Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: You and we thank you for joining us to share your thoughts on H eight sixty eight.

[Harley Sterling]: Alright. Well, good afternoon, chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the chance to speak and the distinguished honor of getting to go first. I'll go quickly because my esteemed colleagues are waiting to speak as well. But for the record, my name is Harley Sterling. I'm the school nutrition director for Windham Southeast Supervisory Union. And we are coming to you live from Brattleboro High School. So, I apologize in advance for bells, announcements, loud children. I'll do what I can. But every day down here we're responsible for feeding about 2,300 kids. I'm also here to speak on behalf of the School Nutrition Association of Vermont and as a resident of Westminster. We're grateful for all of your steady support for Real Vermont Food for Vermont Kids. And the sponsors of H868 is right to push forward high quality nourishing meals for our children. That drive comes from the heart and it matters deeply. Our kids deserve the best food we can possibly make for them. The reality of school meals is tough, right? Like school nutrition programs we run on shoestring budgets. I had the opportunity to discuss this with rep Bos-Lun last week in a visit to the high school. Our programs are undervalued by the federal funding that supports us. And in the real world, if you brought your family to a diner, you might pay $16 for for a hearty breakfast or $18 for a lunch special. Yet down here and my colleagues will reprimand me for this later, but lunch lady land. After our fixed overhead costs, we're usually left with about $1 for a breakfast, maybe $2 for a lunch to actually buy food. So, the gap between the true cost of feeding children well, and the outdated way that these USDA programs are funded is really dramatic. The AOE's report shows the same story with many districts transferring local general fund dollars just to stay afloat each year. I often say that if I had it my way, would make an omelet for every kid, hungry kid who walks in the door and wanted one each morning. But if you only have a dollar and eleven minutes to feed 100 plus kids, the system is gonna push for convenient solutions to make the math work and to get meals served on time. That's the unfortunate reality. What is changing in Vermont is powerful. When you all passed, we all passed universal school meals, participation surged in our programs and we began serving 2,500,000 more meals per year. And then the local food incentive kicked in and local purchasing more than doubled in just three years. According to the AOE's report in January, Vermont schools spent over 1,300,000.0 on local food last year. I know you guys know this stuff, but 14 districts qualified for the subsequent year grants achieving 20% or higher, seven achieved 20% or higher. So that's real momentum. And we need more of that. We need more of what's working. It's right to call out the harms of toxic food additives in our kids' food. And it's right to build on the viable alternative our kids deserve. Scratch cooked local meals fully supported by infrastructure funding and school culture. I think Vermont is perfectly positioned to lead this charge. Here in Vermont, we are the national leader in scratch cooking and local purchasing. And we have every reason to be proud of that. If you look across the border in New Hampshire, where I grew up, and where many of my friends and family still live, they're still paying lunch bills, and they're still struggling to get universal meals off the ground, and their local purchasing lags far, far behind. I can hear the urgency in their voices when they talk about what we've built here in Vermont. In Westminster, my hometown right now, Windham Northeast Supervisory Union reached 31% local purchasing last year. A mile across the river in New Hampshire, local purchasing rounds down to 0%. So Vermont, we don't follow, we lead. And we can show the rest of the country the real path forward. And I think that's the path we're on, raising consciousness, building universal public support, and turning local scratch cook food into reality for our kids every day. That supports, support helps build real culture change. Real culture change means adequate meal times in schools, teachers sitting and eating with students, schools backing infrastructure projects and everyone treating school meals is a valuable engaging part of the educational experience, not just break time or planning period, but a valuable part of the educational experience. So, giant food companies will continue to weasel and reformulate their toxic additives, turning BPA into BPS and BPF, all BPA free solutions that are sometimes worse than the original. And they'll continue to bring us the next iterations of whole grain Doritos and Smart Snacks compliant Mountain Dew. But Vermont can stay ahead. And we can do that by building on the success of what we have here and what's working. The local food incentive, infrastructure grants, everything that's making scratch cooking possible. And I think that we can all work together to continue to find ways to strengthen early ed, early childhood nutrition, increasing access to CACFP, reducing barriers so that our youngest kids can get nourishing meals from the start. So, I'll just close by saying Vermont's leadership, combined with the smart investment you all are making and driving for, is delivering results. So, let's double down on what works and let's keep working together and building this model of Vermont food for Vermont kids. So

[Rosie Krueger (State Director of Child Nutrition Programs, VT Agency of Education)]: thank you, chair.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you, Harley. We'll give you a question or two. And I'm not sure if we had a chance earlier in this session to congratulate you because I think you've moved to a new position since last session anyway, and I hope that's going well.

[Harley Sterling]: Thank you. We're working.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Representative Nelson? Harley, I'm on the school board up in North Country Supervisory Union. So get on 91 and hit Canada. And that's where I'm at. What did you how much money did you say you had to feed kids after your fixed costs? You said $1 per breakfast and how much for lunch?

[Harley Sterling]: So our federal reimbursement rates for a breakfast, so what we get from USDA is about $2.46 for a breakfast. And after fixed costs, overhead, labor, etcetera, it's really about a dollar left for breakfast. Lunch, we get about like $4.69 from the feds through USDA after fixed costs, now maybe $2 It's not a lot. The scale helps a lot. Like I said, universal meals has changed so much because we have higher volume, so a bigger scale, but the margins are slim and they're not in line with the realities of the food service industry.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative Bos-

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: Yeah, so hi, Harley.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: Thank you for joining us today. I'm wondering, talked about sort of your vision for wanting to have meals across the state that are more from scratch and more locally sourced. And I'm wondering, do you feel like, I mean, I've heard from some entities that we already have all the information we need about how to make this work, but we just need to put it in place or something like that. I mean, I guess I'm wondering for you as a school nutrition director, do you feel like all the schools in our state already have a clear vision of what we need and how to get there? Or do we need some other steps? I mean, because I think you're aware that the current version of the bill is really has been shaped around having a task force. And if that would be useful, I'd like to hear that. If that isn't needed, then what could we do that would be getting us in the right direction for the schools that are especially wanting to jump up into a different place than where they've been before?

[Harley Sterling]: Yeah, that is an awesome question. I certainly think a lot of the pieces of the puzzle exists, and I think we do know a lot of the answers. I'm gonna defer to my colleagues in the room about other, like the pieces that exist and the pieces that are missing and how that all comes together. I know that we all will agree that these programs are underfunded at a national level. And I know that we'll all agree that Universal Meals and the Local Food Incentive Grant has been a step in the right direction, huge steps in the right direction. The best way to put together all the pieces that we need to create a roadmap to move forward is not something that I'm necessarily an expert in. I'm curious to hear what other people have to say. And I know that AOE puts together data in the LFI report, the local food incentive report every year. And that data seems to be getting richer as the program has more years of data. And this year, it included things like information on how much local support, general fund support, different programs require to make ends meet. And that's gonna spark a lot of conversations. And what I wanna see that conversation lead to is these are the data that are showing exactly how underfunded these programs are. And our most successful gold standard programs shouldn't have to do crazy things that we do to support ourselves, I. E. Catering at 6PM and chasing every gig we can to try to come up with alternative revenue streams. We do insane things to try to support our programs to make ends meet. And then the other thing we have to do sometimes is lobby our school boards to support these programs. This shouldn't happen. Like if we have programs that are already doing what we wanna see, they're already achieving the gold standard outcomes of local scratch food and as many meal services as possible, how do we get the support that those places need to make that systemic? And I think that, I do think that AOE and other folks can help answer those questions. Like what are the deficiencies? What are the key things that we need to address to get there? I hope that answers your question.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: Yeah, it kind of does. I mean, I was just thinking like, you know, I visited the Brattleboro High School over the town meeting week. And one of the things I thought was really interesting was that in the kitchen in Brattleboro, they've modified how they make muffins. So there's some kind of breakfast muffin that they make, that they use beans for now. And they said they actually can put enough beans into the muffin that it actually has protein and it's enough to count as a breakfast item. Right, Harley? Well,

[Harley Sterling]: so we're trying to create all in one breakfast items that have a vegetable or fruit component built in. So like breakfast grounds that have dried fruit and beans in them in the right proportions that they count as a grain and a fruit, which is really hard to do. Innovative. We're working with stuff like that.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It's a very creative and interesting idea. And I'm just wondering, an idea like that, how would you share that with other schools and other nutrition directors? Like, are there channels for that already or you're piloting it now and then there isn't really a it's more like your thing, but it's not necessarily gonna spread as an idea for other schools.

[Harley Sterling]: Well, we're trying to make it cool. Yeah. We have the tools to do and then, you know, NOFA and all these and SNA and other channels that we work into network. We'll try to get the word out.

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: Yeah.

[Harley Sterling]: But then, the piece that I think that you and I were discussing is like, even if you have a great idea and even if everybody, like let's say we have the perfect recipe and kids like it here, you still need to get the infrastructure in place to do it in other places. You need mixers, you need ovens, you need the time in the morning to serve the breakfast. There's a lot of cultural and infrastructure barriers to the world we wanna see. And I know that that is foremost in a lot of our minds, like how do we start to address these things? Because the school culture piece is a huge barrier too. Like I said, if you have eleven minutes to get out 100 breakfasts, you can't make an omelet for every kid.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Let's take one more question from representative Nelson and Minkel.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Our school used to use the Addison Group and now we use that new I forget the name, one one. I apologize for that. Windham. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I are you your school done there any of them part of that or you're your own entity and how receptive have you talked to those folks? How receptive are they to this idea?

