House Agriculture, Forestry & Economic Development Committee
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Bills discussed (3)
| Bill | Title | Sponsor | Status |
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HB1478
· 4 mentions in chapter, transcript
Matched: “HB1478”
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Pre-2017 bill | ||
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HB1536
· 1 mention in transcript
Matched: “…members, Representative Alexander, who is going to present House Bill 1536, likely on Friday,”
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Pre-2017 bill | ||
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HB2024
· 1 mention in chapter
Matched: “HB2024”
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Pre-2017 bill |
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We have the Sloan Hendricks government class, which is the guest of Representative Ratliff with us today. Welcome to the House Agriculture Committee. Additionally, members, Representative Alexander, who is going to present House Bill 1536, likely on Friday,
had asked that we go ahead and distribute the handout, just so you'll have time to review that prior to that bill being presented.
As the members are aware, we have a special order of business today on House Bill 1478. For informational purposes, on the
agenda, there was a typographical error that referred to the 14th, but I think it's pretty clear that everybody knew that this was going to be taken up today by the attendance of the audience, and likewise, I believe I announced it multiple times in several committee meetings preceding
this. So without objection, we are going to proceed with the special order of business today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Representative McCrary, just for a second, we're taking up House Bill 1478.
Are there any amendments to this bill?
If not, Representative McCrary, you're recognized to present House Bill 1478. Thank you. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
everybody being here and members.
I want to open by telling everyone here who supports this bill. and obviously the
Game and Fish Commission support
it, but also the Arkansas Cattlemen's Association, the Arkansas Foresters Association, Farm Bureau, Department of Agriculture, Livestock and Poultry, and the Arkansas Pork Producers Association. So everybody that has a vested interest in this supports this bill
and they support it strongly. Most of them are signed up
to speak for the bill. So I wanted you to know that before I got in there. Now, the first thing I'd like to do is just briefly explain the bill again. I know that most of you have read it several
times. And it does exactly what it says. It amends the definition of a feral hog, just broadening and clarifying that.
and it regulates the capture, killing, and transporting of feral hogs, and it increases the penalty for releasing them into the wild. So that's it in the short run, but
I would like to expand that just a little bit. Not going into the definition,
because I think that's pretty clear with everybody, but concerning the capture and killing of feral hogs, You know, if it's on your property, your lease, you can do just about anything you want to.
Hopefully, you'll remove as many as you can. If you're on Game and Fish property, obviously, you have to go by their rules and have a hunting license. And then the third part, I'm going through Section 2. The third part of Section 2, or the final part of it, is a feral hog captured by any means shall be killed immediately. And we're very aware that that's where the rub comes in. But I want you to know, well, I need to go through the bill before I comment on it. Thank you.
The release of feral hogs in the wild, that's the third one, and it's pretty well already the law. You can't release feral hogs. You can't now, and
certainly you can't under this bill. and it has a felony. Well, first, I need
to back up. If you transport a feral hog, it's a felony. And if you release hogs on other people's property, it's a felony.
Or it's a, wait, that's a misdemeanor. I'm sorry. I don't want to misrepresent anything. Going on,
just a touch more, the final part of it, it just deals with the fines and the requirement of what goes in that feral hogs have to be killed, and there can be some issues
concerning the equipment. But we'll get into all that discussion shortly. I want to make a couple other comments, and then I would like for these two men that are up here that are going to help with this to make a comment, an opening comment or two. And one is that this is a tremendous issue in our forest and in our pastures, our row crops. Everybody that has anything to do with this are not for feral hogs being transported and moved into their area.
The disease is quite an issue here, and we have those that will speak to it. And then finally, it's doing a tremendous amount of damage to our wildlife and to our native plants. When they get thick enough and get in there, I mean, you can forget your turkeys, forget anything that nests on the ground, bird or animal, if they can get a hold of it. So you have those issues, too.
And they're only going to get worse, and they're going to explode. I think everybody here knows that, and I may be corrected, but that it's normally two letters a year from 6 to 10, and in nine months they can reproduce so you can see how it can grow. So my final comment before I, it would be that we are not trying to hurt hog hunting in Arkansas, nor are we trying to put anyone out of business. And with that, Mr. Speaker, I'd like for the two gentlemen to my left to introduce
themselves and make some opening comments. Thank you,
Representative McCreary. Gentlemen, you were recognized for comments. Please
Speaker 15
6:42
introduce yourself to the committee. I'm Mike Knadel. I'm the director of the Arkansas Game and Fish, and with me today I have Chief of Wildlife Management, David Goad. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, committee members. Before we begin, there's some pamphlets that if we could hand out to each committee member. While we're getting into that, I want to make myself very clear as director of the Arkansas
game and fish that our intent is in no way with this bill to put anybody out of business. The way I understand it from livestock and poultry regulations, if these hog ranches, the ones that are selling the hunts, there is a way that they can come into compliance and be legal and continue on with the hog hunts. right into, I spent 23 years as a wildlife officer in the field in southern Arkansas
right below the county they call Hogskin County. So I have a lot of on the ground knowledge about hogs and hog hunting and the damage that they can do. In the late 80s, early 90s, predominantly the only place you've seen feral hogs was kind of in the bottom land. As timber practices changed, you started seeing the hogs show up, and I think maybe the deer feeders and things like that probably attributed some to the hogs moving up in the pine timber.
But I can tell you that these hogs, before I left the field and lost my mind and decided to join administration in Little Rock, I can tell you for sure that they were being transported all over the place in different areas to, quote, be stopped most of the time by individuals or family members that enjoyed hog hunting. I want to make myself very clear I'm not against hog hunting. We want them all, you know, if we could get rid of the last one, I wish we could because
I see the damage that they do to our turkey population, our quail population, as Representative McCrary says the native grasses, and right before I left the field and came to Little Rock, one of the things I noticed when the timber companies would clear cut and plant these small pine seedlings, the hogs were moving in on them, so they're doing a tremendous amount of damage to the timber industry too. I'll close by saying we don't want to put anybody out of business.
To put this in perspective, last year, the estimate of damage in Texas was $52 million. The state of Texas spent $7 million trying to eradicate hogs. And if we do not do something with them, we're going to be in the same boat, and it's going to cost us a lot of money. Thank you. You're recognized for
comment. Good morning, Mr. Chair, committee members.
Speaker 23
9:44
My name is David Goad. I'm Chief of the Wildlife Division for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
I'm one of 50 wildlife chiefs across the United States and one of 16 in the southeastern states that we are actually a member of an association. And hogs are more prevalent in the southeast, I believe, than anywhere else, and each state wildlife chief is battling these just as we are with different means. What I'd like to tell you all today, and not trying to be redundant with what our director has told you, is that my job is, first and foremost, is to take care of the wildlife resources of the state of Arkansas.
I think the good Lord put me here to do the things that I do. And I guess I better pause just a second and say I can be a little bit overzealous because I'm very passionate. And if I come across that way, I certainly don't intend to. But this is near and dear to me, the things that we're doing today. And it's not just the things for today, folks. It's for our kids and grandkids. And feral hogs are discouraged of the earth. There's no place here. They are an exotic invasive, and we've got to get a handle on them quickly.
You know that we get all kinds of questions about, well, can you eat them? Sure you can if you cook them properly. But on average, about 10% of the feral hog population is positive for either one or two diseases, either pseudorabies or swine brucellosis. And in southwest Arkansas, where hogs are more prevalent, especially around the Felsenthal National Wildlife Refuge, that disease rate is up in the 35% range. Humans can contact swine brucellosis. As a matter of fact, I've known some folks that have had it, and I honestly thought they
were going to die. They had undulant fever. You can treat the symptoms, it goes away, but it comes back. I think there's a case or two reported every year, and I know because of HIPAA, we can't say a whole lot about it, but it's my understanding that there's a young man that's being treated for it today. So, long story short, the things that we manage, our natural resources, whether it's our habitat or the species that live there, hogs are a detriment to it. And they're causing thousands of dollars annually to our levees, on our water control levees for our
waterfowl areas. The Mississippi River down in southeast Arkansas, the levee, hogs are causing a ton of damage down there. We get another flood like we had in the great flood of 2011. We could see huge issues with levies. Golf courses, they're getting hit by cars almost daily now. I'm just not sure what else that I could tell you that you wouldn't understand. But it's just something that we've got to do away with. We've got to do everything we can do.
We've got to close every loophole that we can have because if we can't stop the release and transport of them, we're going to never, ever be able to get rid of them. I don't care how many you catch and kill, you're never going to get rid of them. So I would be more than glad to take any questions and try to answer anything, and I appreciate you listening to
me. Representative Gillum, you're recognized for a question. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman. I think this probably would go towards the director maybe more than anybody else.
In your opening remarks, you mentioned,
I guess several times even in your closing, too, that you were not out to actually put anybody out of business, and I appreciate that sentiment very well. It seems to me, though, that these operations that are existing right now, if that's our case, that we're not trying to put them out of business and they're actually trying to help solve this problem, that we might grandfather those people in to this situation. And then you've got more people actually trying to kill these hogs,
which I think would maybe accomplish our goals. And I just was wondering if you'd give any thought to actually just grandfathering these people in and
using them as allies in this fight
Speaker 15
13:52
against these hogs. Representative Gilliam, we have, but the fact remains that they're still in violation of livestock and poultry regs. I'll read you something under enforcement. Due to the classification of feral hogs as domestic livestock, the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission had ultimate jurisdiction in enforcement of feral hog regulations.
Historically, the ALPC has employed livestock compliance officers that had the authority to impose penalties for violations involving feral hogs. This enforcement authority has since been dissolved, and illegal activities involving feral hogs occur without consequence. That's kind of our issue here. I really don't want the Arkansas Game and Fish to have to get in the business of managing hogs
and stuff like that from the perspective of the buy and sell of them, if that makes sense to you. But the Livestock and Poultry Commission doesn't have the resources to police these kind of things. But to answer your question maybe more accurately, the operations could go, And as long as those, if they have their herd tested for pseudorabies and swine brucellosis and they test okay, then they're good to go.
