11/28/06 Cattle and Ecology defend CAFO permit

Washington Ag November 28, 2006 They say politics makes strange bedfellows but so can legal challenges. The Washington Cattle Feeders Association and the Washington State Department of Ecology are on the same side in a challenge to Ecology's permit for confined animal feeding operations. David Secrist of El Oro Cattle Feeders made a short presentation on the issue at the Washington Cattlemen's Association convention earlier this month. He said the permit is being challenged by the Western Environmental Law Center based in Oregon. Secrist: "The bottom line is in developing this permit representatives of all the industry including the cow-calf sector including the WCA were there to put this thing together. It is not great. It is not perfect but we can live with it. And what we don't want to happen is for some lawyers out of Portland to reopen our permit and be involved in redoing it. And that is what would happen if we did not support the DOE." Most cow-calf operators aren't permitted operations but Secrist said; Secrist: "If this suit is successful they will take, for one thing it will take confined animal feeding down to 200 head so a lot of you that wean your calves at home would have to have a permit to do so." I'm Bob Hoff.