[Harley Sterling]: Well, we're in an independent program this year. We actually converted to like a self run program. So, that means that the school district runs the program as a district. So, we're district employees, we run our own thing, we do our own paperwork. We're not run by a food service management company like Whitson's. We actually were last year and for twenty years or so before that. So I definitely can't speak to Whitson's receptivity to trying new things. But I think when you create mystique and these momentums build, everybody wants to do it. I was kind of being cheeky when I said we make it cool, but it really is about creating the market pressure for these ideas to expand. I hope that answers your question.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: No, thank you.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Can have a comment?

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Well,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Harley, I don't know

[Rep. John O'Brien]: if you know, but I was just looking it up, but Congress members get $79 per diem for meals a day and state reps here, we get $69 So maybe if it was more like $9.69 every day for us to find three meals on, things would change. That

[Harley Sterling]: is really powerful. I want to make that a bumper sticker.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Make it cool. Carol, do you wanna come on up to the table and, Hardy, stay with us if you are able to, but if you need to go back to work, we'll understand.

[Carol Kent]: Hi, everybody. For the record, my name is Carol Kent. I'm a resident of Huntington, Vermont, school nutrition director for Mount Mansfield School District. And I like to share that previously I was nutrition director for Memorial North School District. So I have a little bit of different, experience in different types of school districts. I also serve on board of directors for the School Nutrition Association of Vermont, and we represent 190 school nutrition professionals statewide. Really appreciate representative Bos-Lind for bringing school nutrition to the forefront again and for keeping us in the conversation as well. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on H-eight 68. And back in January, I was here and we were saying thank you and congratulations and for all the support we've had over the years with all the wonderful programs that have moved the needle in school nutrition in Vermont. And it's really interesting to be back again with a cause that wasn't something we brought to the table. But now we have lawmakers who are interested in stepping up and making improvements in school nutrition. Lots of thoughts about that. Some things I want to comment on are just some I want to share stories about the realities of what happens in our kitchens. Harley was sharing about making these really cool muffins. I love that. A couple of my kitchens could do that. We have the staffing and we have some equipment. By and large, most of my kitchens could not pull off making muffins of that sort. We, on the other hand, have partnered with Krinz Bakery. I don't know if you know Krinz Macaroons in Huntington in our district. And they have developed with one of our schools a breakfast cookie that meets the requirements, uses local maple, local oats. And they have worked with NOFA, and they have gone through the USDA process of vetting the product, so they're close to having a product that is local, using local ingredients, and that's ready made for schools. So these are some other ways that we're trying to get more local into schools without having to within the limitations of our infrastructure. We are working I am working with Salvation Farms in Hardwick. They glean and purchase surplus produce from farms, and they minimally process it and freeze it so it is available to schools to be served throughout the winter months when fresh produce isn't available. So those hollow heart potatoes we talked about at another meeting, they can take those and they're turning them into mashed potato, frozen, ready to serve. These are some other ways that some of our supporting organizations are helping us achieve more local purchasing, putting more semi scratch made foods on the menus. Because in actuality, the infrastructure in a lot of our kitchens in Vermont are so outdated. We have state federal equipment grants I don't think are happening much anymore. We're not getting much support from the federal government these days. And the state equipment grants, I think last year, there was $50,000 available for the state.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Yeah. So

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And a and a rebuilt Hobart mixer. She's $78,000.

[Carol Kent]: So I'm looking to get a combi oven for one of my schools to replace a failing convection oven, and that's $50,000 I believe Harley's looking at replacing a dishwashing system at $70,000 new technology isn't cheap, but we have a stove from 1957 in one of our kitchens. I mean, that's older than me. Okay, some things gracefully than other things, but this we can't use the ovens and the stove. We can only use the stovetop. We also have a nineteen sixties double deck pizza oven in that kitchen, and they're producing 250 lunches a day. So the idea of being able to bake potatoes, roast potatoes, you can't do that and serve a baked chicken product or any other baked product on that day. The new technologies give us faster, better product, and they're energy efficient. So we need help. We need help with that type of thing. We can't keep up with cooking local fresh product if we don't have the infrastructure for it. We had a conversation, I think, about tater tots and baked potatoes in in one meeting. Right? This morning, I started my day at Camelstomp Middle School. It's baked to stuff baked potato. And as I'm helping prep, we had a little staff, so they were running a little behind. So I jumped in to help with the potatoes, and it's 300 meals. So we're scrubbing 300 local potatoes, and then we have to tray them, and we have to prick them, and we have to rub them with oil and salt and pepper them before they go into the oven. So there's a couple hours of labor to prep them. And then they're taking up most of our oven space. And it takes, you know, a baked potato takes an hour to bake if your oven temperature is stable. Tater tots take twenty minutes to bake, and you can batch cook them as you're cooking other things in your oven. So these are some of the things that we deal with on a day to day when we're thinking about using local fresh products. It's like, Okay, how long is it going to take to wash those carrots? We buy seconds, they are all funky with all the legs, those are almost impossible to clean. So there's so much juggling that has to go on in the kitchen every day to figure that out. So if you talk about some schools that aren't moving to scratch cooking and aren't doing local foods, you really have to give some grace because you have to look at what their kitchens look like and how much money do they have to for infrastructure, for labor. It's it's not easy. We have staff who are super passionate about cooking local. We have staff who are there to punch a clock while their kids are in school. We're trying to change that culture as well. That's difficult when everybody is out of work for the summer, when they have to take a week with no pay during vacation breaks. So it's really hard to get professional culinarians in school kitchens under those circumstances. These are just a couple more of the barriers we're looking at. So what do we do about it? We work with our agency of education really closely on training. We depend on them for our summer institute training for staff all across the state. School Nutrition Association of Vermont. We have monthly sharing circles where things like topics like equipment grants and sharing recipes and summer meal programs, how to make those work. We talk about those. We are sharing information. We put on our conference in the summertime, and we partner with NOFA, Vermont Feed, we partner with AOE, we partner with Hunger Free Vermont, and we pull in all of our really strong partners, put on a conference that's answering a lot of the questions that school districts have. How do I start a farm to school program? How do I purchase local? How can I make the time to serve local foods? How can I balance my budget with commodities and local foods? We're talking about this, and we're trying to make things work. And a lot of the missing piece comes down to finances. It comes down to what Harley was saying. There's not enough money for reimbursement. What happens when we run a deficit, we draw from the district's general fund that gets published in the report. And that's almost shaming. So when you look at those numbers and void the directors on the S and A Vermont board, we were pouring over those numbers. And then it can be really shaming to see how much you had to draw from the general fund because it doesn't also give a picture of what's actually going on in your kitchen and whether big equipment purchases needed to be made or you had staffing issues where you had to pay a lot of extra staff and it doesn't give a complete picture. I guess what I'm asking for for us to keep supporting those things that work. You guys know what they are. It's the local foods incentive grant. You know, this is my second year at MMU, and we are in line to meet that 15% threshold and to find out that, oh shoot, there's not enough money left because there's so many people who've met it. It's exciting and it's disappointing. So we need to fund that a little more and get more. It's really inspiring. It's inspiring other districts to do what we're doing. The Food Hub Grant, I mean, that's another genius thing. There wasn't federal money for that and our state stepped up and is now funding the local foods to schools in early childhood food hub grant. That's a huge help to get schools inspired to bring local foods into their kitchens. So those are the things keep, you know, universal school meals, amazing. Such it's changed the culture. And it's also increased participation to the point where we've got to get so many kids through the line using the same equipment that we had before in many cases. Sometimes there's not enough time for those kids to eat. And you can cook as many baked potatoes or locally made chicken legs, But if they don't have time to eat it, it's just you've got a really healthy local compost heap. And that's not really good for anybody.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative O'Brien had a question.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: I just wondered, with what you're describing, SU or a school will have a furnace blows up or a bus transmission goes, and the district comes up with money for that. Can you remember the last time you put in a big kitchen equipment expense into a budget where there was actually people agreed like, okay, yeah, we need a new oven, we need some other big piece of kitchen equipment.

[Carol Kent]: Yeah, each year I submit my list of needs for kitchens.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Is there

[Carol Kent]: It doesn't really go very, very far. I applied for a lot of grants. Yesterday, I applied for three grants to try and get money for milk coolers. Just got a $25,000 grant for a walk in freezer from Hannaford's. Yeah, I've received probably around 50,060 thousand dollars in grants that I've applied for over the course of this year. It's a pretty hefty side job applying for grants.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: It's not sort of an accepted line item that kitchens need equipment updated every so often.

[Carol Kent]: There is to an extent. But our kitchens have been very neglected for a long time. We still have the original equipment from when the houses were built in 1972. So we've got big steam kettles that, you know, nobody dares to use them because something lets loose every time we use them, and then you've got everything all over the floor. I mean, they really they need to replacing our district's been on a budget freeze, spending freeze this pretty much entire school year.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I don't speculate here, but I'm guessing that Mount Mansfield District's spending, for people spending, is somewhere in the higher end of the compared with the rest of the state. So even in a district that has historically been willing to

[Carol Kent]: And spend a little also, I mean, yes, and the equipment grants are also a little bit weighed on your free and reduced percentages. And because we don't have a high free and reduced percentage rate, you know, we don't get weighed as heavily for towards the grant. So

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: One more question, and then I will switch. Representative Lipsky. Thank you, Carl.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: If I recall, you either testified remotely or in person three years ago in here when you lived in Wyoming North, where you exhibited

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: in And nutritionist

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: you were lauded by Harley and others for you exceeded many other districts in the state for your culinary, farm to school, local purchases.

[Carol Kent]: It's it's a passion.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: And that you were very impressive there. Were you able to did you have these same hurdles in your food preparation at the Memorial North? Did you do it's just something your whole career you've had these challenges balancing?