They may have to, if some of them test hot, and I would venture to say that they would for either one of those diseases, what they're going to have to do is maybe go to a domestic operation somewhere and buy some hogs and put inside their enclosure, and then they would be, that are tested and certified, they'd be perfectly legal. They may have to whip them with a stick two or three times a week and make them wild, but I can assure you that's a joke.
But you chase a hog a couple times with a dog, and they turn wild pretty quick, turn feral. Okay, thank you. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman. Representative Link, you're recognized for a question. Are feral
hogs considered wildlife? No, sir, they're not. They're considered domestic? No, sir. They're considered feral, which is wild. Okay.
So they're not wildlife, but they're not domestic. They're wild. Right. Amendment 35 paints with an incredibly broad brush. So why are you not able to handle this within your agency?
Speaker 15
16:32
Why are we writing legislation? Because they have never been declared wildlife. And I'm going to defer to David, which
Speaker 20
16:38
has a lot more firsthand knowledge of the history of that. Thank
Speaker 23
16:44
you. Representative Blink, they are not a native species in the state of Arkansas.
They are an exotic. They were brought over here by European Settlement. And so, essentially, we're not charged under Amendment 35 to manage exotics, nor do we want to. There's just no good that can come of them, honestly. Okay. That's interesting. So things like
the Asian carp, we have to write legislation. You cannot manage them because they're exotic. My apologies, but I'm not a fish guy, so I'm. Well, I mean, that's exotic, so I'm just trying to find out why this is falling under our scope and not yours.
Speaker 20
17:26
The Asian carp, absolutely, we're trying to do some things with them right now, but once
Speaker 15
17:32
again, there's a little bit of difference between the hog and the Asian carp, and there's two different dangers that they pose as being an invasive species. Also, representative link, a few years ago, just a
Speaker 44
17:45
little history, But feral hogs in Arkansas were considered personal property. And if you caught
Speaker 23
17:50
feral hogs on your property, you had to pin them up and you had to advertise it to the local farm store and the newspaper and wherever for a certain amount of time,
maybe a couple weeks, 30 days. And then if nobody claimed them, then you could do with them what you want to. And then there's been a couple of sessions
Speaker 22
18:10
where there's legislation passed that starts to recognize them as a problem. So if
we declared feral hogs as Arkansas wildlife with legislation, all management would then fall underneath game and fish. Is that right? No, sir. We can't do that.
Speaker 49
18:23
No, sir, because of Amendment 35. Okay.
Representative Branscombe, you're recognized for a question. Thank you,
Representative David L. Branscum
Unverified
18:34
Mr. Chair. I know that there's a
Speaker 54
18:38
huge problem. I have a problem, too. I also have a problem with elk in Searcy County, tearing the
Speaker 56
18:43
fences down. So the elk is really, to me, just the biggest problem as the feral hog on a limited basis. But the problem I have is with this particular installation, and I signed on to it because I thought it was a great idea when Representative McCrary brought it to me, but then I've since learned that there are some people that make the living from this,
and I wonder if boys up in my district, if we took the incentive away, if they trap them and they have to kill them right then, then they're telling me that we're just not going to mess with it anymore. So that's the statement. The question I have for you is if this is passed and we do this and this doesn't achieve the goals we want, what is our plan B to get rid of this problem? Well, sir,
Speaker 41
19:30
just to be real blunt with you, I know that there's folks that are killing hogs in the wild
Speaker 23
19:36
and they hunt them and some trap them. But incidental to hunting is a very small take, I mean, anywhere across the country. I don't know how many of them are being trapped. I don't know how many these folks have in their pens because there's no record of it. We have actually just reassigned an employee, and he's working on this full time now. We're employing some new trap systems that have been figured out that we can actually watch them remotely from cameras, and we can actually close the trap.
The intent is not to catch one or two here and one or two there. Hogs run in a group called a sounder, and the intent is to catch the entire sounder. And we bought some of these traps a week or two ago, and we've already been successful in catching one entire sounder. So we're going to expand that out as much as we can. We have AFIS Wildlife Services working for us. They're trapping today. There's a lot of stuff going on out there to try to curtail this problem.
But the biggest problem, sir, is the transport and release of them. Until we can
Speaker 60
20:40
stop that, we can catch all the hogs in the world, and somebody's going to be turning them loose. Well,
Speaker 56
20:47
you know, I don't disagree with you, and I'm far from the goal of the bill, but I don't know if this is the right way to do it. I mean, I don't know. I was hoping you had a plan B. The
Speaker 23
21:00
plan B is not let plan A fail. It's to do everything. I mean, we are committed to this.
Speaker 56
21:08
That's an admirable goal. I mean, a couple weeks ago where I'm from in Marshall, my wife and youngest son were going out in the yard, and when they opened the door I had three boars and a sow and four piglets in my yard. Did you shoot them? Rob shot the sow, yes. But the other one's run off. Well, that's a good
Speaker 39
21:27
point. That's a great point. I'm glad you brought that up because what happens when you start hunting hogs with dogs and actually
Speaker 23
21:34
hunting them individually, you're going to get a couple of them, but you're going to scatter them.
And the intent is to minimize the disturbance and get those sounder groups together and get them all conditioned to bait and then catch in the entire group. We caught last Sunday we killed 30 in two different traps. So it's a very successful way to do it. The Forest Service is with us, the Fish and Wildlife Service, Central Arkansas Water is having problems in their watershed for Lake Maumelle. It's just something that we absolutely have to do. And, again, to echo what the director said, we're not trying to put anybody out of business.
Speaker 56
22:10
That was never an intent. You know, I believe that, and I appreciate that sentiment. But, you know, a lot of times we pass these bills and have underlying consequences that we don't think of until it's already too late. So I'm hoping that we can be out ahead of this train before we do something that was going to, you
Speaker 30
22:29
know, be a detriment to the problem we're trying to solve. Representative Branscombe, if I might add
Speaker 15
22:33
just a little bit to give you an idea, about two weeks ago we received a call from a gentleman over in Springdale. He had just bought 30 feral hogs and was asking, was it legal to transport them?
He had a small hunting lease in Newton County. He told me just south of Eureka Springs. He said, can I carry those hogs over there and turn them loose? And I said, well, right now you can. I said, a couple weeks, maybe not so. But those are the cases where, and I talked to him, and he was very open and candid with me when I got to discuss it with him a little bit, and I asked him what his intent was. He said, well, I just want to put some over there so when we're deer hunting,
Speaker 20
23:15
you know, we might have an opportunity to shoot one every once in a while. And there with the
Speaker 54
23:19
end lies your problem. And I agree. That's the problem. But, you know, how do, you know, and I appreciate, you know, Representative McRae at least bringing this to the forefront so we can have a discussion on it because something has to
be done on it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Ratliff, you're
Representative James Ratliff
Unverified
23:40
recognized for a question. Has Game and Fish thought about a bounty system to see if we can eradicate them faster?
Speaker 69
23:46
Well, sir, there's been bounties. We've heard bounties all of our lives, you know. Years ago,
Speaker 23
23:53
there was a bounty on crows, if you recall that. There's a bounty on beavers today. And bounties typically just don't work. I know when there was a bounty on crows years ago, like Yale County, you had to give them the head, and Pope County, you had to give them the foot. Well, guess what? They got paid twice. Two times. Yeah, and it's just very simple.
Speaker 4
24:18
No, sir. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Representative Jean, you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Representative Lane Jean
Unverified
24:28
Walls, Representative McCray, I appreciate you bringing this bill, and we do support the stopping of transporting hogs from one wild area to the other wild area. But this is the director's question, and I just kind of want to know, do you all have a feel of how many wild hogs are in the state of Arkansas?
Speaker 30
24:50
Representative Gene, I couldn't even begin
Speaker 15
24:53
to tell you. I can tell you from being a field officer, as I stated when I opened up, that as Chief Gold
Speaker 20
25:01
said at one time, I can assure you, we'll never eradicate the hogs. spent most of my career working in what they call Hogskin County, Calhoun County and but I can tell you for sure the southern part of the state where I spent most of my career, they're very abundant
Speaker 23
25:21
What size are deer herd? David, what's it as? Well, there's you know, and that's a good great question, the guesstimate is in the million deer range Do we have as many hogs as we do deer? No, sir, I wouldn't think so. Are we half? A quarter? You know, to answer your question, I don't know. The answer to your question is we don't census them. We're just trying to shoot them. Well, you
Representative Lane Jean
Unverified
25:47
know, for Columbia County, where I'm at, I'm going down to Louisiana line.
At some days, when I bring my .30-30 out, I think we've got
Speaker 23
25:58
think there are places we do. I mean, in pockets we probably do. But to answer your question, how many would we have? And it's a
Speaker 87
26:04
real easy answer. It's just too many. Okay. But we have no idea of how many hogs we have. No, sir. An estimate.
Speaker 39
26:11
No, sir, we don't. And I would like to go back in something that Representative McCrary said.
Speaker 23
26:16
They can have three litters. And by the time the third litter is born, the first litter is already old enough to reproduce.
And also, one thing I would like to say about these operations, we are not trying to put them out of business, But one thing I would say is that, you know, our other commercial operations around the state, like cattle, the cattle farmers have to raise their own. And really that's the answer here. Let these folks raise their own and make sure they're disease-free. The Arc Support Producers Association, Mr. Jerry Masters, is here this morning to tell you that we don't want swine brucellosis in our commercial operations.
And when they do get in there, and they have, it's a total depopulation and quarantine of that area for
Representative Lane Jean
Unverified
27:02
a number of weeks. And calendar year 2012 or your fiscal year, however you all count it, how many hogs did Game and Fish kill last year? Hundreds. Well, like 400? No,
Speaker 4
27:14
no, over 500. Over 500. How many did you trap? Probably 95 or 99 percent of them. We've trapped the biggest most of them. Yes, sir.
Representative Lane Jean
Unverified
27:24
These traps that you've bought, kind of explain how many you bought, how big are they,
Speaker 23
27:34
where have you got them located? They're 30 feet in diameter. They have an 8-foot gate. The gate system works similar to like a key fob. You push the button and the gate falls. It's electronic. We're actually putting together a system now where we can shut that gate with a cell phone. Those that we caught on Cutoff Creek Wildlife Management Area in south Arkansas.
