Public Disclosure of Manure

 When does public disclosure, the right to know, become too much information. Example…how much manure is on your property? I’m David Sparks and we’ll take on this challenging question in a minute. A bill recently heard in the Senate Agricultural Affairs Committee proposed that nutrient management plans of individual CAFOs be kept confidential between the business and the state and prevent the public from seeing what CAFOs or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations otherwise called feed lots are doing in their Idaho State Department of Agriculture inspections.

 Environmentalists and conservation groups who see the potential for livestock waste to pose a risk because it could leach into groundwater, streams or irrigation canals and increase the levels of bacteria, nitrates and ammonia want the information to be public. Ranchers and CAFO Operators say the information is proprietary. Rick Stott, a representative of the Idaho Cattle Association, has an interesting perspective: “Fundamentally what we’re talking about is there are trade secrets that are important for any business. I often ask the question how many other businesses do you know that are required to publicly disclose how much inventory they have in their warehouses and there isn’t one. Yet the feedlots are required to disclose not only how many cattle that they have which is inventory, but also how much other natural resources like manure, fertilizer, natural composts, those kinds of things, all of which are inventory items.”

 Part of the problem with making decisions on issues such as this are that there are strong arguments for each side.