[Carol Kent]: We were fortunate at Lamoille to have how do I put this? There was this really great grant. And I got $148,000 grant that was from the USDA Action for Healthy Kids. And it was a really wonderful program that's now been, of course, shut down. And it really promoted scratch cooking. It promoted local foods. And we were able to replace a lot of equipment in Lamoille. And I'm super proud of them because they've continued, even after I left two years ago, they've continued to work on their scratch cooking to the point where they've now built an in house bakery, and they're baking all their own muffins and breads from scratch there. So it's a pretty exciting legacy.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: And just because we're dealing with educational Mhmm. Funding challenges big time.

[Carol Kent]: Yeah. And

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: I know the demographic of but is that to your advantage than than as was brought up earlier, you know, in the

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Carol Kent]: I would say so. We were able to operate other programs, the CACFP programs, which brought in more revenue. And the district I'm in now, we simply do breakfast and lunch. And we do the summer program, though, which has been a huge success for us, that brings in a little extra revenue in the summer.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: I laud your dedication, your achievements.

[Tim Morgan (Deputy Director of Programs, Hunger Free Vermont)]: Thank

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Carol Kent]: If I can just finish by thanking you all again, and also just recommending that we keep funding what we know is working, these programs, and expand on them. I also I don't know that a task force is the way to go. I don't know if that's the next step that we should be taking, but I do believe we need to get some actual data under our belts to know where we need to increase funding and where we are overreaching some other programs and they need support.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you very much.

[Carol Kent]: Thank you. Tim.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Tim, while you're getting seated, I'm just going to note that the local purchasing incentive program we did here earlier in the session was oversubscribed. As Carol just alluded to, that $0.15 per meal is not going to be $0.15 because too many people have qualified, the $0.25 is not going be quite $0.25 because there's only a certain amount that we had budgeted. And I don't think we really considered in our budget memo this year any suggestion of increasing that amount. But I think it's something we should be thinking about going forward. We're hearing, let's use what works, and this is a program that we think works, and it's being oversubscribed, should we be investing more in that going forward? So with that, Tim, thank you for joining us.

[Tim Morgan (Deputy Director of Programs, Hunger Free Vermont)]: Thank you, Chair Durfee and members of the committee. Thanks for inviting me to speak today with you regarding age 68. My name is Tim Morgan. I live in Williston, and I am the deputy director of programs at Hunger Free Vermont. In my role, I provide technical assistance and training to school nutrition programs and professionals all over the state. At Hunger Free Vermont, I'm also the data guy, so I brought some numbers to the party today. I hope you don't mind. It is my nature. I am so glad that this committee takes kids access to quality food very seriously, and we share your goal of seeing more high quality scratch cooked food available to kids. Many school nutrition programs in the state are doing great work, but we also know that there are major obstacles that prevent programs from doing all they want to do. The main barriers to expand scratch cooking are operational rather than philosophical. So we don't believe that banning foods is an especially effective path to improving meal quality. The incentives and supportive measures that we have put in place have proven to be frankly astoundingly effective, and we see clear opportunities for the legislature to make meaningful intervention that will help schools prepare more fresh, healthy, and local food. Because we see these clear pathways already, we don't believe that the next step is necessarily a task force, and that perhaps a better option would be to ask the state agencies to identify clear costs or capacity needs or policy or program considerations of some core strategies. Report back to the committee using the existing program reports that get delivered next session, like for the local foods incentive. Before diving into those specific interventions, I want to thank all of you on this committee for your continued support of child nutrition programs, your commitment to ensuring high quality farm fresh meals for all children, and the powerful leadership that this committee Lost my spot. Excuse me.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: You can repeat the part about how great we are as a community.

[Tim Morgan (Deputy Director of Programs, Hunger Free Vermont)]: The powerful leadership of this committee to create extraordinarily valuable investments in meal programs that form the bedrock on which we continue, all continue to build. Today, thanks to Vermont's Universal School Meals Program, no child must learn what hunger feels like in school because they're unable to pay. But we didn't just make meals free. You committed to a holistic approach of farm fresh school meals for all kids that combined universal school meals with an innovative local foods incentive program, and funding the Farm to School and Early Childhood grant program. Because of these programs, today more children eat and eat well in school due to the foundation that we all built together. Kids learn about where their food comes from, they are engaged with Vermont agriculture, and the food that they eat and the land that they live on is more deeply integrated into their learning and development. These advancements have made it so more kids are getting to eat fresh local food in schools and have allowed space for continued innovation in our child nutrition programs, which Hardy and Carol both alluded to. Many Vermont schools, including those that you heard from today, are at the forefront of innovation in child nutrition. We submitted a memo to the committee, and in it, we shared some examples of some of these innovations, and I will highlight a few of those for you now. At Hunger Free Vermont, we are currently working with districts to connect off-site universal pre kindergarten programs to their universal school meals programs and feed additional eligible children who were not getting fed already. Schools have forged partnerships with local dairies to serve organic milk in an affordable and sustainable and repeatable way that's growing. The local foods incentive has driven countless new school producer relationships and spurred market development for local bread, beans, beef, and other products that meet child nutrition program requirements and can provide the quantity that schools need. And the Agency of Education Child Nutrition Programs has also been supporting and working to make this happen, and has helped schools with their management company contracts to add additional specifications into the contracts. They require better quality food or local food procurement and applying to the local foods incentive, and that technical assistance is helping the local foods incentive extend to school districts with management companies. Still, many schools and early childhood programs face steep challenges to cooking from scratch, offering kids the time and space they need to eat, and many children, especially our youngest, are still not being fed. One of the most significant barriers that schools face is cost. Schools operate under federal reimbursement rates that do not pay them adequately for the meals that they serve, which you have heard already. USDA found the average meal costs significantly outpaced reimbursement rates in both breakfast and lunch a decade ago, And since then, schools have endured significant inflation, supply chain challenges, unless we forget a global pandemic. Scratch cooking takes a lot of time, requires kitchen equipment and space that some schools have and some don't. And we still have schools with no kitchen or cafeteria at all. Despite meals being free for students, less than half eat school breakfast due to scheduling and timing, Due to the complicated and challenging nature of the Child and Adult Care Food Program, that's CACFP, only 40% of the early childhood programs that are licensed or registered in the state participate in the federal meal program. 80,000 kids attend schools where NSLP meals are available, but the license capacity of childcare providers participating in CACFP is only 6,700. In the joint memo we submitted, we outlined four key strategic areas where we believe the legislature can have the greatest impact in the near future to improving access to fresh and healthy food, and where focusing age 68 could deliver clear next steps. Expanding the local foods incentive, growing equipment and infrastructure grants to the point to support school kitchen and equipment upgrades at a scale that can support those really big, bigger things. Continuing to invest in the Farm to School and Early Childhood grant program, and strengthening coordination between state agencies to expand access to meal programs in early childhood settings. My colleagues have spoken in greater detail to some of these interventions or will, and so I am going to focus on one of them, the fourth strategy on that list. There are many aspects of the child and adult care food program that are out of reach at the state level because the program must be improved at the federal level. It is a federal program after all. However, we can make sure that early childhood programs have support at key moments to plan and implement meal programming. We often hear that it's a lot more difficult to add a meal program to an already established childcare programs. Strengthening interagency coordination and incorporating CACFP into licensing processes for new programs at the Agency of Human Services Child Development Division which support meal program getting built into the initial phases of childcare program onboarding and would bolster the expansion of child nutrition programming in early childhood. Rather than creating a new task force to explore these established issues, we recommend getting input from the state agencies to analyze costs, capacity needs, and program considerations associated with these strategies through the relevant annual reports they're submitting to you already. The DOE's report on the LFI, the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets report on farm to school early childhood grants. The committee should request the child development division report back on what is needed and how to take steps to effectively incorporate meals into new early childhood program onboarding in a meaningful way. Using these reporting structures will allow the legislature to gather the information needed to guide future policy decisions while allowing school nutrition programs, the state agencies and nonprofit partners to remain focused on the work that's already underway to improve meals for Vermont children. We share your commitment to ensuring that every child has access to good food every day, and the least nutritious meal a child can eat is nothing. As we continue working to improve access to quality meals for Vermont children, it's essential that we pursue policies that strengthen program participation, support nutrition staff, and make healthy farm fresh food more readily available to students. Thank you again for your commitment to the Vermont's Child Nutrition Programs, and please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any further questions from us beyond today.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All right, thank you, Tim. I think maybe we should have Betsy jump right in just looking at the clock. And just a programming note here, we had our agenda said that we will take a break before we hear from the Agency of Education. Think we'll have Rosie come. It doesn't make sense to take a break, hear from you, and then we'll take our break. But in any case, Betsy, thank you for joining us.