All right. Tell the people where Cutoff Creek is. It's near Monticello, a little bit east of Monticello. You've got one trap there, too. We actually have two traps there. We've got one up on the Pate-Gene River Wildlife Management Area right now. We've got traps on every wildlife management area that
Speaker 69
28:14
has hogs, but not the better ones. So how many total traps did we purchase? I
Speaker 23
28:22
think we probably purchased about a half a dozen of these.
Speaker 22
28:26
So we have six. In the beginning. Yes, sir. We've just started as best we can because we didn't have a hog budget, so we're having to borrow a
Speaker 88
28:36
computer to pay Paul, if you will. Okay. And I haven't looked into your budget line item by line item. Next year, do you all have extra money to eradicate the hogs?
Speaker 23
28:46
Yes, sir. How much and where are you spending this money at? We're working on our budgets right now, And they actually worked on that yesterday. I was working on this, if you will. But I know that our hog eradication coordinator had about $100,000 in his budget.
Now, what he got out of there alive with yesterday, I'm not sure. But we intend to buy a bunch more traps. We intend to use our cell phones to be able to get the photos when the hogs are coming and going and then be able to shut the gates
Speaker 97
29:15
to minimize disturbance. Okay. No further questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
and thank you. Representative Thompson, you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Do we,
Representative Tommy Thompson
Unverified
29:26
when you talk about these hogs are hunted, is it commercial clubs that are hunting them?
Speaker 23
29:32
Yes, sir. There's, and I don't have, I don't know how many there are. Some of them are here, maybe all of them today, but they're catching them out of the wild or buying them from folks that are catching them, turning them loose in their facilities, and then they're charging folks to
Representative Tommy Thompson
Unverified
29:46
come in there and hunt them. Is there any record on how many hogs they actually kill or sell or whatever the term you would use? No, sir, not
Representative Lane Jean
Unverified
29:59
that I'm aware of. So are they allowed to buy deer and sell them?
Speaker 104
30:06
No, sir. Deer or wildlife, sir. do you have a record I didn't have time to read this good brochure by the way it's a very good brochure on how much damage they actually are causing an estimate to field crops my district that's a big issue That combines fall off in holes that they rooted in tractors, and they do tremendous amounts of damage.
Speaker 102
30:44
Is there a record, an estimate as to how much dollar-wise damage they're doing? The Department of
Speaker 23
30:50
Agriculture estimates, you know, across the United States, it's in the billions. And I'm sure in Arkansas, you know, it's nothing like that, but obviously a percentage of it. And you're correct. We get called out to folks with, when corn starts coming up or right after it's planted, they'll go right down the road just as straight as a string, eating the seeds or pulling the seedlings out. So it's going to be in the millions of dollars.
Representative Thompson, and as far as the row crops are concerned, obviously corn is the
most expensive because they put more money in it, and it depends on when the hogs get in it. But I would say it can run anywhere from
I would say that would be a close estimate, very close. I've seen that much at least on several acres. One comment I'd like to
but it was to a question a while ago.
I read an article recently, Representative Jean, that Texas had a million, they estimated they had a million and a half. And the director here of hogs, feral hogs, and the director here said that currently they estimate $52 million of damage. And they also, the game and fish spent $7 million. So if that helps you kind of get it in perspective, and I, you know, they're not saying that I hunt south Arkansas,
And I would estimate, which is well over 100,000 or 200,000 now and climbing just enormously. One of the
Speaker 15
32:35
things that hadn't been mentioned here, during the last big flood, one thing that was very scary, we had wildlife officers patrolling the Mississippi River levee when it got up to the very top. All these hogs come out, and the levee board contacted me and asked would it be okay for the officers to start shooting these hogs.
I went over and actually looked at the damage, but they were at the bottom on the inside of that levee, rooting and digging around. And you're talking about making a person nervous when that Mississippi River is up that high. But we killed hundreds. I got over there about day two of the eradication efforts on the hogs, and I never seen anything like it, but the river had pushed them out. But after they got on the other side of that levee, they were rooting right at the base of it,
and we were very scared that they were going to compromise that levee, and that would have
been bad. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Meeks, be recognized for
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
33:44
a question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Got a couple questions here. Would you describe your current public campaign
to bring awareness to this issue? Obviously, you've got the brochures here, but what kind of outreach are you doing? Because your testimony talking about a guy that's wanting to purposely release some out into the wild
kind of brings to mind that the public may not be aware that this is such an issue or this is something they should be concerned about. So would you comment on where we're at with that? Well, if you recall,
Speaker 23
34:12
and you may not, but a couple of third weeks ago, Channel 7 came out, and we actually got a four- or five-minute segment on TV and I thought was very good. We do have a great brochure. Our website is full of information. We have the largest Facebook following of any
Speaker 22
34:27
state agency in the United States with over, I don't
Speaker 22
34:34
61,000 followers. And that was Ms. Nancy Ledbetter. She is our communications director, and she's responsible for the brochure. So we're doing, I think, hopefully a great job of getting the word out to the public. And, you know, if folks call, we have about 10 private lands biologists out across the state that are willing to go help landowners. And we do loan traps out. We have some smaller traps that we do loan. We have a lot of them. And we'll continue to help and assist with any outreach that's necessary.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
35:08
Okay. A personal experience is actually fairly timely because on the way home last week along I-40, I happened to see one or two out there along the side of the highway, which brings up the question, you know, here in Arkansas we have deer and car run-ins all the time. Do we have any evidence or data on hogs getting in the road, accidents, injuries? Well, I don't think we have any,
Speaker 23
35:33
you know, a long list of data we could talk about, But I know last
Speaker 22
35:38
week there were two different road kills for Farahogs, one in the city of Paragool.
And you're right. I live just outside of Conway in Worcester. I know you know where that's at. You're my constituent
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
35:50
if you live in Worcester. I am. Yes, sir, and I voted for you
Speaker 124
35:54
just so you know. I appreciate that. So, but if
Speaker 23
35:57
you, but I've seen those pigs as well. And we're going to try to figure out where they're coming from. And
Speaker 22
36:05
I believe probably off of Camp Robinson they're spreading out.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
36:08
And hopefully I can return the vote this morning to you. I hope I would appreciate that, sir. The last question that I have is that we've talked about these farms where they've got these feral hogs.
Do we know how many of those in the state and how many would be affected by passage of this
Speaker 22
36:26
legislation? No, sir. I do not know. And I've been working real close with livestock and poultry, and I don't think they have they have they haven't a record of them. They don't
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
36:34
know. And I mean, just just to guess we talk less than a dozen.
Speaker 123
36:38
Oh, yes, sir. I'm told that there's four
Speaker 81
36:43
or five. Five. I have a list here, and what I'm showing is five right now. There were six, and one of them is out now. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chair
Unverified
36:54
Representative Brantz, can we recognize again for a question? Thank
Representative David L. Branscum
Unverified
36:57
you, Mr. Chair. You know, I think everybody in this room agrees that we have a problem, and we've got to do
Speaker 56
37:04
something about it. But I was wondering, take me back, when you guys were, Representative McCrae was working on this bill, and I'm sure you were working with him, and you were thinking, what can we
Speaker 54
37:15
do to get rid of this problem? And you come up with, all right, if we trap them, we've got to kill them. It sounds like a great idea. And kind of going back to my plan B scenario, but was there anything else that you thought of in your scenario?
Look, this is a major problem. We have to do something. But what else could we do if not this? Well,
Speaker 41
37:37
sir, I'm sort of a realist, if you will, and I'm sure you all are too. But, you know,
Speaker 23
37:43
if you've got a cancer, man, you've got to get rid of it. And you've got to get rid of it as quick as you can because if you don't, it's going to spread, and it will eventually get you. So, you know, there's been a lot of talk about, you know,
why can't we let these folks catch them and move them? And, you know, that's a segment of the population that probably our enforcement officers deal with more than anybody else in the world. Because what happens is if, I mean, you may be the most honest person in the world, and our guys stop you and you've got hogs in the trailer and you're taking them to one of these operations. But the next guy is going to say, yeah, I'm taking them over here to so-and-so operations. And if we follow him, he may go there. But if we don't or don't catch him, he's going to take them where he wants to take them.
and turn them loose. And by allowing that and making an exception and creating a loophole, it's a never-ending problem. And, you know, again, there was no intent to cause anybody any physical harm, but I don't know any other way,
Speaker 22
38:43
sir, other than just kill them. There's just no way. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. All right. I see no further
questions from the committee. Representative McCrary, any further comment? You close for your bill?
Yes, Mr. Chairman. I'd just like to remind the committee of two things. One, if we don't address this problem, it's going to just explode, and it's going to do tremendous damage to the property owners in the state of Arkansas. The other thing is that if you, you know, I was surprised when the Cattlemen's Association told me there was 6,200 members,
and they are all for this bill. They don't want any loopholes. They don't want any transport. They want them killed. And that just gives you one example of all the organizations that are represented here. There's no telling how many farmers Farm Bureau represents and the hog industry represents. And we hate to hurt anyone, but compared that number of people that we're trying to help
to the ones that are against this bill, to me, it's not good policy. We've got to try to help the most people we can with this problem. It's not one that's going to go away. It's only going to get worse. It's only going to get more and more expensive and more and more damage. And obviously, Mr. Chairman, I would appreciate a good vote. And at this time, I'd like to make a motion to do pass.
Before we take the motion, we're going to go to public comment. And I misspoke. You'll get an opportunity to close for your bill after public comment. Thank you. So going to the list, I'm going to recognize Alan Myers has signed up to speak against the bill. Mr. Myers,
if you would, take a seat at the end of the table so that we can get you a microphone so all
the committee members can hear you. Mr. Myers, you're recognized.
