is ramping up efforts to work with different countries to draw disease-related restriction lines on U.S. poultry products more narrowly, after several countries recently cut off “all U.S. poultry, from Alabama to California.” This happened even though widespread avian flu outbreaks affected chickens only in Iowa and Minnesota, Shea said.
The Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, as part of its fiscal 2017 budget request (here), asked that Congress waive the cap on administrative costs allowed to draw money collected from inspection and weighing user fees. GIPSA Administrator Larry Mitchell during the hearing said that nixing the cap is needed to ensure that the agency has enough flexibility to pay staff during years of high exports. “In a strong year such as last year, we had record grain exports,” Mitchell said. “It got pretty thin at times on how I could make sure we have the proper people in the proper place at the right time.”