14 CapitalPress.com
August 21, 2015
Inspectors’ challenge to
poultry rules dismissed
‘A single El Nino year is unlikely
to erase four years of drought’
EL Nino from Page 1
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
A lawsuit filed by federal
meat inspectors that alleged
new USDA poultry inspection
rules are unlawful has been
dismissed by a federal judge.
The case is the second le-
gal challenge against the reg-
ulations to be thrown out of
court this year.
Under the new rules,
which USDA approved in
2014, fewer inspectors are as-
signed to visually examining
carcasses and the speed of in-
spections is increased.
The revised National Poul-
try Inspection System regula-
tions allow more screening to
conducted by slaughterhouse
employees, while federal in-
spectors are geared toward
preventing contamination.
However, the union repre-
senting inspectors claimed the
changes would reduce food
safety and make consumers
— including inspectors —
more susceptible to disease
from eating chicken.
U.S. District Judge Ketan-
ji Jackson has found that the
Courtesy of Alice Welch, USDA
U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service
inspectors examine chickens in 2008 at the Holmes poultry slaugh-
terhouse in Nixon, Texas.
plaintiffs failed to show they
have the legal standing to op-
pose the regulations in federal
court.
The inspectors haven’t
proved that increased slaugh-
ter line speeds and other
provisions will cause an in-
creased risk of foodborne ill-
ness among consumers, Jack-
son said.
“In short, plaintiffs have
provided no concrete evi-
Capital Press
SUN VALLEY, Idaho —
Following state-regulated nu-
trient management plans didn’t
save five Washington dairies
from Environmental Protection
Agency action and an environ-
mental lawsuit that resulted in
stringent new protocols, costly
environmental upgrades and
other mitigation actions.
That should be a warning to
all dairymen that following cur-
rent standards might not protect
them from similar EPA actions
and lawsuits, according to a
panel discussing the repercus-
sions of the Yakima, Wash., case
at the Idaho Milk Processors
Association annual conference
last week.
Those Washington dairy
operators are multi-generation
dairy families and good people,
not outliers, said attorney Deb
Kristensen of Givens Pursley,
lead counsel for one of the dair-
ies. They are committed to sus-
tainability and subject to nutri-
ent management plans inspected
by the Washington State Depart-
ment of Agriculture.
They are more like every
other dairy than different, said
former Darigold attorney Steve
Row, president and CEO of
Newtrient LLC — a fledgling
company focused on renewable
energy and nutrient capture and
trading.
The dairies’ problems began
with a 2008 local newspaper se-
ries on the presence of nitrates in
the groundwater. It was followed
by a flawed 2009 EPA study that
ignored the many reasons for el-
evated nitrate levels and targeted
the dairies, Kristensen said.
That resulted in a 2013
EPA-negotiated consent agree-
ment with the dairies under the
threat of a Safe Drinking Water
action. One dairy couldn’t afford
to comply, sold its cows and went
out of business, she said.
EPA’s information was being
provided free of charge to envi-
ronmentalists, and two groups
sued the dairies in 2013 alleging
groundwater contamination in
violation of the Resource Con-
servation and Recovery Act,
which regulates hazardous and
solid waste, she said.
In the law’s nearly 40-year
history, EPA had never brought
a RCRA action against agricul-
ture, as it doesn’t apply to waste
returned to the soil as fertilizer,
she said.
In the last several years,
environmental groups have at-
tempted to expand RCRA to
agriculture, but Judge Thomas
Rice’s ruling in January against
one of the dairies, Cow Palace,
Services & Supplies
In addition, past years were
cooler than the temperatures
that California has been
experiencing lately, which
could impact the snow line
for storms that do come this
winter, his office noted.
“California cannot count
on potential El Nino con-
ditions to halt or reverse
drought conditions,” An-
derson said in a statement.
“Historical weather data
shows us that at best, there’s
a 50/50 chance of having a
wetter winter, Unfortunate-
ly, due to shifting climate
patterns, we cannot even be
that sure.”
dence — much less substan-
tial evidence — that the NPIS
rule will actually cause more
adulterated poultry to be re-
leased into the marketplace
than would otherwise be the
case,” she said.
The federal inspectors may
appeal Jackson’s ruling or
try to amend their complaint
to establish standing, among
other options, said Matthew
Milledge, their attorney.
Yakima dairy challenge has
broad implications, experts say
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
stubborn high-pressure ridge
that has diverted storms away
from California and caused
the four-year drought.
“Right now, it’s too soon
to tell which one will win,”
Mead said in an email.
Though growers have held
out hope that a wet winter will
ease drought conditions, it
would take as much as three
times the average annual pre-
cipitation over the next year
to make up the cumulative
deficit of 71.3 inches of rain-
fall in the central Sierra Ne-
vada since 2011, said Kevin
Werner, the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administra-
tion’s director of western re-
gional climate services.
“At this point there’s a lot
of uncertainty,” Werner said.
“A single El Nino year is un-
likely to erase four years of
drought in California.”
State Climatologist Mi-
chael Anderson agrees. He
warns that of the seven times
since 1950 that conditions
pointed to a strong El Nino,
three turned out to be wet
years, one was average and
three were dry, with the 1992
water year perpetuating a
drought.
is the first case where the appli-
cation to manure prevailed in
court, she said.
The judge left a couple of
things to be decided at a trial in
May.