If you would, state your name, and then you can give your statement. My
Alan Myers
Unverified
41:14
name is Alan Myers. I'm one of the... You good? I'm going to let my partner do the main speaking. He's got a lot more of the literature on this, but I want to say my name is Alan Myers. I'm the owner of Cousin Cousin. Hall Ranch. Me and Kendall have been in business here for 10 years. I want all of us to look at it from a perspective today that we all have a job here today. We all are drawing
some type of a paycheck. And mine and Kendall's income comes off of this. We rely on this. Our families rely on it. And there are four other ranch owners in the state of Arkansas that does the same thing. What we're doing is not hurting the problem in Arkansas. We're actually helping this between these ranches. We're removing 1,200 to 1,500 head of hog a year, and we're putting it on our ranches, and we're taking them. More or less, you ought to call this a slaughterhouse, because when they come into these high-fence areas, they're
not leaving. They're taking a bullet. They're going to somebody's family that eats them also. It's not like gaming fish. It's killing them, and they're rotting it. I mean, when I grew up, my dad, if I killed something, I brought it home, and it fed our family, and That's the way I think a wild hog, he is a problem. I'm not going to say he's not a problem. I've seen problems on hunting ranches. I've seen problems in other places. But what we're doing is actually helping this. We're not hurting the problem. The trappers that's here in Arkansas that's trapping for the ranches
and where they're going to these quarantine areas that we have, we're wanting you all to look at it from our perspective today that we're trying to help the problem. We're not hurting it. And I hope when this thing comes to a vote that it goes the right way. So I thank you for your time. Mr. Myers, would you take a few questions? Yes.
Representative Linderbin, you're recognized for a question. Thank you.
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
43:17
Mr. Myers, thank you for being here today. I've got a few questions, if you don't mind. I'd like to
Alan Myers
Unverified
43:24
know what size is your enclosure. Mine in Kendall's area, we've got
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
43:27
a 200-acre high-fence ranch. Okay, you have a hot wire or
Alan Myers
Unverified
43:31
something inside that or anything? Well, at one time we've had a hot wire, but there's not any need. Our animals are kept in. We don't have any problems. We've actually took bulldozers. Our fence is a foot underground, and we've took bulldozers also and pushed dirt windrows inside our property to the bottom of the fences.
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
43:48
You have a tremendous investment in a fence.
Alan Myers
Unverified
43:51
Yes, sir. Y'all, thousands, let's go into $200,000. dollars uh we have three tractors that we own on this operation we just recently bought a new tractor about two and a half weeks ago um we have numerous trailers we have traps we have feed bills it's uh unreal we got you know we got a lot of money you you
Speaker 142
44:13
said last year y'all harvested 12 to 1500 hogs this
Alan Myers
Unverified
44:16
is between the ranch owners in arkansas me and kendall uh we do about 140 hunts
a year is what we actually kill off our place, 140 to 160, and we usually bring in around 200 and something a year. Okay,
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
44:30
I was going to ask, how many hogs do y'all normally buy during
Alan Myers
Unverified
44:35
the year? Normally around 200 and something a year on our operation.
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
44:38
Could you give me some kind of an idea about normal purchase price? What size hogs are
Speaker 145
44:46
you buying here? We've bought anywhere from, I mean, the bigger hogs, the boar hogs is what we,
Alan Myers
Unverified
44:52
you know, Our operation is we try to sell a quality hunt.
Normally, you know, your hunters won't come in. They won't kill a nice boar hog. So we would rather have boars. But last year, I think our numbers was at 211, and we bought 78 sows out of the 211 hogs. So if you take them numbers with your sows, they will have three litters of pigs a year, not two. And they can pig up to 2 to 12 is what a sow will have. And so you do the numbers on it. Seventy-eight siles come into our operation, which was, I'm going to say, the majority of them have been killed.
But you take 78 siles and just times that by the number of six times three and look at the wild hogs that would have stayed into the wild if they hadn't been removed and into our operation, what that
Speaker 146
45:43
number would have went to. Okay. Thank
you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Gene,
Representative Lane Jean
Unverified
45:49
you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me make this straight. How many hogs did y'all kill last year on your ranch in 2012?
Probably around 140. 140. Do y'all do any trapping and bringing hogs, or do y'all purchase from somebody? Do y'all have any traps that you go out on other people's property? I
Alan Myers
Unverified
46:08
have trapped in the past, but I buy most of my hogs. So you're
Representative Lane Jean
Unverified
46:15
not a trapper, you're a buyer. I'm a trapper and a buyer. So you do both now? Yes, sir, I have trapped. So in 2012, you trapped hogs and brought them to your facility, and you also bought them from other people? Yes, sir. Okay, thank you.
Representative McCrary, you're recognized for a question? Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First,
you said you took, all together, you all took 1,500 hogs out of the wild. I said an estimate of five ranches, tallies around 15. Well, my first observation is that under this new bill, those hogs, if they were
trapped, they would be killed. So they would go out anyhow. I guess my main question to you, do you test for
brucellosis and other diseases when these hogs come on your range?
Speaker 40
47:06
No, sir. And you know that's the law. We
do now. Yes. and I guess I well thank you Mr. Chairman Thank you
Mr. Myers next we have Rodney Baker who is signed up to speak for the bill
Mr. Baker, if you would, state your name and you can make
your statement. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm Rodney Baker, and I'm with the Arkansas Farm Bureau. And we are very supportive of this bill. Wild hogs, or feral hogs, I should say, are a huge problem for agriculture in this state. And I'd like to point out a couple things. First of all, this is very much a public policy issue.
We've got a non-native species that's been turned loose by man and has caused trouble for man. It's a man-made problem. This is not a wildlife issue. Historically, if you'll think back in your history, you don't have to go very far, historically we've not had a problem with this kind of population explosion of hogs, even though we've had feral hogs since settlers first came here. Now, a lot of people, when we had open range, yes, they used to turn them loose. They'd notch them and catch them.
They'd trap them. They controlled their populations by catching them and using them. So we know that that can work, along with more recent science that shows that trapping is the way to do this. What we've got is a situation in Arkansas where people have decided to turn animals loose and go back later so they can hunt them. These were turned loose in open areas, you know, open land. Trouble is, a hog doesn't know where the border is. When he gets to that border, it just looks like land to him, and he crosses it.
And he eats whatever he finds on the other side. And that has caused tremendous problems. We are lucky in this state. We produce a lot of good crops. We have a lot of crops that, you know, hogs can grow and reproduce and flourish and fatten on, and they find them and they use them readily. They've done incredible damage in our state to crops, to pastures. They damage structures. You heard Mr. Thompson talking about equipment running off in the holes they've rooted out. That's an issue.
Disease, swine brucellosis and pseudorabies. Hunting by itself is not the answer. We've got to do more. We've been hunting these things for over 20 years, and the population keeps getting bigger. I've talked to some of the gentlemen that have called me that have the operations where they're under fence, and I'm sympathetic to what they say and their situation. But I'd like to point out something else. These hogs are being tracked, and they're being brought in.
I understand size varies. A lot of them are probably big enough to hunt when they come in. Okay? Those hogs were grown on somebody else's property that aren't growing those hogs because they want them there. They're getting over in somebody's corn. They're getting over in their pasture. Wherever they want to go, they pretty much go. And they're growing to this size to where they're desirable to trap and hunt at someone else's expense that did not put them out and did not require it. Now, that is a public policy problem where you've got this kind of encroachment on a
private property and into people's private bank accounts. It's a real situation. We've been asked today, I don't know how many we have in Arkansas, and I don't know exactly the dollar amount of the damage, but Alabama estimates their damage at $75 million. Well, that's $75 million. Much of it's coming out of somebody else's pocket. where they either lost the production or they've got the damage that has to be fixed. That's what we're trying to address here, is the damage to the people that didn't create the problem
and are simply trying to protect their rights to farm their land and get the crops off of it. That is the public policy issue here today. It's very difficult to catch people, turn them loose. It's very difficult to plug into this equation almost anywhere and solve something. But transportation is the one common factor here. Our problem is these things were stocked. They didn't just happen.
And the problem is people are continuing to catch them and move them in restock areas, in stock areas where they didn't have them before. And that is causing the spread of the hogs. That is causing the damage, and it's causing the expense that people that didn't ask for this problem didn't want the hogs, and it's causing the expense that they're burying today. Yes, there are, you know, there's opportunities there to take advantage of that. But we've already talked about also how prolific these animals are, and you can produce them.
I know it's going to be another expense, but if you're in the business, it ought to be your expense and not the expense of the person that's not in the business. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the chance to be here today and write these comments, and I'll answer any questions. Representative Gillum,
you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Baker, you talked about a little bit on the business side of things, these operations that are using the hunt and everything. Would you consider them kind of an ally in this fight on trying to eradicate this problem?
You know, I've tried to look at that from all sides, Representative Gillum, and, you know, yes, there's animals being killed. One question I have, if we're buying several hundred or $150 and you're killing $140, what's happening to the rest of them? But that purchasing of wild animals creates, or wild feral animals in this case, creates a market for those feral animals. And there's an incentive there to meet that demand, even if you have to turn some loose somewhere else to have them catch next year when you need them.
So it's not as simple as one solution or one problem. Okay. Fair
enough. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Seeing no other questions, Mr. Baker, thank you. Next on the list, we've got Mr. David Richardson
signed up to speak against the bill. Hi, my name is Dave Richardson.
Dave Richardson
Unverified
54:22
I'm on the Rolling Hour Ranch in Harrison. Well, there's been a lot of things said today, and
Speaker 164
54:30
I tell you, none of the farmers, none None of us would disagree that hogs are an issue and cause damage. We are all in agreement with that. I have friends in Texas who are peanut farmers, and they get devastated by wild hogs. And I understand those in the Delta, those guys in southern Arkansas are dealing with
that problem. Our heart goes out to them. We believe that our ranches provide a service to the state. We buy about 300 hogs at my place every year, and we kill about 300 hogs at my place every year. Majority, I would say 60% of the hogs taken on my place are sows, and I buy every size hog. I would be nice if I only could buy, you know, boars and nice hogs, but I don't.
I buy whatever I can get. I buy every hog that I can afford to buy, and we have local guys catching them all the time. We have never released any hogs in the wild. We have never planted anywhere any hogs so we could harvest them later. It's just not been a problem. We don't do that. In fact, if a hog gets out, it's very expensive for us. Mr. McCray, you have a question? Are you
willing to take questions? Sure. Representative Gene, you're recognized for a question?