[Betsy Rosenbluth (Farm to School Director, Shelburne Farms; Co-Director, Vermont FEED)]: All right. Thank you, chair and the committee for having us all today. My name is Betsy Rosenbluth. I'm the Farm to School Director at Shelburne Farms and Co Director of Vermont FEED with our partners at NOFA Vermont. And Shelburne Farms also coordinates the statewide farm to school and early childhood network. I'll try to be brief and not repeat too much, but we also are really excited about the committee's ongoing interest and support of getting Farm Fresh School meals to all Vermont's children and to be able to work together on strategies that lead to scaling up more local and nutritious food in every program. As a network, we've been looking at what barriers remain to realizing this shared goal and how legislators can help us to reach that. And about an hour ago, we just received the results of a local purchasing evaluation that I passed on to Patricia. And maybe at the end of this testimony, I don't know if it's possible to share screen or we can look at that or you have that information that really backs up a lot of what we've been saying today. And one of the highlights is that over the last ten years, Vermont schools across the state have increased local purchasing 150%. So we're still at 14%, our goal is 30%. So we still have a ways to go but we have a lot of momentum and we know we're moving in the right direction and we just want to acknowledge there's some real structural barriers getting there that we're working on. You've heard those barriers which are repeated in our evaluations that the cost of reimbursement certainly has not kept pace with inflation and is really not adequate. Kitchen infrastructure and storage and training and labor challenges in particular. The investments we've made really made a difference. And I wanna add to that because I know this committee also works on the Working Lands Enterprise Fund and the agency of agriculture's budget that includes the farm to institution market development grants and other supports for producers. Those are really important so that the supply chain keeps pace as we grow demand. And so a lot of the projects we're talking about getting local milk in schools, getting bakery items fresh baked that are clean and can go to schools. We are exploring is there a cider project? We're working with Vermont Bean Crafters on a grant to expand Vermont beans in schools. There's a lot of projects and it really requires the change in that an investment in the whole system. I think the investment in local food for schools really helped the food hub infrastructure distribution in the state to be able to reach now every school across the state and that has really made a big change and those food hubs really promote things like if there's a bean muffin, how do you get that out to the schools or local beef and things like that. So the food hubs that I know you heard a little bit from on Farm to School Awareness Day, they're really part of this system to get that fresh local food. I would just say a couple of things, Tim laid out the four strategies that we feel like our next steps to really pay attention to. So the local food incentives, Rosie can speak more, but expanding that funding and looking for opportunities to make it easier to use is really important. So the agency of education saw that there were few food service management companies that were taking advantage of that local purchasing incentive. They helped schools draft model contract language that we're seeing now paying off. And I think this last year's report shows that more foods are more schools with food service management companies are participating in the LFI and they're strengthening their contract language to get to make sure there's local purchasing. So it's small things like that where we see a barrier, an opportunity to try to work on that. I think Carol spoke eloquently about the need for kitchen infrastructure and I'm not gonna repeat that, but I will touch on the Farm to School and Early Childhood Grants Program at the Agency of Agriculture. That's where we've really been funding a lot of technical assistance that can reach any school nutrition program anywhere in the state and help them connect with farmers, connect with local product, provide some professional learning opportunities. The program has subsidized CSA shares for early childhood as an entry point for small early childhood programs to begin to buy local and you know other ways of expanding local and scratch cooking as well as the most important thing is the customer are the students and making sure that the kids feel connected and excited and understand that connection to Vermont agriculture and local food. So your support for that grant program has really been a piece of this puzzle that really helps us to achieve the success that we've had. And then lastly, Tim spoke about the importance of, you know, I feel like farm to early childhood is a little bit where farm to school was maybe twenty years ago, where we're just really trying to figure out how to change a system to embed it in a system so that it becomes common practice. And we know how important it is. You've heard us talk about 90% of our brains developed in the first five years of life and 70% of Vermont kids are cared for outside of the home so nutrition in those first five years is so key And so, are there administrative policies that we can look at that can really help an interagency coordination with child development division that really helps to get more programs into the federal nutrition programs and onboard them during licensing or other opportunities. So I feel like that's a big area for the programs serving kids in those early years. Yeah, lastly, I would just say that we're happy to work with you on addressing barriers. We've had a lot of success, we have a strong partnership with both the agency of education, child nutrition staff and their agency of agriculture. We're mostly just concerned that a task force would stress existing staff capacity already focused on this work. And we really want to just identify where are those opportunities and where are those needs and how do we continue to build the momentum to reach all the schools that we need to. So I think that's all I will say, unless you want me to try to bring up the evaluation summary or if you have that in your notes, maybe that's enough.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Well, think that I'm not sure that we do have it, but if we can, we'll make sure that we get it posted and the committee has access to it. And thank you for sharing it, Betsy. I think we were looking to see whether the committee has any questions for you. If not, maybe we'll have Rosie come up to the table then. Yeah, please.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: Tim mentioned the four key legislative priorities, and I think you referred to them, too. None of those are things we're going to be able to do anything about this week. So you're basically saying you don't think our committee should move forward any legislation right now. We should wait and see. Those are almost all things that require money, and we're not a money committee, and the things that we recommend get cut about 75% when they go to appropriations. So the idea of a task force is a relatively small ask financially. I think that that would be something we could get through. If you think we don't need a task force to gather more information, it sounds like we're not going to have anything new coming out of the legislature until next year. And yeah, I mean, I guess I feel a little bit disheartened by this because to me, the idea of having a task force with a diverse range of stakeholders who can share ideas that might not cost money and some of them that would cost money. And we get the whole list together and then we can come back and see, you know, partly it could be the data around, you know, what do we need? I mean, it sounds like it's really very dire. The situation in our kitchens is very hard and we need to be able to lobby for funds from appropriations to help that, to get it on the priority list, along with all the other ones. So I don't know. I mean, I guess, it feels like we're maybe missing an opportunity to gather some information that could be useful,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: Is my opinion.

[Betsy Rosenbluth (Farm to School Director, Shelburne Farms; Co-Director, Vermont FEED)]: Yeah, I think there is some data to gather. I think this committee could request the agency of education who already reports in January and the agency of agriculture also reports to the committee regularly each January and direct them with the specific questions that we might have. So if there's a question around the need for the anticipated need with the local food incentive or anticipated need with equipment you know you've got an agency already connected administering those programs who would be able to answer some of your questions in terms of some of that data. I'm concerned that just with efficiency whether a task force is the most efficient way to get some of the information we would want so that next year we have that data to look at opportunities. And I think early childhood, yeah, I'm not sure what, it's not really a money item, I think it's more of an administrative policy, how we begin to pressure that system from a legislative point of view to encourage some change that makes nutrition or makes it easier for early childhood programs to enter some of the federal nutrition programs. So we're working on that, we can think about what's legislative action around that. I don't think it's, we're ready with a policy yet but I think encouraging some of the interagency coordination and some of the encouragement through licensing and existing structures could be really helpful.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All right, any other questions for Betsy? Betsy, thank you. Betsy, yeah.

[Carol Kent]: Hello.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think your testimony is on our website.

