Meat and Poultry Inspection Budget Cuts

Update on the cuts to the meat inspection program here.

State Senator Sue Errington of Muncie spoke in support of an amendment on Monday that reinstates the requirements of the Meat and Poultry Inspection Program under the Indiana Board of Animal Health. Recent budget cuts threatened locally owned state-inspected meat processing facilities as well as an estimated 1,600 jobs in those processing facilities.

The Indiana Senate Dems blog from which this information comes has not been updated to say that Sen. Errington's amendment failed later that same day!

SB 0035, the bill in which her amendment was introduced, contains a huge assortment of provisions, from elimination of "the requirement to submit fingerprints to the horse racing commission every five years" to granting permission to "the board for the deaf school and blind school to prescribe [...] a salary schedule for the school without having to make the daily rate of pay for a teacher equal to that of a teacher at the Indianapolis public schools."

This crazy bill is now heading to the House where perhaps there will be another chance for a legislator to propose an amendment to ameliorate the effects of the Meat and Poultry Inspection Program cuts.

Meanwhile, Gov. Daniels has responded to complaints by saying the cuts won't be as deep as first proposed. It remains to be seen what this vague pronouncement really means.