Speaker 78
55:55
Mr. Richardson, your ranch is up around Harrison. Yes, sir. What kind of investment and how many acres do you
Speaker 164
56:06
have enclosed? I have two pens. I have a 40-acre pen, which is a breeding pen. We do try to grow them ourselves. And then I have a 220-acre pen as well. It's hog wire fence all the way reinforced
Speaker 170
56:22
with electric. Okay. Okay. You entertain hunts that come in?
Speaker 164
56:26
Yes, sir. Out-of-state people? Absolutely. How far away? Well, we had the groundskeeper for the Queen of England here three months ago, so pretty
Representative Lane Jean
Unverified
56:37
far away. Wow. How about that? How many hunts do you have a year on weekends? Do you do them during the
Speaker 164
56:44
week? We do most of ours on Fridays and Saturdays, and we do a few weekday hunts. We try not to do too many. They stay in
Speaker 88
56:52
your local hotels when they come in? Absolutely, absolutely. Eat in your local restaurants? Yes, sir.
Speaker 171
56:56
And you've killed around 300 hogs a year? 100
Speaker 97
57:03
hogs a year. One ranch? One ranch. Thank you very much. No more other questions, Mr. Chairman. Thank
you. Representative McQuarrie, you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Curious, what do you pay
Representative Joe Jett
Unverified
57:14
for your hog? What's the average that you pay when you buy one that's a feral hog that comes out
Speaker 168
57:20
of public property? If I can buy them by the head, and usually I
Speaker 164
57:24
try to buy a group of hogs. If I have to, you know, if it has to come very far, I can't afford to pay them for the gas to bring it.
So I want them to bring me $10 or $15, I try to buy them by the head. And like I bought $11 last week, I paid $600 for them, and they was 40-pound hogs, and there was two that went
about 230 pounds. So $50, $60 a head. Yes, sir. And what do you sell your hunts for? I sell them for $300. $300. Do you hunt any other animals on your farm? No, sir.
Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Representative Linderman, you're
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
58:09
recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Richardson, for being here. Thank you. Very intriguing what you told me. You have a breeding pen. And are you all trying to breed
up any, like, the European boars to get the better tushes and those kind
Speaker 164
58:22
of things? You know, I would like to have, if I could find a good source of European boars and it be legal, I would certainly like to do that. But we just try, you know, you can't always get them when you want them.
And so that's why I buy every one I can because I might not get an opportunity when I, you know, if you get low. And people come in from out of state, they want to see lots of hogs. They want to have lots of opportunities. So I try to keep as many as I can. But we try to breed feral-looking hogs that look like
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
58:59
Razorbacks or European hogs. Okay. You said your hunts are about $300. Yes, sir. You do about 300 years. So a little rough
math here. We're talking about $100,000 to you and your operation personally,
not counting the influence or
impact on the area. That's correct. Mr. McCreary asked the question about what you sell. Do you all also not do some hunts for
the wounded veterans and some things like that? Yes, sir. Actually, most of
Speaker 164
59:30
my hunts are ministry hunts. We support missionaries all over the world. I myself am a missionary and travel all over the world.
And we do a wounded warrior ministry where we have, in fact, I've invited most of you through e-mails to come and join us and see what we do. But we honor wounded veterans. We give them free hunts. We support their families. That actually brings a lot of business in the community as well. We have one March 22nd and 23rd. We also honor Gold Star families. And we do a special ceremony working with the National Guard and the VFW. And we have invited the Game and Fish to participate in that, but they never have.
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
1:00:12
Okay. On your facility, do y'all have any kind of a processing facility where, I mean, do y'all grind these hogs up in sausage
Speaker 164
1:00:20
for folks or do any of those things? We don't do any processing other than skinning, quartering, and putting it in our ice chest.
Speaker 171
1:00:26
For processing it further, they have to take it to a butcher,
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
1:00:30
and we have several butchers that take care of that. Okay. Do any of these people that participate in these hunts, Do they, in the Game and Fish, they had a meat for the needy or some kind of a program like that.
Do any of those donate these for shelters or anything? Yes, sir.
Speaker 164
1:00:45
Every animal is taken and donated to needy families. We have a lot of families, and we usually know who needs one, and so we are looking
Dave Richardson
Unverified
1:00:53
for, you know, somebody to donate. All the meat is given away. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you,
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
1:00:59
sir. Okay, committee, just to remind the committee, we've got several
witnesses on the list to speak for and against, and still a lot of questions for this witness, so keep that in mind, please, and keep it brief if you could. Representative Meeks, you're recognized for a question.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:01:13
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll try to be brief on this. Looking to your crystal ball, this becomes law of the land. What does that do to your operation? You said you had breeding. Are you able to breed enough hogs? Would you have to buy domestic hogs, or do you go out of business? Would you kind
Speaker 172
1:01:30
of go into that? It would pretty much put me out of
Speaker 164
1:01:36
business. I mean, I can't grow enough shooting size. Nobody wants to shoot a 20-pound pig. I buy them and feed them and invest in them, and hopefully I'll recoup my money back on them.
But, no, it would pretty much shut us down, and I don't have the resources. Like I said, most of mine goes to ministry. I have a full-time job. I have employees that work for me there, but it would pretty much shut us down because I don't know how to buy. If you go to the cell bar and you buy a hog, nobody wants to come in and shoot Arnold Ziffel or Priscilla. They want to shoot a wild hog, and so people aren't going to participate in that. Gotcha. All right.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Douglas, who recognized for a question.
Representative Dan M. Douglas
Unverified
1:02:18
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I'd say why they wouldn't want to shoot Arnold or Babe there. That's not very good business. Disease control has been mentioned here before. Do you have any facilities, or do you bleed your hogs or test them, or do you have facilities that you can do that, and would you be willing to do that if that was?
Speaker 164
1:02:38
Actually, when this all came about, I didn't understand the law properly, and I'll just throw myself on the mercy of the court, and I'm not going to lie. We haven't had them checked.
But since I have found that out, we have built an isolation pen, and we have contacted our veterinarian to start doing that. So we are building the facilities to do it, and be within the law, but we don't do that now. Now, any hogs that are captured in the wild, they would have to be brought into a place, and I know to answer your question, Dan, the best way I can is we are working towards that, and I would certainly be willing to do that.
We haven't been doing that, and to be honest, I wasn't
Speaker 192
1:03:23
aware that that was the law, but it is. I'm not denying that.
Speaker 193
1:03:27
Appreciate your candor. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Link,
you're recognized. Because you're on a private land and so on and so forth, there's no hunting permit required for your guests. Is that right? That is correct, sir. Okay. Thank you. Representative Thompson is
recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Tommy Thompson
Unverified
1:03:50
Mr. Richardson, did you say you had a 40-acre pen that you used for reproduction? Yes, sir. And how many
hogs can run in that 40 acres? Well, we've
Dave Richardson
Unverified
1:04:03
had, you know, 70 or 80 in it at a
Representative Tommy Thompson
Unverified
1:04:08
time. And if they are bred and produce 2 1⁄2 litters or 3 litters a year, how successful have you been in trying to reproduce hogs for your ranch?
Representative James Ratliff
Unverified
1:04:22
Well, I haven't been successful, and part of it, to be
Speaker 164
1:04:25
candid, It may be that I'm not a hog producer. The wild hogs, when you have them in an enclosure like that, you don't separate them after that. You know, the boars will eat the babies. You have a lot of that. And then these mothers will get shot, and then we'll lose the babies. I mean, even though, you know, I pull out of there all the time. When I get low, I pull them out of there and put them in the main enclosure,
the 220-acre pen. And, well, sometimes the sows, you know, it's not like I'm walking them out there. I'm herding them out. And I'll get the sows out there and little babies will be left in, and I'll lose them. So it's really hard. It would take me a year to build up enough hogs to hunt for a year. And without the income to provide
Speaker 104
1:05:19
for the feed, I couldn't afford to do it.
Representative Tommy Thompson
Unverified
1:05:21
Have those sows that you use, are they tested for brucellosis and those type of issues?
Could health issues with the sows be a reason, or are they reproducing enough pigs, they're just not surviving? They're producing enough pigs, they're just not surviving. I mean,
Speaker 172
1:05:36
we probably, in my enclosure, I'd say that if you had a litter of eight, you might
Speaker 164
1:05:42
have three survive. And have you had any issues with animal activists? No, sir, I have not. All
Speaker 104
1:05:49
righty. Thank you. Sir, I would like to add one thing to that.
Speaker 164
1:06:00
One of the major losses of wild hogs in my enclosure is wild dogs. and packs, and I don't know, but they kill the little pigs right away, and we have to dispatch a lot of wild dogs. So I don't know. Just to answer your question. Thank
Speaker 171
1:06:19
you, sir. All right, committee, we have
Ballinger, McGee, Branscombe, Douglas, and McCreary, and Gillum. So we've got a lot of questions here, but Representative Ballinger, you're recognized for a question.
I'll keep this short just for a second time, but my question would be, you indicated these are mostly coming from local, so Boone County, Newton County, that type
of thing, and if you're paying $50 or $60 a head, what are they getting at the sale barn? What I'm trying to think is, would it ever be economical to go buy a pig from the sale barn, take it out, turn it out loose, and then go back and trap it to sell it to you,
what you're paying for them, that wouldn't be enough to make that economically feasible. I don't think so. Okay. Thank you.
Representative McGee, you're recognized for a question. Representative Branscombe, you're
Representative David L. Branscum
Unverified
1:07:20
recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Richardson, I do thank you for being
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here. And we all recognize that we have a problem, and very legitimate problems. and I applaud the Farm Bureau and the Game of Fish trying to address this problem. And I have concerns that what they're wanting to do is going to alleviate the problem.
And I don't want to do something that is a detriment to your business. Thank you. But do you reckon, I mean, you would agree that we have a problem with the feral hogs in the state of Arkansas. Sure. Do you have any thought or idea of what we might could do other than doing what's been proposed
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here to help with this problem? Absolutely. We have a lot of ideas. You know, I would love to do... Just give me one or two, not a lot. Okay. The farms could sponsor rodeos where you have catch contests where everybody goes out.
You know, we're catching 200 or 300, did you say, David, on the wildlife management areas with pens? No, sir. We're killing over 500 a year. Okay, 500 a year there. Yeah. Yeah, but you have two or three big events where the people go out and they trap the hogs and bring them back, and there's prizes and there's rewards, there's an incentive to do it. You could bring in a ton of hogs that way. The other thing is, you know, I like my hogs trapped.