[Rosie Krueger (State Director of Child Nutrition Programs, VT Agency of Education)]: Yes, so for the record, Rosie Krueger, I'm the state director of child nutrition programs at the agency of education. I have given you some written testimony and I do plan to elaborate on a couple pieces of that, as well as answer some questions, some great discussion questions that I heard come up today and I think I can answer for you. So I want to start by sort of framing what we're talking about when we're talking about school meals in Vermont, because I think a lot of us have conceptions about school meal quality and what's going on in school meals. And I have been involved in school meals in Vermont since 2013, and I've been the director of the program since 2019. And I'm sure those of you who have been around a while have heard me say how dramatic the change in school meal quality was after the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act about fifteen years ago. And that's true. That had a massive impact on meal quality. But as I reflect on that time, I think I have been surprised by how rapid the improvement in meal quality has been just over the past five years. So if you are even picturing meal quality in Vermont, say, seven years ago, it's different now. It looks better now. And even over the past three or four years, things have improved. And over the past year, things have improved. And this committee and the legislature gets a lot of credit for that, as you've heard already with the local foods incentive and universal school meals. You provided additional funding And that additional funding has really made amazing change. I'm just when I hear Carol and Harley talk about what they're doing, it's amazing to me what they're doing on a shoestring. And every time I hear them talk, think, oh, if you could just give them a couple more cents, what could they do with, you know, 2 more cents, 3 more cents? You know? They're really magicians when it comes to funding. And so the small amounts of additional funding that you gave in the local foods incentive have really driven just astonishing change. And I think if you go back and look at our report from this year, you really see that really surprised us. I think it surprised everybody involved in it with how well it's worked. And I think that really speaks to what I think all of us who are involved in the programs really understand sort of at a core level is that the major barrier to change here is funding. And so every time we've seen adding a little bit of additional funding, we've just seen a dramatic increase in milk quality. I'll also say with the local foods incentive, another thing that your committee did that really improved outcomes there was you funded an additional position at the agency of education. So Connor Floyd on my team, his position was created in that legislation. And so he's been able to assist schools with local purchasing, but we've also used him to, really increase oversight on food service management companies, which are a little bit, slower to move in terms of increasing meal quality. And so we've really put a lot of that additional capacity that you gave to us into pushing for increased meal quality in that area. And we continue to do that. And then with the universal meals initiative, that's additional funding. A major place where we've seen improved meal quality there is with the absence of a la carte foods. So it used to be that these programs really had to sell a la carte meals or a la carte items, an extra slice of pizza, an extra cookie, an extra drink, in order to make ends meet. And, we, on my team, were just really astonished to see how quickly director school food service programs pivoted. As soon as they had any additional funding through the Universal Meals funding, they pivoted and stopped offering those things. The moment they had additional funding, they shifted and stopped offering those poor quality products. So over, I don't know how aware you all are of this, but over on the Senate side, the Senate Health and Welfare Committee is considering a bill that specifically limits about 12 different additives in school meals. And my team went through those additives and we were looking at all the products that are in Vermont schools because we are constantly looking at menus, at nutritional facts, at ingredient labels, at recipes. And we went through those 12 items and there were a bunch of things that we used to see just three or four years ago, and we're not seeing those items anymore. And there in fact were only five food products that we're seeing in the entire state that are being served, that have those items that they're looking at banning. And there used to be more just a few years ago. We've really seen a big shift there. And the places that we see those additives still occurring are mostly in those a la carte items. So by not offering those a la carte items, we're just seeing a dramatic change in what's being offered. So I just want to kind of share that because if you haven't been to see what school meals look like this year, you might not be up on what things actually are looking like in Vermont. And I want you to have that framing before feeling like, okay, we were going to step in and make some changes here. And I bring that up specifically because, Rosland, I know from speaking with you, a lot of your concern here comes from an experience you had in Windham Southeast Supervisory Union. I just went there last week and had a refresh. Yeah. And I want to speak about that a little bit because this is just such a success story. So you spoke about how I think you had substituted in that Yeah. Or you worked in And you saw some pretty appalling meal quality. And my team is in the schools at least every three years, but we're actually there much, much more frequently because we're there every three years for every program. And we had flagged that. We had seen that meal quality in those schools in that district. They had some self op schools that were doing amazing work, but then they had these schools that were contracting with a management company and the meal quality was just deteriorating and was much worse than what we were seeing in the rest of the state. And so we pushed and provided assistance and really prodded through our administrative reviews, through work directly with the administration there. And so they started out by trying to hold that management company accountable. We helped them put new requirements in their contract about increased meal quality and gave them some ideas on that. And then once they'd gone out to bid and those were in the contract, we helped them try and enforce that contract. And when it became apparent to them that enforcing it was more costly and draining than it would be to move to a self operated program, we also gave them assistance in that transition to the self operated program. And now you see Harley's taken over as the food service director there, and we're really pleased to see the improvement in meal quality already, but know that Harley has big plans for making it even better. And in fact, he asked us to come down and do a technical assistance visit recently, just I think in the last month. And so my team went down there and gave him a bunch of ideas about things that could change and spoke with the staff there. And so I kind want of paint that success story for you because I think our process is working. We saw that that was not good quality and we intervened and we helped with assistance. And the district saw that as well. And I believe they intervened with additional funding. So I think one of the reasons that we're skeptical that a task force is the right way to go here is because we feel pretty confident that we already know what the major barrier is. The major barrier is funding. When you heard Carol go through all those equipment needs, those staffing needs, not being able to pay her staff over school vacation, them having to go unpaid, all of that is funding. And we will go in and we'll do specific technical assistance for each district because every district has different needs. And they'll all be a little bit different, but ultimately what it comes down to is funding. If we had all the funding in the world, it wouldn't matter how we very efficiently move staff around and collaborated. So when we are worried about inefficiencies in the programs, that's because the funding is so tight. And if you don't have folks like Carol and Harley who are pinching every last penny, then you won't end up with that amazing meal quality. And if you don't have, at this point, boards that are supportive and putting additional funding in, you won't have that really good meal quality. So we're pretty confident that we know what the issue is. And that's not just coming from us. I've provided in my testimony a link to the School Nutrition Association nationally. They did their trends report where they surveyed food service directors from across the country about what their barriers were to more scratch cooking, more local cooking, or more local purchasing, and what caused them to rely on ultra processed foods. What were their barriers for moving away from ultra processed foods? The top three issues are all directly funding, funding for food, funding for labor and funding for equipment. And then the remaining issues around staff time to try new recipes and develop new recipes and do procurement and do training, those are funding issues too, because time is money, right? So that matches what we're seeing when my team goes out, and that's backed up by that. Then I think Tim mentioned, and I've linked as well, the USDA in 2019 published their school nutrition and meals cost study that broke down what it actually costs to produce a quality school meal versus what the federal reimbursement was. And there was a big mismatch there and it hasn't gotten better since then. So I think we have a lot of the information we need already. And there was a lot of discussion in I listened to your discussion about this bill initially, and there was sort of a I I think representative O'Brien made maybe a joking comment that the agency of education doesn't cost any money. So assigning our staff to this task force, you don't have to allocate any funds for that. And I appreciate that. I think that was made in a joking sense, but quite seriously, it really does have a huge cost. And that huge cost is that we at the agency have limited capacity. We have all of these supports that we want to be able to provide. And when we are pulled from those supports to go do a task force to study what the issue is, and we know that the issue is funding, that's going to mean that we're not able to do that customized second fill assistance, that we're not going to be able to spend the time doing the summer meals expansion outreach, which will allow schools to bring in more funds, which they'll use to supplement their school year funding. That's not going to allow us to spend the time doing This is very in the weeds, but we're going to restart a whole bunch of cycles for the community eligibility provision this year, which is a lot of paperwork, but it's going to allow us to draw down more federal funding for the next four years than we would if we kept the existing cycles. And that's going to allow us to have additional summer meal and after school meal sites for the next five years fully federally funded. I have given you a giant list of all of the things that I would really love to be doing with the very limited capacity of my team. And I want to do all of those things. And so any time spent on a task force is going to necessarily mean that I can't do all of those things. I also want to mention that the federal situation right now is pretty tough. And so most of our time right now is spent on that for federally required work to monitor, to do oversight, and to do reporting to the federal government. And we really have to dot every I and cross every T right now because if we fail in that work in any way, if we're not 100% perfect, we're risking $40,000,000 in federal funds that support these programs. That's where I have to spend my time. Where I want to spend my time is on all these initiatives to provide that one on one assistance to figure out how we can draw down more federal funds, how we can have districts collaborate with each other. I know you're running out of time here, so I don't want to belabor this too much. But one thing I didn't talk about in terms of an initiative, and then I heard it come up, was working with the Child Development Division on working with the Child and Adult Care Food Program and childcare licensing. So this is actually something we're already talking about and working on. We see real issues with the CACFP. And frankly, a lot of those issues come from the federal government. They've made the regulations harder in the last few years rather than making them easier. So we are losing programs participating in the program. We're going in the wrong direction. So we've been spending a lot of time thinking about how we're going to improve that. And when Building Bright Futures got that giant childcare expansion grant this year, Part of that grant was us saying that we were gonna work with child development division to figure out how to make it easier for childcare centers to participate in the CACFP and how to align our outreach and work. So that's on my would be nice, really wanna do that work. I don't know if I'm gonna have the time, I'm gonna try. I've had some good conversations with Jen McLaughlin already, but need to continue to have conversations with that team. Our teams need to basically meet more often and be talking about how we can align our messaging, how we can streamline paperwork. And so, yes, we agree. We wanna do that work. And we're hoping to do that. But all of these competing priorities are the thing that might make that not happen. There was also a great question about how information is shared between districts. We do a lot to make that happen. Our summer institute was mentioned. We're going to be collaborating with Sheldon Farms this year on that, but that's an annual training opportunity where we do in person trainings, we do culinary training, we do food safety training, and then we do a bunch of online trainings as well. And so we'll be working on that again, and that's a wonderful sort of exchange opportunity. And we use that to highlight really cool initiatives that are happening. For example, a couple of years ago, when folks started doing the organic milk thing with Miller Farm, we hosted a bulk milk training there to really focus on how schools can offer bulk milk in the programs and give them more supports on that. And so we continue, when we see these good ideas bubbling up, we use that as an opportunity to share that and collaborate. We also have a biweekly phone call with everybody in the field where folks are invited to join, there's a collaboration opportunity there. And then when we see somebody doing something well, we try to create templates and toolkits and not have them all recreating the wheel. And so that's another initiative. Right now, we're working on a We already have a seasonal cycle menu toolkit for lunch that was created by some of the excellent food service directors in the field using our funding. And we're working on one for after school snack as well. So lots and lots of initiatives there. And that's the work I want to be doing. We absolutely believe on my team in trying to get the highest quality meals that we can for our kids. And we're going to keep doing that work and want to keep doing that work. I don't think we need you to tell us to do that, but certainly always happy to have conversations with you all about what resources we need, or if there's a particular direction you would like to see us going, we're really happy to collaborate on that.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Just maybe one or two questions here. Thank you, Leslie.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Yeah, Leslie, what Hardy brought up earlier, I was intrigued by that. When you're talking about nutrition, it's so much part of your life, but then the context of it also is like, we only have eleven minutes to So produce at the AOE, are there conversations of like, can we change the way a day looks so that food is cool, we have time to eat our great food, etcetera?

[Rosie Krueger (State Director of Child Nutrition Programs, VT Agency of Education)]: Yeah, so we actually, this fall had a brief, we've been thinking about whether there are some movements in other states and other states do have a mandated seat time, and we don't have that. And so, you know, we've thought about, is this the thing? Is this the thing that, you know, should we propose to you all to make some legislation on that? And we haven't decided that that's something to propose yet, but it's under discussion for sure. And we do see, in some cases, seat time is a barrier. And I've actually compiled some information on that for I don't think it was this committee. I think it was a different committee last year. So there are areas like that where maybe a policy change could make a difference, we're on the lookout for those. And we kind of discuss, okay, so if you require seat time, how does that interact with the rest of the education system? We're continuing to put mandates on there. So I think that's why we haven't specifically come to you with a proposal on that, but we're looking at that. That's certainly part of the conversation.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: The other thing is you just said funding is

[Rosie Krueger (State Director of Child Nutrition Programs, VT Agency of Education)]: It's mostly funding.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: So what do you do about that?

[Harley Sterling]: Go next door to a property agent.

