07/08/05 State takes over Food Quality Assurance

The state of Idaho once again has control over the Food Quality Assurance Laboratory in Twin Falls. The state Department of Agriculture had given up control of the lab in the mid 90's but it was the University of Idaho take picked up the ball in 1997 and ran the lab's daily operations until earlier this month. State representative Darrell Bolz is chairman of the commission that oversees lab operations. BOLZ "It started out being part of the Department of Ag and I really think that's where it belongs quite frankly." He says it didn't make a lot of sense to run the 80 thousand dollars in state funding through the Department of Agriculture and then send it to the University of Idaho. BOLZ "We still maintain a relationship with the University of Idaho. It will allow that they will still have the supervisory role in terms of the quality assurance. In other words making sure that the lab follows the strictest requirements as far as maintaining lab compliance and this type of situation but administratively as far as the personnel and that type of thing the lab will be under the Department of Ag." Which means the half dozen lab employees are now work for the state Department of Ag. The state only provides about one quarter of the lab's annual operating budget of 320 thousand dollars. The rest of the money comes from various commodity commissions and groups. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott