Drought Relief Dollars & Fair Season Soon

Drought Relief Dollars & Fair Season Soon. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

It won't be long now until fair season gets underway in the northwest. Besides eating too much or getting too much sun there is also a risk for picking up an infectious disease, especially for the livestock. Dr. Ryan Scholz, district veterinarian with the Oregon Department of Agriculture says people showing livestock need to be aware.

SCHOLZ:  You are never going to prevent all risk, but biosecurity really is just the common sense approach that you can take to mitigate that risk, to lessen the risk of your animals being exposed to things and lessen the risk of you taking those back to your farm and herds at home. The two main ways that we see diseases spread is direct contact, animal to animal, but also indirect contact through the owners, through clothing, through boots, through buckets, through halters– anything that touches animals.

Washington state has made drought relief money available as hardships from water shortages really begin to mount for farms and fish. With a $16 million appropriation from the Legislature, the Washington Department of Ecology is accepting  grant applications for public projects to help relieve hardships arising from the drought. These funds can be used over the next two years to help protect public health and safety from effects of the drought, and reduce economic or environmental impacts from water shortages.

That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.