Seeing the writing on the
wall, the dairies settled with
the environmental groups in a
pre-trial agreement that went
even farther than EPA’s consent
agreement, she said.
“It’s just a matter of time
before more pursue similar law-
suits,” she said.
The lawsuits were focused
on nitrates, but it’s not just ni-
trates or manure that will be
affected, it’s also commercial
fertilizers and waste lagoons,
she said.
Brian Oakey, Idaho State
Department of Agriculture
deputy director, said the ruling
could potentially impact state
regulation.
The agency’s goal is to pro-
vide the rules of the road for
nutrient management to protect
surface and ground water, but
the Yakima decision has turned
that on its head, he said.
“Those regulatory standards
now become the floor rather
than the ceiling,” he said.
Nutrient management plans
are based on estimates, but the
Yakima rationale would require
a higher level of precision to
protect dairymen from a similar
outcome, he said.
The court focused on manure
as discarded waste when it was
over applied, stored on unlined
soils and seeped from lagoons
that met National Resource
Conservation Service gold stan-
dards, he said.
AP Photo/Elaine Thompson
Loaded container trucks line up at a gate at the Port of Seattle on Feb. 17. Agricultural exporters worry
that the devaluation of China’s currency will impact their business with China and other Asian nations.
China is small market for Pacific
Northwest soft white wheat
CHINA from Page 1
Soybeans are probably the
largest single U.S. ag com-
modity in volume going into
China, said Glen Squires,
CEO of the Washington Grain
Commission in Spokane.
China is a small market for
Pacific Northwest soft white
wheat, buying only 19,000
tons last year, but it bought
322,000 tons of total U.S.
wheat, mostly hard red spring
wheat out of North Dakota
and Montana, Squires said.
That compares with 3 million
tons that went to Japan, 2.3
million to the Philippines and
1 million each to South Ko-
rea and Taiwan.
The U.S. ships no beef
and very little pork to China
but the big concern is the af-
fect on Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan and the Philippines,
which do buy U.S. meat, said
Joe Schuele, spokesman for
the U.S. Meat Export Feder-
ation in Denver, Colo. It also
could strengthen New Zea-
land and Australia as com-
petitors in meat sales to Asia,
he said.
“The dollar has had a run
of sustained strength, which
has made it more difficult to
export and this makes it a lit-
tle more difficult. It’s some-
thing we are watching very
carefully,” Schuele said.
The Washington apple
industry just regained access
to China for Red and Golden
Delicious apples last Oct. 31
only to be hampered by la-
bor slowdowns at West Coast
ports. In June, the first Wash-
ington Gala apples went to
China under a new agreement
that took years to achieve.
The industry hopes to accel-
erate sales to China shortly
with harvest of the 2015 crop
and hopes for annual sales of
10 million boxes, worth about
$200 million, in a few years.
“We will have to adjust.
There is nothing we can do
about it. A lot of our ship-
pers and marketers are fol-
lowing it closely,” said Chris
Schlect, president of North-
west Horticultural Council in
Yakima.
The bigger concern is
other “potential devaluations
and a spiral of government
actions that don’t serve any-
one’s interests,” he said.
It undoubtedly will be a
big topic of discussion when
Washington apple shippers
go to Asia Fruit Logistica, a
trade show in Hong Kong,
the first week of September,
Schlect said.
West Coast hay exporters
sell a lot to Asia and are wor-
ried about another hit while
they are still trying to sell in-
ventory stacked up from the
port slowdown.
“You can’t have curren-
cies getting weaker — Ja-
pan’s yen and now the yuan
— without it affecting ex-
porters in the U.S.,” said Jeff
Calaway, president of Cal-
away Trading Inc., a major
exporter in Ellensburg, Wash.
Chinese retail and food
service importers were in Or-
egon and Washington visiting
companies from those states
and Idaho the week before
the devaluation, said Andy
Anderson, executive director
of Western U.S. Agricultural
Trade Association in Vancou-
ver, Wash.
The delegation had no clue
the devaluation was coming
and any agreements they
started or signed undoubtedly
are being reviewed, he said.
Powdered milk, yogurt,
cheese, citrus fruit and nuts
all are exported to China, An-
derson said.
“A lot of almonds and pe-
cans in California, Texas and
New Mexico go to China,”
he said. “Pecan growers went
from tearing out orchards to
planting because China is
buying so many.”
Various things may hap-
pen, he said. China may buy
less, U.S. companies may
drop prices, but China won’t
reverse course overnight, he
said.
“It’s a big concern,” he
said. “China is a big market
for a lot of companies.”
2015 Special Section
October 2nd, 2015
Doing Business with the
Ag Community?
On October 2nd, 2015, Capital Press Ag Weekly readers
will find labor and money saving tips in the
2015 Winter Services & Supplies Special Section.
Place an ad in this Special Section and reach Capital Press
readers online and in the newspaper with YOUR
services and supplies!
Content will include: Online Agribusiness, Equipment,
Maintenance, New Products, Consulting & Planning Services
and much more!
Contact us by Sept. 4th to advertise
your product or service!
(503) 364-4798 of (800) 882-6789
FAX (503) 364-2692 or (503) 370-4383
P.O. Box 2048 • Salem, OR 97308
www.CapitalPress.com
ROP-32-4-4/#13
34-7/#4N