I don't like them caught with dogs because they're nothing against that, but I prefer them trapped because they're not tore up, they're healthier, they're less stressed, they're less dangerous. and you catch a lot more of them. And I think that if other trappers could go into the public lands and trap them and bring them out with a permit, and my issue would be, okay, you've got to get a permit to take it to Roland R. Ranch or Cousin Cous or Choctaw, and if you get caught going anywhere else without that permit, and we would issue the permit or through you,
and we'd work together on it so that we would help you monitor that. And that way you know, and you're right, whoever said that they will go for them, they'll say they're taking them to the Roland R. Ranch, but
Representative David L. Branscum
Unverified
1:09:33
they might go here or there. That happens. So you think that there's an avenue out there through a permitting process? Absolutely.
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And with the authorities, Game and Fish, that permits could be issued, and the people that are in business, the ranches that are in business, could issue permits? Yes, sir. And agree to buy them.
I mean, if anybody else is caught with them without a permit and they're only trapped them to specifically take to a registered facility, permitted
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facility, if this was another avenue. Yes. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative McQuarrie,
you're recognized for a question? I'll pass, Mr. Chairman, in
due time. Thank you. Representative Douglas, Charlotte Douglas, you're recognized for a question.
Representative Dan M. Douglas
Unverified
1:10:20
Yes, sir, on that same vein of thought where you are doing the roundup,
would it be possible if Game and Fish were not comfortable with general public transporting the hogs, if they had a program to trap those and then work with you guys to give them back to you? Absolutely. We would love that. I mean, that would be, to me, the simplest fix. Yeah, we would love that. And they could be in control of the process, and they would hand it right to the owners, and would there be a payment needed on this to reimburse them?
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You know, if they were going to be in charge of that and bring the hogs to us, and I'm speaking for my ranch personally, I'm not speaking for every farm here, but it doesn't matter to me. I would just assume as long as they get to me and they're safely and we're within the law and we're doing
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everything right, I would be glad to pay them, you know, pay the Game and Fish,
Representative Dan M. Douglas
Unverified
1:11:23
the $30 a hog or whatever. I see that as a solution for you and then a way for them to make a little cash. That's right. So is that maybe I could ask them that question if that would be possible at the appropriate time.
Thank you very much. Thank you, ma'am. Representative Gilliam, you're
recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be brief. If you wouldn't mind, going back to the comment you added to your answer to Representative Thompson's question, you mentioned wild dogs. Yes, sir. Could you elaborate a little bit more on how the wild dogs are killing your animals,
and specifically are they getting in your pens and then killing your hogs in the enclosure?
Yeah, I think they, well, I'm going to be perfectly honest here. I
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think that people throw them in my pen, but they do dig under. We find places all the time where they've dug under. In my area where I'm at, we have an issue with wild dogs. We have a lot of wild dogs. You see them alongside the road all the time. and people live out there, and they just end up in everybody's livestock.
Okay. One last follow-up question very briefly, Mr. Chairman. Okay, so if the dogs are getting in and they're digging underneath and getting in the pens, what's keeping the hogs from getting out then? Well, we repair the fence every
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week. We go through, we ride the fence, and, you know, We find the places where they get in. But, you know, if you've got a pack and they find a place in, they can go over, they can go under.
I mean, if you've got a dog, just like a hog, if you've got one that really wants to get out, it can find a place. Are you a farmer? Yes. As a matter of fact, I am. Okay. Well, I mean, we've monitored our fence all the time. We work hard to keep it up. But, you know, they get in there and they run. Like if the dogs get in, they crawl under the fence. They dig under the fence just like a coyote or a fox. They all do the same thing. They crawl under the fence. They dig away in. Once they get in, it just takes one of them to run a hog through the fence.
And then once the holes are in, then all the dogs are in, and then we've got a problem. But like I
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said, every week we ride our fence, sometimes twice a week, and we're always fixing holes where
they're trying to dig in. But the hogs could get out through those exact same holes, correct? Absolutely. Okay,
thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Jett, you're recognized
for a question? That's my question. Okay, thank you. Thank you for your comments. Going back to the list, Representative, I'm sorry, Mr. Darwin Hendricks has signed up to speak for the bill.
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I want to thank you for the time you have given me to address a very serious problem we have here in Arkansas, and I commend you for the service you give to the people of Arkansas by serving in the legislature. My father was in the Senate for 24 years, and my brother was in the House until his death in 1996 so i'm aware of the time it takes to serve in the legislature i have a couple of
handouts that um if you would allow tammy to hand them out without objection go ahead and hand those out and some pictures that i took on my farm this past weekend i'm sorry that i don't have copies for everyone i stopped at walgreen this morning they had them misfiled if y'all would just pass them among yourselves. I have two jobs. One is banking and the other is taking care of my family farm in southwest Arkansas. We have row cropped, raised cattle, and are primarily growing timber today.
The destruction caused by hogs is a major concern of the landowners in our area, and I brought a neighboring landowner with me this morning. I brought the pictures I have given to you to show you an example of this destruction. My bottom land is subject to overflow, and where the rooting takes place is washed down the river every spring when the overflows come. A herd of 15 to 40 hogs, and I ran into a herd of 40 hogs yesterday afternoon on my farm.
they can easily root up several acres before i get them caught and they're becoming more difficult to trap i think they're learning the system i've not caught any hogs to amount to anything in the last couple of years although i have nine traps on my farm they are voracious consumers of the acorn crop that the other wildlife depend on our turkey
population and our squirrel population has declined severely not only because of the lack of food but as mentioned earlier a hog is going to devastate a turkey nest the hogs have gone down rows of freshly planted pine trees and rooted them out of the ground. I've had to rework pastures and hay meadows more than once from the hogs rooting them up and with the price of diesel at three or four dollars a gallon
this is not pleasant. I've had to give up maintaining some areas of our farm just because I cannot control the hogs. I have handed you two articles that will point out what a problem our neighboring state of texas has and we will have the same situation here in arkansas in a short time i could go on by saying that anyone who would release a hog does not have any respect for fellow landowners i'm going to give you a quote by willa gaither
We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it for a little while. I thank you again for your time, and I'll be glad
to answer any questions. Vice Chairman Steele, you're recognized for a question. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman. It's a pleasure to have one of our most distinguished constituents here, and I'm not going to ask whether or not you voted for me. Don't worry. I was unopposed in your race anyway, but could you tell us where do the hogs normally come
from that make it to your farm? Across the river, up the river, I know that some hogs have been released, talk in the community about hog hunters that will take the hog to their place and then catch the hogs and then release them again. I've not witnessed that, but there's certainly a lot of talk that goes with that, releasing the hogs. I know that there was one person who had about 40 hogs in a pen.
Game and Fish was watching him. All of a sudden, the hogs were not there anymore. They questioned him. He said they broke the fence
down and got out. Do you have hunters on your property that release
these and hunt on your property? No, I do not allow them to release any hogs on my property, and I have quit allowing dog hunting on my property because they catch one or two hogs and just run the hogs over to my neighbor's property across the river. They can easily move two or three miles to get away from the pressure.
So dog hunting is not an effective method of eradicating the hogs, in my opinion. But do you think the transportation
itself to your farm from other areas is one of the problems that leads to this? I don't think
they've actually turned them on my farm, but I think they've turned them within two or three miles of my
farm. In the area? You don't have any idea what the long-term costs would be. You mentioned rooting up pine trees, freshly planted pine trees. I imagine those costs would be pretty significant. Do you have any kind of estimate on what this has cost you in the past few years?
No, I don't. You know, I don't
keep up with that kind of thing. But it's hard to imagine what the
long-term costs would be? Right. Thank
you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Representative Gilliam, you're recognized
for a question Thank you, Mr. Chair I'm just wondering, given the problems that Arkansas Hogs have had You know, over the last 12 months On the football field and the basketball court and everything Can they really take any more on this? I mean, is this really going to solve the problem?
And I think this goes back to what Brefford and Branscombe have been about But do you, in your opinion, if we pass this law, will it eradicate the problem that you have on your
land? I think it will certainly be a positive step in the right direction because the hog hunters love to go hog hunting every weekend, and if they've run them off of my place, they need a new place to go. And so they have another landowner call them or they go to public land and hunt the hogs.
And the more hogs they've got, the more breeding takes place and the more herds there are. I don't think this is a solution, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. Okay. Thank you. Seeing no
other questions, Mr. Hendricks, thank you for your comments. Thank you. Next on the
list, we have Jill Kemp, who has signed up to speak against the bill.
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Hello, can you hear me? Yes, Ms. Kemp, you're recognized. Thank you, Chairman. Jill Kemp, I am representing the trappers, and we are against this bill. I just wanted to briefly go over some of the things that were brought up previously. According to CDC, Centers for Disease Control, pseudorabies is not a direct threat to humans. According to CDC, brucellosis, there was none reported in Arkansas.
Those stats were updated November 2012. The trappers that I know spend 30 hours a week trapping at the least. I'm not sure about you all, but I don't know if our state budget could take that type of employee increase. I'm nervous. Y'all make me nervous. because this deal, as written, calls feral hogs a public nuisance. A public nuisance is defined by law as having an effect at the public at large.
And before I moved to Hogskin County from Union County, I had no idea what a feral hog was. So it didn't affect me at large, personally. As mentioned, the economies that are affected in these small towns, they would take a hit also. So, you know, a hunter spending anywhere from $1,000 to and on up on these hunts and in these towns. I
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follow the Arkansas Game and Fish on Facebook. Never seen a feral hauled update.
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And the 1,500 that are being killed, there would be no incentive for these trappers to take these and kill them immediately. Therefore, those 1,500 that were mentioned would probably still be in the wild and would probably reproduce. I just, you know, in essence of time, I just want to clarify those facts, and I'll be happy to take any questions. Seeing no questions,
Ms. Kemp, thank you for your testimony. Representative Jett, you're recognized for a motion.