[Rosie Krueger (State Director of Child Nutrition Programs, VT Agency of Education)]: What we are trying to do is maximize every drop of funding that is already And so that's a lot of the work that my team is doing with technical assistance is looking for any inefficiencies. When it kind of breaks my heart when Carol mentions that it feels like shame when we're listing how much general fund a district is putting into the program. I think we don't have any concerns when we see a district putting general fund into the program and they're getting high quality meals. That makes sense. It's worth it to them. They're going to purchase that. We have concerns when we see a district putting money into the program and they're not getting high quality meals. So then we're going to go in there and say, what's going on here? And one of the initiatives that we have is we've interviewed seven of the districts that have very high quality meal programs that have not put money into their programs to ask them, what are you doing? This is great. What's going on there? And we did pull from that some best practices. And my team has drafted the report. It's sitting on my desk. I really want to publish it, get it out there, and then develop some training based on it and develop some templates and best practices. And this is all the work I'd like to do, but I'm not doing that because I'm handling federal fires and, you know, doing all these other things. So that's, yeah, absolutely. There are things that we can do to try to maximize the funding that we have, and we try to do those at every opportunity.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So we're out of time. Representative Lipsky, do you have a very quick follow-up with a very quick answer?

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: I take away from this afternoon. You've got to get Carol's new equipment. I'm

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: sorry. So

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think we're hearing the general theme here, and I'm wondering whether it might be possible within the existing networks that you have and the ways we have of communicating already. If a task force isn't the way to go, whether the legislature, when we get back in January, can hear more specifics on what might be helpful. We'll have more chance to discuss what we want to do with the bill, I'm just going to toss that out there, not looking for a reaction necessarily. But also, I will say that I'm glad to hear on the record folks saying we could use more money for these programs because we didn't hear that. We haven't heard that in my four years. It's been level funded. So good to hear that. And perhaps that can be part of anything you might bring back to us, even if we don't set up a task force. Thank you, Rosie, for coming in. We are going to move right now into, just because we've asked people to come back, and I don't want to make them wait another ten minutes. Actually, Patricia, if you can take note here, I want to be sure that we're also covering here not only 58, not only rodenticides, but also paraquat seven thirty nine while we have the agency. And maybe we'll even start with that. So Steve, would you mind coming up? Sure,

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: Chair, before you take testimony on that, Fish and Wildlife was expecting a calendar invite to be able

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: to join for this next portion. Online. Okay, well, see at least one department member there. I'm not sure if there are others maybe who Thank you. Okay, yeah. If that's a concern, let us know. But it's probably the same Zoom invite as it was earlier this morning, I think, yeah.

[Patricia (Committee Assistant)]: Yes, it's the same.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thanks for confirming that. Essentially we don't have any more testimony scheduled on 07:39, but over the break, we were made aware of a significant development, I think, in this larger conversation that manufacturer of paraquat, Syngenta, had announced that it was going to stop selling their product at the end of the year. Yeah. I thought it might be helpful to have some testimony from the agency. And I don't expect you to come on a moment's notice and be able to answer a lot of questions, Steve, but what that might mean for the availability, what that might mean to farmers, to growers, just in terms of getting access to Paracat from another manufacturer. I think we have the sense that Syngenta has a large market share, but I don't know. I'm not sure if you know that. So what I wanted to do is just start by asking that, and then we'll have a couple of other things to say about Paraguay, and then we'll move on with rodenticides.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: Thank you, Chair. For the record, Winell, AG Agriculture Food and Markets. And in reference to the development with the registration of Paraquat, Syngenta announced last week that they were no longer going to market Gramoxone, which is our product in The United States. They will continue to provide it for sale up until December 31 or until existing stocks on share comes first. So there are seven other registrants for Paraquat products in Vermont. I don't know how many there are in the country, probably more than that. But there are seven additional registrants. Each one of those is a separate registration. So each company that has that registration, you know, has the They are registered with the federal government, they're registered with state, so they can market those products. There's a Well, I should clarify too that one of the registrants, Generic Crop Science, is in the process of phasing their product out also. They have what's called a discontinuance registration with us, which means they are not actively bringing their product into the state. But if there's any product in the marketplace, they can continue to be used because it's still registered. In terms of the market share, the only product we have any report of being sold for the last three years, maybe four years is Gramoxone. None of the other products were reported as being sold. So it's been all Gramoxone. There is a kind of a wrinkle with the whole thing in that EPA requires as a condition of registration that there's a statement on the label that states that applicators have to take a special training once at least once every three years and get a certificate from the registrant that they've done that training. The only provider of that training is Syngenta. So I've talked to the Syngenta representative about that. And he said he didn't have a definitive answer, but he expected that Syngenta would maintain that training process for at least a year. And then somebody else would have to pick it up. I'm going to be talking to EPA about that issue for Vermont, but also for some of other responsibilities. The question I'm going have for EPA is if the other registrants don't pick that training up, what happens?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: That's a training that's required every three years from now.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: It's an online training that's primarily for safety and handling PPE. So that's pretty much it. That's the information I have.

[Harley Sterling]: All

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: right. No reason to believe, or is there reason to believe that next spring, say, or whenever somebody would first be using it and had run out between now and then, that they won't be able to access it through another manufacturer?

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: There are other manufacturers that have registered products, whether they actively are supplying it is unknown. And

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: do you know anything about the worldwide market and how much Syngenta share? No, I do not.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: If the legislature were to ban its use in Vermont, would the I'm just wondering, would the training issue become irrelevant? Assuming it would.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: Yeah, because it wouldn't be used. Yeah.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: That's my assumption.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: Thank you.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: President O'Brien. Steve, do you know if it's

[Rep. John O'Brien]: used as a desk again in Vermont at all?

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: The only indication I have that it was used was in 2022. We had record of two fifty gallons being used by one applicator. And the only use I can imagine was uses of desiccant. But that was just a one time record that we have. I just don't think it's a common practice in Vermont. The primary uses in the Southern States were cotton and peanuts. And we don't have those. Yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Right, any other questions on that?

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: All right.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So where

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: where are we? So what we would like to do is have Dave talk about the you know, you heard about the fact that Vermont Fish and Wildlife and our agency are working together on this issue. And that's what we'll talk about is what we've been doing and what our plans are, I guess, for that. So much for that, Sherry.

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: Plus the committee also wishes to give any work from Brian's presentation from earlier today From Fish and Wildlife. And

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: we see that Brian has joined us remotely, has joined us again along with Doctor. Andrew and commissioner?

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Program manager.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I've got you director. Director, thank you. Me just say if there's anything else that you wanted to add that you had a chance to think about maybe since we wrapped up earlier or the committee has any questions while they've joined this.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Representative O'Brien? I wanted to ask you, but you didn't pick

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: them up.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Do you have any idea of how many, say, Eschar bait traps are set in Vermont at any one time?

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: We had a report of the use by the licensed companies. And I think that was part of the testimony I gave a couple of weeks ago. And in terms of the total poundage is pretty low, but because the baits are very low amounts of rodenticide in each bait block that adds up, you know, we're talking tens of thousands of bait blocks being applied in terms of how many individual bait stations. That's something that could be hard to figure out. But essentially every commercial business and especially any food business will have or ought to have bait stations on their perimeter at least in order to keep the roots. So it could cause problems.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Even right here probably.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: I'm not sure about this building. We have them around our building. I know that. I haven't seen any, but I haven't walked across the perimeter. But I would expect that they'd be nearby.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Since we've got to right across the

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Yeah. Chairman, are are we receiving questions on parapause or on rodenticides? Well, we're about about I have a request for single non dental science.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. Good. Because we have I think we've officially moved into that. So, would you like to ask now?

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Well, this is a request to you, and I've got a committee that we're gonna continue to hear testimony today, but we talked a couple weeks ago getting testimony from the Vermont Department of Health on the rules if rodents are found to be in food establishments, markets, or restaurants, and that's one area that you have not to might remember.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: You've invited them and Patricia can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they declined to testify. I may be mixing that up with another piece of legislation, but Patricia, let's compare notes later on anyway. Okay,

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: thank you. Let's be

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: sure that we are understanding what the concern is and maybe we can reinvite them if that would be one. So Dave, did you have a presentation that you wanted to put on the screen?

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: I do, Mr. Chair. Just for the record, Dave Huber, Deputy Director of Division of Planet Administration, Vermont Agency of Ag Food Markets. I do, but I don't have an invite to the Teams meeting. And I did send this into Patricia, so it is

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: on the committee's page. Patricia, maybe you could send an invite and then give access to Dave Huber. Yeah. It'll come

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: to your email in a minute. She's gonna send it right now. Yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: There's probably the same invite from this morning, Dave. But in the meantime, the committee does have it on our page. So if you wanna find it under Dave Fieker's name.

[Patricia (Committee Assistant)]: Dave, I haven't actually got your email because all our communication goes through Terry, as does the Zoom link. So probably it will be in your email from Terry forwarding the link that I sent her. I can send to you again, but I'll need to have your email.

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: Absolutely. I'll shoot you an email with my email because I have the link. I have an email from Terry, but there is no link.

[Patricia (Committee Assistant)]: Oh, okay. She must

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: have You know what, gotten rather

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: than go fill this, why don't we just

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: we all have it on our That many, sounds good. Maybe a couple of slides.

[Patricia (Committee Assistant)]: Okay.

