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Indiana lawmakers advance bill to increase CFO inspections

A bill to increase confined livestock farm inspections has advanced in the Indiana State Senate.

Executive director of Indiana Pork Josh Trenary says Senate Bill 193, proposed by Senator Niemeyer, would require two state inspections every five years. The organization is concerned the quality of inspections would suffer from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management not budgeting for new hires.

“That either means that the inspectors that they have aren’t fully deployed, which isn’t a good use of resources, or it means the inspectors are fully deployed, but they’re using their discretion to prioritize on what sites to visit based on certain risk factors,” he says.

He tells Brownfield, “If they have to shift their focus to meet a statutory requirement, they’re going to be doing less of those risk-based inspections in order to comply with some arbitrary blanket statutory requirement. That’s a concern for us from an environmental standpoint.”

Trenary says any changes in inspections will add additional expenses for farmers in an already challenging ag environment.

AUDIO: Josh Trenary, Indiana Pork