Representative Joe Jett
Unverified
1:23:43
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll make a motion and we limit debate to
your discretion on time. How about it's a proper motion, 10 minutes aside. We've got some things coming up at noon
today, and I know that a lot of people have come and would like to see a decision made one way or the other. Any discussion on that motion? Motion to
limit debate, 10 minutes aside. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, 10 minutes aside, starting now. And keep in mind, Representative McCrary is on the foreside.
Your closing is part of that ten minutes. Going back to the list, we have Max Braswell, who's
signed up to speak for the bill. Mr. Braswell, you're recognized. Go ahead and
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introduce yourself. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. I'm Max Braswell.
I'm the executive vice president of the Arkansas Forestry Association. I will certainly try to help you in your challenge for time. I don't know that I can add a number of facts to the equation, but I am here to represent the Arkansas Forestry Association in support of this bill. AFA represents about 1,300 members across the state of Arkansas. In Arkansas, 60 percent of our almost 19 million acres of timberland are owned by private landowners,
And I'm very pleased to say that Mr. Hendricks is an AFA member, and he's a perfect example of the kind of feedback that I have received from AFA members. Another 20 percent of our timberland in the state is owned by forest industry. We also partner specifically with folks that own the state forests in the state and also our federal forests in the state. And much of the activity that you've heard about this morning happens in the places that AFA has a direct interest.
Representative Meeks asked about outreach. The Arkansas Forestry Association over the past couple of years has partnered in a number of landowner workshops that have talked about feral hogs. We have brought the feral hog issue in front of our members at our annual meeting. We have a wildlife and biodiversity committee where we have discussed this issue on a frequent basis over the last couple of years. I have never had a conversation with an Arkansas Forestry Association member who felt like feral hogs were a good thing.
So that just reiterates what I believe I've heard from the committee and what I've heard from both sides of the equation. Feral hogs are a problem. We agree that the transportation of these animals is the key point of contention here. Will we solve this problem? I don't know that we will solve the problem with a bill. We have to take an aggressive step forward, and this is the best step forward that we know of at this time because the feedback that I've gotten from my wildlife biologists who've reached out to you
and the experts within my association feel like that that transportation loophole is the thing that we can try to close at this point in time to allow us to take an effective step, to take some of the incentives out of the process. And bottom line is that if we sit back and do nothing on this issue, it will only get worse, and so that we feel like this is a good approach to helping take a positive step to help solve this problem.
Thank you, and I'll be glad to answer any questions
that you might have. Seeing no questions, thank you, Mr. Braswell. Thank you. Next on the list, we have Mr.
George Dixon to speak against the bill. Mr. Dixon, please have a seat at the end of the table and introduce yourself,
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and then you may make your comments. Yes, sir. I'm George Dixon, owner of Choctaw Ranch in Magnolia, Arkansas.
So I would first like to say that I am totally against the releasing of wild feral hogs into the wild on public land, any place that's not fenced. I'm totally against that. Always have been, always will be. What I'm not against is releasing them on my property, which is a 300-acre farm. Our fence is buried a foot in the ground. We don't have any problems with dogs digging in or hogs digging out.
We have a three-generation family business. My children and grandchildren would be here today, except that they're running a hog hunting farm. We have hunters there today. I have been receiving texts all morning of hunters that are going to arrive this weekend. I would like to read you a statement that I came up with. My wife did, and I'm the owner of Choctaw Hog Hunting Ranch in Magnolia, Arkansas, where the livelihoods of three generations in my family depend upon our business of dealing with wild boars.
Hunters from all over the United States come to our ranch to hunt our property and bring hundreds of thousands of dollars in tourism revenue to the state of Arkansas. We are decidedly larger than the other hog hunting farms in the state of Arkansas. In order to keep our ranch well stocked with hogs, we are constantly trapping hogs in the wild and bringing them to Choctaw Ranch. As the Game and Fish said, they just purchased two
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remote control traps in the last couple of weeks.
We've had them for years. I can close my gates on my cell phone right this moment. If there's hogs
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in there, I get a text. We catch as many as 16 or 18 at a time. We watch them walk in. There'll be five or six. We know that's not the whole entire sounder. When the whole entire sounder comes in, we close the gate. We drive over there. We load them up. We take them to our ranch. That's what we do for the farmers and ranchers in southern Arkansas.
saw. Last year, we put over 700, and to be exact, 705 hogs on our ranch. We killed 542 of those. We have killed 143 so far as of this morning. As of this year, as of yesterday morning, we put 203 more on our ranch. Every hog we put on our ranch is going to die. It is not going to propagate out in the wild. We had 175 sows out of that 705 hogs we put
on our ranch. If they only gave us 12 hogs a year, they would give us 2,100 hogs. So that would be a big problem out in the state. We trap on local farmers. We trap on Bruce Alford's land. He is one of the largest cattlemen in the state of Arkansas. He is a member of the Cattlemen's Association, and he is totally for Choctaw Ranch and trapping. We are the only person that he is ever allowed to trap on his land because he knows that every hog that we trap
is going to die. It just ain't going to die on his place. It's going to die on ours. In the last two weeks, we've caught 21 hogs off of his place. And over this next year, if you don't put us out of business by not being able to transport them to our ranch, we will catch hundreds more off of his ranch. We have two remote-controlled traps set on his ranch over near Garland right this moment. i'd like to read a email that was sent a couple of days ago from a customer last week
this is from amanda kilgore she is with the department of public safety and she wrote this letter to representative mcquarie on my request she said i'm writing to you concerning your feral hog bill which was brought to my attention this weekend while visiting Arkansas on a hog hunt. My husband and I came to Arkansas to visit Choctaw Ranch on a yearly basis as we love the challenge of bowhunting wild boar. George Dixon and his family have a first-class hunting operation set up outside of Magnolia that draws not just our yearly group
of six to eight law enforcement professionals from Iowa and Minnesota, but groups of hunters from across the nation. This weekend there were 11 hunters on the ranch from four different states and a calendar posted on the lodge shows that groups of hunters coming in seven days a week for months on end. The Dixon family has a very high successful hunting business because they work hard to keep a number of quality hogs in their fenced land because they are friendly people who create a great atmosphere.
Both of these factors are why our groups look forward to coming to Arkansas every year. When it was brought to my attention that your bill would prohibit the Dixons from catching feral hogs and transporting them to their ranch, I was deeply concerned that our favorite hog hunting ranch and the great people who run it would be put out of business. I understand completely that your bill is meant to eliminate the nuisance animal that causes damage to your state. In Iowa, we thrive on farming and our state's economy depends on the quality of our land.
I think the problem in your bill is the broad spectrum of outlawing any transportation of feral hogs. While this transportation ban would possibly eliminate the problem of people catching and releasing hogs into different areas of the wild by imposing a fine, it would also eliminate the legitimate hog hunting businesses of owners operating. In order for Choctaw Ranch to be stocked with hogs to hunt, the Dixon family travels all over the state to catch wild hogs and transports them to their ranch.
The Dixon family has agreements with farmers who need hogs off their land. They provide a service to these farmers by catching these hogs and then turn that service into a profitable business, a win-win situation any way you look at it. The hogs are removed from the wild, released into completely fenced Choctaw Ranch where they cannot escape, and then hunted by people coming to your state to spend money on the hunt. The Dixon family removed over 700 feral hogs from the wild in your state last year
then turned those nuisance animals into a source of tourism, income, and economic growth for your state. This weekend, my husband and I spent nearly $2,000 in the state of Arkansas to come to Choctaw Ranch for a two-day hog hunt. That is two of 11 people at the ranch this weekend. Choctaw Ranch alone brings people from all over the country who pay for the hunt, pay for the processing of the meat, pay to eat, pay to stay in local hotels, pay for the gas, pay for supplies needed for the hunt, and so on and so on.
Choctaw Ranch brings hundreds of thousands of dollars to the state of Arkansas, and they are the only one of the hog hunting operation in the state. The hunting industry is a multimillion-dollar industry, and these hog hunting ranches are where your state is getting a piece of the pie. Your bill would put this operation out of business and eliminate the money that the hunters bring into the state and eliminate the jobs of people who operate these hog hunting ranches. And in closing, she says,
I would ask you to please consider the legitimate hog hunting businesses, owners and fine-tune your bill so the intent of eliminating the nuisance of feral hogs can be accomplished without hurting businesses and without losing tourism dollars that are brought to your state. You and the Dixons are on the same side of the fight. Both of you want to remove these hogs from the wild.
Speaker 239
1:36:15
Please find a way to write your bill so that the capture and transportation of Feral hogs
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is allowed for legitimate purposes, such as Operation Choctaw Ranch,
where the hogs are contained in a high-fence land, hunted and killed. Please consider other options, such as licensing these operations, and do not put these good, hard-working people out of business. We would like to see the state of Arkansas again and hope that your bill does not ruin that. We enjoyed your state again this past weekend, and hopefully we will be headed back to Choctaw Ranch next year. Sincerely, Amanda Kilgore, the Drug Identification Section of the Crime Scene Unit, Iowa DCI Crime Laboratory of Keeney, Iowa.
And in closing, I'd like to
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reiterate, we are with the thinking of the Division of Wildlife. We want the wild hogs to disappear out of the wild. We don't want anybody to drop them off on your
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neighbor's land so they can hunt them later. That isn't what we're about. What we want out of this bill is just to be able to transfer them onto our land so people can hunt them, and these people will have a lot of fun hunting them.
One thing I'd like to say, there is a state
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statute. It is 2-3-504 that concerns the releasing wild hogs into the wild, and it's been on the books for years. It was a $500 fine years ago. Two years ago, it was raised to $1,000. But no one has ever been fined or caught. So I don't understand this bill. I mean, I don't see
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why it is such a big deal.
This bill has already been on the books for years. The only difference is the agriculture and poultry industry has been in charge of it, and they've done nothing. But then again, they don't trap, and they don't catch hogs, and they don't bring them out of the wild like we do. If you put us out of business, we have no incentive to trap, and all of these hogs
are just going to run wild. Thank you, Mr. Dixon. The ten minutes against the bill has expired.
We're going to move on to for the bill, and by my count, we have seven minutes left for the bill. Mr. Preston Scroggins, you're recognized to make comments for the bill. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee,
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I'll be brief so Representative McCurry can close for his bill. I come here today in support of House Bill 1478.