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: Well, you, Patricia. Sure. And thank you members of the committee. We really do appreciate the ability to continue to testify on this bill and also to extol what we have done with Vermont Fish and Wildlife as far as the interagency collaboration and efforts that have gone into coming up with some sort of solution here that would be the best for Vermonters and as well as for making sure that this tool can still be used, but in very much prescribed manner. So to that extent, the agency of agriculture and Vermont Fish and Wildlife, We have met up several times over the past year. We did this so that we could have an ad hoc informal interagency meeting to discuss more about this rodenticide issue. This issue is beyond the confines of the state of Vermont. This is being talked at the national level, but as far as what we can do, fish and wildlife and also ag, we're looking to discuss further. In doing so, we invited to our meetings pest management professionals in the state, as well as those PMPs, pest management professionals that have territories outside of the state, but they have companies that are found within the state. Rodenticide researchers, infertility experts, you'll be hearing from Professor Steve Bellman tomorrow around 9AM. He's a infertility expert. And we also heard from state government staff who are looking to share information on the issue of rodenticide use and the impacts on wildlife. And then we collected some information on possible best management practices. We don't have best management practices in rule, but we were talking about the possibility of best management practices and what that would look like. So just to talk about a couple of the folks who came in to these meetings to discuss really that intersection of fertility control and anti twangling rodenticides. Professor Steve Bellemay, professor of ecology at the University of Greenwich, Natural Resources Institute, you'll hear from him tomorrow. He came in and spoke with us. James O'Neill, compliance manager over at Rent A Kill Terminix, very large territory on the Eastern Seaboard, also spoke to us. Doctor. Giovanna Massey is the European Director of Professor of Human Wildlife Interactions at the University of York. She also gave us a presentation and is a colleague of Professor Bellemine at the Batsteever Institute, which is a collection of folks and scientists and PhDs who are looking to study infertility treatments. It all started with, I think, African plains animals and infertility treatments surrounding the trade in ivory, and then it expanded from there into rodent management. So a very interesting group, but you'll have more information from them tomorrow. And then Doctor. Niamh Quinn, Human Wildlife Interactions Advisor at the South Coast Research Center, University of California also gave us some information in the form of presentations. I'm hoping to sum up as best I can, as quickly as I can, some of their findings. So for fertility control, what is the concept here? There's been some testimony in your committee about fertility control. And what this really does is it targets reproduction rather than mortality. And it's really particularly suited for fast breeding R selected species. These R selected species are animals that maximize reproduction in unstable environments. They're also characterized by shorter lifespans than other animals, rapid maturation, and minimal parental care. So if you can think of a rodent, it fits the bill for those areas. Fertility control also aims to suppress populations over time. And you'll hear from Doctor. Bellman tomorrow about his concerns and interest in that. But now what are the potential advantages to fertility control? Well, to reduce secondary poisoning perceived, We don't know that from the science. And it's also more publicly acceptable, mainly because it's not an anticoagulant on the fentanyl. But again, the science and the research is still out there and needing to be conducted on these infertility treatments. That's exactly what pots deep dish does. It's they look to start working on research and literature to find out the best case moving forward if infertility treatment is that method. So what are suitable applications for fertility control? Because these are a little bit different than when you would wanna use anticoagulant rodenticides. Best suited for urban populations, but which Vermont does have some. Agricultural landscapes, again, Vermont does have some of those. And then situations where eradication, it's just unrealistic. And that could be because of culture, with people refusing to make changes to their daily lifestyle, because it's easier for them to put the trash in the alleyway or to compost in the alleyway as we found in some municipalities in Vermont. But really that's a it's unrealistic, it really is because there's a culture issue or because it's a food establishment and they're always gonna be having an influx of food, or it's a farm where they're always gonna have grain available and it's just hard to control in those situations. So where is it not suitable for? Food warehouses, manufacturing plants, restaurants, as well as domestic infestations. So that would be at somebody's house.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And just to sum up why it's not suitable, Dave, for those three.

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: Well, those areas, you have to eliminate the rodents because they're going to be dropping fur, feces and urine. And even with fertility control, you'll be lessening the population amount, but they're still going to be contaminating or possibly contaminating those food. There's also that cultural fear where I have a rodent in my house, have to do everything I can to get rid of it. Can cause some very severe reactions in humans knowing that there are rodents in their house. Antibiotic rodenticide is a good way to definitely get rid of those rodents as well as exclusion work.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: Yeah, if I may chair, the use of the fertility controls will reduce the population over time. But while you're doing it, you still have the roadblock. So in a situation where you have, like you've heard from several folks about, you have to have very low tolerance for rodent infestations in food warehouses, restaurants, stores. You can't wait till that takes effect. Can't do so right away.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative Burtt is joining us, assume, and he has a question.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Thanks, chair. I just was wondering if there has been much testing done on the infertility mechanism just to see whether or not, you know, I'd I'd be wondering if there's potential that predators could also ingest the same thing and also become infertile infertile, but I don't know if any testing has been done on that or if that's a concern.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: Yeah, well, think Doctor. Bell probably talked about that when he testifies, we don't know off the end.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So we have testimony tomorrow morning, o'clock. Put a plug in for our early start tomorrow at nine for everyone from a specialist on the infertility treatment. We can ask that question again. Yes. Anything else, Representative Burtt?

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: No, that's good. I'll wait to see if I can ask that question then.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: Thank you.

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: Thank you. Thank you, representative. So moving on from the infertility side of the conversation, looking at what has happened in California and the research findings out there. So there's a paper written by Doctor. Niamh Quinn, who again came to our interagency collaboration meeting here. And she came up with three key findings from her research out in Orange County and Los Angeles Counties in California. The key findings were one, there's a limited non target bait station access. And when there is for other animals, other non target animals entering a bait station, the exposure is predictable and context specific. We did hear this morning about potential songbirds entering into a bait station. That would be one of those predictable and context specific times. Number two, coyote exposure is extremely common. And that was proven over time with some of their research, which included the use of isotopically labeled anticoagulant rhodanocytes. I'll get into that in a second. But what they're able to do is utilize GPS, ILARS, isotopically labeled product and scat reading. And they find out where a coyote has eaten an animal that had poisoning from an anti coagulant red genocide because the scat comes out with a different color under light when you use this isotope labeled anticoagulant rhodenticide. So pretty neat. That's how they're able to tell that coyote exposure is common and that there was no demonstrated population level decline in coyotes in those two counties of which there are a lot of coyotes in those two counties. And then number three, the last finding was about monitoring tools being in existence and allowing rodenticide movement through the web, through the food web, and that it can be directly traced and quantified on a real world use conditions. So taking that lab experiment and moving it out into the exterior, into the environment. And again, that's through the use of ILAR, those isotope labeled ARs, through the use of GPS monitoring and through the use of SCAT readings.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. So no demonstrated population level decline. So the rat and mouse population stayed static. No, for the coyotes. For coyotes.

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: Okay. Rat and mouse population was definitely not static because they were being eaten by coyotes. But what they were finding is the DNA was going through a coyote and so they're able to get each specific coyote pinpointed with the DNA through a scat. And then I think using a UV light or some sort of reader, we're able to show whether or not that coyote, that specific coyote actually ingested an animal that had eaten an isotopically labeled anticoagulant rodenticide. So pretty interesting methodology out there. And then the challenge that we're talking about today, there's public health risks that we discussed in this collaboration meeting. And as Steve had just mentioned, you use the infertility treatments, but you still have a problem at that time. And so there is that public health risk that's persisting, even though you're treating it with birth control of sorts, of which there's only a couple in the state of Vermont that are registered. And there are a

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: lot of

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: fertility treatments out there that not registered. Agricultural production losses can result from the lack of anticoagulant or then site usage or having rodent population exceed the threshold. Infrastructure property damage, as we all know, I think I testified a couple of weeks ago about, know, cars using soy based products as part of the wiring and how that is an easy way for rodent to basically disarm your car and make it unusable. There's impacts on biodiversity just when there's an overpopulation and things are being overrun by rodents, that's never good. There's also a traditional alliance on lethal control, which is the culture change that I talked about little while ago, still have to change that culture. And then growing environmental and regulatory scrutiny. We're talking about this now, also being discussed in many other state houses. One thing that we have done in Vermont, and you all know because this is something that went through your committee, but we did change the status of SCARs to restricted use pesticides. So they're all class A in Vermont, and we did that in 2024. It went into effect 07/01/2024. Right now, at a couple other legislatures, they're looking to come up with legislation to equal what we currently have. So we're ahead of the game on a couple of other state legislatures as it is.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you, Dave. Representative O'Brien.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Have you ever seen any data on, I'll just use description that looks like compensel rodent. Comensel rodent. Comensel rodent. So is there a per capita amount of mice and rats per person that you've ever seen? Mean, I'm just trying to get the population in Vermont of what are we talking about?

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: The most pertinent data we have is what I've testified to for is the Census Bureau survey that showed that Vermont had the highest level of rodent infestations and structures in the country. In terms of the population of rodents versus population of humans, I have seen some papers in urban areas like New York and places like that where the population of rodents is similar to the population of humans, basically. And the whole thing about these commensal rodents that we're talking about, the mice and the rat, is that they reproduce so rapidly that if you lose control, you've got serious problems. I actually worked in the pest control industry for a while and got to observe some of those situations that are pretty dramatic when they get out of control.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: So that rodent population in Vermont, that's not because our accountant has all those woodchucks, is

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: it? I will go back and look at the paper.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: It's, I can't help but feel that all the studies we heard today from the the fish and wildlife department, and I value their work and treasure their expertise and and, you know, being forthcoming and saying, you know, they don't know or they do know. But we just changed the law 2024. They don't have any data from 2025. And and by their own admission, it will take years for to get clean data. So I just, you know, I feel that more time is needed with the control measures we've already taken, and they haven't tested for the non ARs at all. Talking to Brian Burtti, she said that the testing fees are fairly robust.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: How many dollars a sample?

