Yesterday DATCP Secretary-Designee Brad Pfaff announced that the agency had decided not to bring ATCP 51, its proposed updates to the state's livestock siting regulations, to the DATCP board for a final vote. This comes after hundreds of citizens and farmers attended public hearings to submit feedback on the rules.
Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden has issued the following response:
"Wisconsin Farmers Union urges DATCP and Secretary-Designee Pfaff to reverse course immediately and bring the ATCP 51 rule revisions to a vote before the DATCP board next Thursday. To scrap the rules now is to ignore the input of hundreds of citizens who participated in the public comment process, not to mention the hundreds of hours invested by technical review committee members in 2010, 2014, and again in 2018 to make science-based recommendations for improving the rules. To abandon the revisions now at the 11th hour is a colossal waste of government resources. It's time for these rules to go forward."
WFU supports periodic and substantive changes to these rules with the benefit of Technical Committee recommendations, as parts of the existing rules are outdated, unworkable, and contrary to the available science.