This is a bill in the six weeks that I've been on the job now. We've had numerous meetings with the Game and Fish, Farm Bureau, interested parties. I can tell you from going across the state and meeting a lot of the different trade groups, being new in the job, that I've had more calls and questions and comments on this than I have our own bill on brucellosis. So it's definitely a big issue. I've not had the first farmer or anybody yet that's called me that was against it. So it is a big issue out in the community. With that, I'll be brief and try to let everybody get their time in.
Representative, make sure you're recognized for a
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:39:40
question. Another one of my constituents, so I'm going to get a question here. Mr. Scroggins, if this bill were amended that would allow Game and Fish to permit only these ranches and regulate only these ranches to be able to transport these hogs as a compromise here, would that be acceptable to you and your folks? Well, our regulations have
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been on the books for years. You know, and like was said, our field men,
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there's about 35 of them, and we're stretched thin.
We're just hanging on by our toenails right now to keep up with what we can with the poultry industry and the cattle industry and the commercial hog industry. You know, we would, it would stretch us to go out and have to look at those operations, and we would, you know, probably have to charge something for doing that. Sure, sure. Which, you
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:40:27
know, if they're able to keep their businesses as a compromise, I suspect they might be willing to make that small construction. And I
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won't make it plain. You know, we're not out. We don't have police powers or anything. We're merely an agency that tries to help and prevent the spread of diseases in our animal herds across the state.
All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Representative Linderman, you're recognized
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
1:40:50
for a question. Thank you. Director Scoggins, I'm going to ask your opinion about something. Yes, sir. If this bill passes, do you
feel like that there might be an unintended consequence, like has been referred to today, that people that are now capturing hogs and catching them out of the wild and taking them out of the population, do you feel like that they will stop doing that and that this might actually be an unintended or negative consequence on the problem we're trying to address?
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Well, you've got a severe problem. I had a problem personally with it a few years back in my farm in Conway County, and we went up and eradicated the problem. You know, like I said, the laws are on the books. You know, we're not out looking for more work. But, you know, if we know about the operations and they ask us or they ask their veterinarian, we'll work with them. I do believe it's a big problem in the wild, and they need to be eradicated, my personal opinion. Thank you. Thank
you, Mr. Chair. Seeing no further questions, thank you, Mr. Scroggins.
As I mentioned, the time against has expired. Next up to speak for the bill is Jerry Masters. Okay. Representative McCreary, is it okay for me to continue down the list of people signed up for? Did you say there was time for you? There is still time. Yes, please. I've got about four and a half minutes left for you. I'll go ahead and speak to my team. Okay. Mr. Masters, take a seat, introduce yourself, and make your comments.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I'm Jerry Masters. I'm the executive for the Arkansas Pork Producers Association. And I think one thing that maybe hasn't been brought up here is the investment that the pork industry has in their units. We have growers that have from a half a million to a four or five million dollar operations. I can show you and testify to you that we have contracted Bruce Lowe's in some of those units in the past where they completely have to be liquidated.
It's all been traced back to feral swine. Recently, and I'll be brief here, there was an operation in South Arkansas that broke with PERS. We haven't talked about PERS yet. Feral swine are full of brucellosis, pseudorabias, and PERS. And if you go back and you check the records when we've had this break in our state, it all goes back to feral swine. I am not for putting these folks out of business. There is an easy solution to this problem. all they have to do is get legal like the rest of our operations are.
If they become a monitored, pseudorabies-free herd, which only means they have to test 10% of their swine once a year, if they come negative, then they're legal. They can transport those hogs wherever they want to. Now, they can't catch them in the wild. If they're caught in the wild, you know, those animals are the ones, But they can transport hogs from farm to farm if they are monitored by the laws of the state of Arkansas and also our federal health regulations. This is really a simple solution for these folks.
If we just all work together, they get legal, this problem can be solved, and we can eliminate the problem we've got in the wild. And that's all we need to do is work together to make this happen. Thank
you. Representative Ballinger, you're recognized for a question.
i appreciate you coming and testifying when you say get legal do you mean i mean what they're i think that that's sort of what it sounds like they're trying to do in in doing the testing like you said and so forth but they're the this law particularly doesn't allow them to transport
these animals so so therefore these animals will not be coming off from wild lands anymore correct
these animals will not be able to come from wild lands to their farms but they're perfectly legal to
Speaker 247
1:44:47
go buy at a sale barn from other producers that are pseudorabies-free, brucolosis-free, and move to their operations. This is no different than what my commercial growers have to be. We have to be legal to produce pork. We have to be legal to transport across the state of Arkansas. If we transport hogs, I run a show pig operation, okay?
I've got a very small show pig operation. There's valuable animals there. I have to be legal. I have to have health papers when I transport across the state. Our kids in 4-H and FFA, they have to be legal when they go to the state fair. Those animals have to be attested for pseudorabies and brucellosis. And yes, a young lady that talked a while ago that talked about we have zero pseudorabies and zero bangles in the state. You know what that tells me? Our industry is doing a really good job of monitoring their own herds because that's
where those numbers come from. If we do get a break in pseudorabies, it has happened at a sale barn where somebody has captured a feral swine, brought it there to sell, and then that animal becomes positive, then that becomes a whole other set of issues of quarantines, of areas, and things like that. This is an issue, folks, that we can work together. We can make this work. All they have to do is get legal with what they're doing and get those animals blood tested. no other questions thank you
I showed that we have 40 seconds left we had one other person signed up to speak for the bill Mr. J.L. Griffin okay thank you I believe that is everybody who has signed up to speak for this bill Representative McCrary you're recognized
again you have 40 seconds realizing that that's not long enough I'll
just simply make the comment that all of these people that spoke for it they make their living in this business you're going to hurt them and it's been talked about and talked
about and and proven that you if you're going to transport these hogs you're creating loopholes where it's not going to work so all these people who are in the large majority of the people are going to be hurt and with that
mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a
motion due pass. Thank you, Representative McCrary. Representative McCrary has made a motion due pass. Is there any discussion? Representative Jean.
Representative Lane Jean
Unverified
1:47:18
I respect Mr. McCrary, Representative McCrary, very much, and I have tried to get this bill to be amended. It's not going to be. It's a bad bill on the case of this legislature to go in and run people out of business, and that's what this bill will do. The testimony today, I'm a landowner. My family and I own probably about 15,000 acres of timberland, and I'm also a rancher,
and I'm a member of the Arkansas Cattlemen's Association. This bill will not address the problem with feral hogs as far as multiplying. I am convinced these ranches have done as much or more than what the game of fish has done to stop the spread of wild hogs in the wild. We would like an amendment. There are other bills that will be considered. I would encourage my colleagues to not
pass this bill. Thank you. Thank you, Representative Jean.
Any other discussion? Seeing no other discussion, we have before us a motion do pass by
Representative McCrary. All those in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, no. No. The ayes have it. The motion passes. We have two hands for a roll call.
Speaker 252
1:49:00
Call the roll. Representative Ballinger No Representative Branscome No Representative
Charlotte Douglas No Representative Dan Douglas No Representative John Edwards, Representative Edwards, Representative Eubanks, Representative Gillum, Representative Lane Jean, Representative Joe Jett, Representative Lampkin, Representative
Lampkin representative Linderman representative link representative McGee representative McCrary representative Meeks representative Ratliff? Representative Thompson? Representative Steele? Representative
on to our next item of business.
We've got Representative Ratliff, House Bill 2024.
Representative James Ratliff
Unverified
1:50:49
Yes, Mr. Chairman, I have a House Bill 2024. It's an act to amend the membership of the State Plant Board, and what we're doing here is we're adding some livestock and forage producers to the plant board. we'll give them some representation and mr. little's amazing he's in favor of it and all the folks cattlemen everybody's in favor of it so it's good bill
represent ratless as I presented his bill are there any questions from the committee anyone here speak for against the bill do we have a motion we have a a motion for Representative Jean do pass. Any discussion? All in favor
Speaker 260
1:51:40
say aye. Aye. All opposed? The ayes have it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Committee. Do we have any others? Is there any other members here to present a bill today? The
Chairman's coming back. We'll let him make the motion to adjourn. Members,
a couple items of business. Representative Williams' bill, House Bill 1832, he's asked for a special order because he's got people coming in from out of state. We're going to
set that for special order next Wednesday. Additionally, Representative Alexander, let's see, House Bill 1536,
he would like to run that on Friday. and so my intent is to likewise set that for a special order Friday morning.
Hopefully by special order for those who are coming in from out
of town, I'm trying to give people some certainty. So without objection, we're going to set those two items for special order. All right, without objection, we're adjourned. Thank you.
Agenda
HB1478
HB2024
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Representative Matthew J. Shepherd Chair
Unverified
Representative Walls McCrary Chair
Unverified
Speaker 15
Speaker 23
Representative Jeremy Gillam Chair
Unverified
Representative Kelley Linck Chair
Unverified
Speaker 20
Speaker 44
Speaker 22
Speaker 49
Representative David L. Branscum
Unverified
Speaker 54
Speaker 56
Speaker 41
Speaker 60
Speaker 39
Speaker 30
Representative James Ratliff
Unverified
Speaker 69
Speaker 4
Representative Lane Jean
Unverified
Speaker 87
Speaker 88
Speaker 97
Representative Tommy Thompson
Unverified
Speaker 104
Speaker 102
Speaker 109
Representative Bob Ballinger Chair
Unverified
Speaker 110
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Speaker 58
Speaker 124
Speaker 123
Speaker 81
Chair
Unverified
Alan Myers
Unverified
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
Speaker 142
Speaker 145
Speaker 146
Speaker 40
Dave Richardson
Unverified
Speaker 164
Speaker 78
Speaker 170
Speaker 171
Representative Joe Jett
Unverified
Speaker 168
Representative Nate Steel Chair
Unverified
Speaker 172
Representative Dan M. Douglas
Unverified
Speaker 192
Speaker 193
Speaker 233
Speaker 231
Speaker 237
Speaker 238
Speaker 239
Speaker 242
Speaker 243
Speaker 247
Speaker 252
Speaker 127
Speaker 260