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: I forget what it was. We entered into a memorandum of understanding to Yeah, think

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: it was less than that. I mean, we did provide some funding. Might be able to do

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: that again. Which really was the start of our interagency collaboration, realizing there's an issue and trying to work together to resolve this.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: Yeah, and that's really the point we want to leave you with is that we understand that there's an issue and we do want to work on it. And we want to work with Fish and Wildlife and other agencies that are involved. It is a complicated issue because of the implications of not having effective rodent control, especially for mice, rats. The public health implications are pretty dire. So we really need to come up with the right solution.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I just saw briefly, Rianne, not unmuted, but yeah. Did you have do you like to jump in?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: Sure, for the record, my name is Brianne Furpie, for a bare product leader for the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife. I spoke with you all earlier. I just wanted to clarify the cost of testing. So we use the Pennsylvania Animal Diagnostic Lab, and typically that's where most samples go in the Northeast. They're pretty renowned. But yeah, sample testing is about $86 a pop. And then of course there's the shipping costs as well. So yeah, it can add up pretty easily. So I just wanted to clarify that and make sure that you all had that correct.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: You're welcome.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Bartholomew? Well, clearly we heard some compelling testimony about bioaccumulation in wildlife and poisonings in domestic animals. So but then also there's the issue of we've gotta be able to control loads. So given those conflicting issues, what do you suggest we do with this bill? Where should we take this? We're burning out of time, we have a bill. I'm not hearing a recommendation about what we should put

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: into this.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: And I don't know if that's really our place to do that. But I mean, I do think that more, we need to give, we need the opportunity to work on some possible solutions, which is going to take thought and time and more information. We can benefit from what they're doing in other states. California in particular is doing a lot of work in this area and they've taken some steps and they're having to reconsider some of those steps they've taken. We have to figure out a way to use the products in a way that mitigates impact on wildlife. We probably will never be able to completely eliminate any, you know, exposure of wildlife to these materials. But, you know, we haven't really done a lot to mitigate it yet other than the reclassification and a limited public education campaign that we did strictly within in house. So there are still a lot of misinformation about how to manage rodents out there. There's a lot of opportunity to work with the pest management industry to come up with better practices on their part, which they're willing to do. And that's what we've been talking about. But there's also, and then the whole area of agricultural user identicides, We can work with UVM to look into that and come up with best practices. So, given where we're starting from, I think we have a long way to go where we can move toward mitigating impacts.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: What would your impression be if we changed the surround so that rather than an outright ban on the use of these reminiscent sides, we were to make them restricted use so that we would limit, not a, well not, I mean, can't consumers go to a store? Yeah, so the So if were to limit the indiscriminate use, make sure that people using it are trained and the stuff can be monitored, And you had mentioned rulemaking, we could then put together the rulemaking process to look at best practices, see what's out there and provide more information, education, maybe even including stakeholders that in the process to give input to the agency, that seem acceptable to both agencies?

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: Well, okay, I can't speak for both agencies. But I do think that the direction of that approach is the way to go in terms of developing better information and providing that information. To answer your specific question about restricting all the organisides to certified applicators, that would have an impact on the ability of everyone else to use effective tools. We already restricted the second generation anticoagulants. I have a concern that if we restrict the first generation anticoagulants or some of the other materials, you're removing too many tools out of the toolbox for everyone else. And it would increase the costs of pest, of road management for everyone in the state and limit the tools they have to be effective. Essentially, would have, folks would have, if you restricted all the rodenticides or even just the first generation anticoagulants in order to control rodents, any property owner or business owner would have to hire a pest management company to do it. And then they would have fewer tools to use too. So there's sort of a knock on effect. I think given an opportunity to get together with the stakeholders you mentioned and everybody else that's involved in this, we can come up with some solutions that move the ball down the field in terms of producing impacts.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Who's the everyone else here that we're talking about? We know that there are people who are licensed and we know that there are pest control companies. Presumably pest control companies have licenses. Is that always the case?

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: Yeah, in order to do that. So

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: if I had mice in my home, I can buy something right now that I couldn't buy possibly if you were to restrict the use. So I'm part of the everyone else. It's as a homeowner. Who else is?

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: That's what I'm talking about. Anybody who owns property or tries to manage property-

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Who's not licensed.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: Who's not licensed and doesn't have to be licensed now. But it doesn't hurt to have them be better educated about what to use and how to use. Now, EPA has already made some, taken some steps toward that by only allowing pre baited stations to be sold in consumer stores. So if you go into any of the big box stores or most hardware stores, all you can find are stations that are already pre baited or that will sell you in addition to the bait station with bait in it, a limited amount up to one pound of material that you can use. And almost all of that is bromomethyl. It's not even a first generation anticoagulant. Almost everything on the shelves is bromomethylin.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Is that a non anticoagulant?

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: That's a non anticoagulant, a neurotoxin. But yeah, so there are materials you can buy if you go to one of the stores that are geared toward agricultural uses. They will sell you different materials that are not preloaded into base stations, but in buckets up to four pounds. And the theory there was that could be used by agricultural users and an average homeowner wouldn't wanna spend the $40 or $50 to buy a five bucket, yeah. But again, the

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: committee made, we got away with that. It was an agricultural exemption from EPA back in 2008 on 10 rodenticides and that covered the SCARs that we're talking about. The project Steve is talking about, you still have to be a licensed applicator in order to purchase that product. I'm talking about.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: But you can go buy first generation anticoagulants at a farm store, know, bump it up to four cats. Yeah, Tomcat's a top one.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Mr. Lipsky, do you have a question earlier? Yeah, okay. Somebody, I saw a movement of a hand I thought somewhere. Can you just tell us, Steve, you've probably gone through this before, but does it take to become a licensed applicator?

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: To become a certified applicator, you have to take training and you have to take a test which we administer. They need to be done in person or online. Currently the first test is free. If you fail, you have to take it again, it's $25 to take it and you can take it up to three times, I think. In a year. In a year. Although there's, we're trying to change that right now because now we have online exams also. And we're gonna change the system a little bit, but basically you have to go through some training and take a test.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Is training the also online or do you need to?

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: There is online training. You could also purchase the manuals and study it yourself. You know, there's a little bit of a bar to entry to become a certified doctor. You have to take the test and the pass rate on the test is about 60 to seventy percent. So it's not a driver's exam in terms of being that level of pass rate. There is some studying that's needed.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Is the certification something that needs to be renewed regularly?

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: I think it's like three years. Yeah, every couple of years you have to renew it and you need to take continuing learning education credits throughout the course of that. So you're able to stay up to date. You can get the credits, you take a quiz, go to trainings and it has to be in the category in which you're certified. So there are a lot of trainings tailored towards those who are using rodenticides or in general pest control.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: I was just at what you referenced, Steve, it says Vermont, South Dakota, North Dakota reported the highest rates of rodent infestation. Why is that? What is

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: the difference? Older structures, older housing stock and cold weather. Agriculture too? I'm not sure about that. The commensal rodents we're talking about, the mice and the rats aren't necessarily associated with agriculture. They're associated with food for sure. But not necessarily associated with agriculture per se. But it's where food is stored or where you have structures that Well, it's all about the food. That's why they live with us is because we have food.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: You talked a little bit about research in California. Then Steve, you mentioned that California had made some changes to its laws they're revisiting. Do you know enough about that? We had heard about that at one point.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: Do

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: you know enough about that to say what changes were made?

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: Yeah, without preparing for it, because I don't want to misstate. I do know there were some laws passed that were severely restricted and they're going through rulemaking right now trying to refine that a little bit because they have run into situations where people have not been able to get the control they needed in some situations because the restrictions exist.

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: But it also has a lot of exemptions to that tool. Well, that's what I'm

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: talking about. They're talking about modifying the exemption process.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Any other questions?

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: Yeah. Richard, go ahead.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. This is more for fish and wildlife. Do you have any consideration of testing other rodent predators besides raptors and fisher and bobcat, I you know, foxes and coyotes eat an abundance of rodents. And our our harvested and throughout the year and if you thought about reaching out to certain areas and saying, you know, we'd like to look at so many, you know, foxes or coyotes that come from proximity to agriculture facilities or or what have you. And and then you could almost get a look at an animal that wasn't tracked, but would, you know, if you could look, get a broader range of carcass, look at it and whatnot, determine health of animal, if there ever happened, as respect through the rodenticide or whatnot?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: Yeah, we have thought about that and I think that if we were to test foxes or coyotes, certainly it would be very challenging because we would have to capture the animal or we would have to collect sick or roadkilled animals to determine that. And so that's where the challenge lies, is getting reports of sick or injured animals that are showing signs of toxicity. And then from there, being able to look at, okay, what is that lethal dose amount? And like I said, it's really challenging. And the raptor literature seems a little bit more clear cut, but for mammals, it's not. We could test for other carnivores, but I believe we wouldn't see anything terribly different if I were to really guess on that. I don't know that for sure. We haven't tested them, but given how close Red Box are to our communities here, I'm suspecting that they are probably exposed as well. And so what does that mean? Of course, we don't know. And in terms of your other question of kind of trying to put the puzzle pieces together, we're already in a good place to use the data that we have on fisher and bobcat and otter to then take a closer look at what areas they're being exposed in, what towns, what compounds, what levels, and then correlating that with potential pesticide use and maybe even having targeted outreach information if it came down to that. So there's a lot of potential, but of course the number one thing that needs to be done first is securing funding, and that is the thing that we don't have. So funding is always going to be the number one issue when it comes to really being able to do more research to understand this better.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And how many animals do you try to test a year, Graham?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: It depends on how many we receive. We usually get about a 100 to, I don't know, 75 to 100 fisher tops a year right now from trapping derived harvest. And we get a little bit more than that in bobcat and we get more than that in otter, but we try to get a representative sample of different areas. So it depends. We're really limited by how much funding that we have. So if each sample is $86 we can then calculate, okay, how many samples can we realistically send out with the funding that we have to test for the presence or the exposure rates, right? And so it's, yeah, it's really driven by how much funding we have.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And how much funding did you have last year for?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: In collaboration with the agency of agriculture, food and markets, they were able to help us out with approximately 118 samples. I could have that number wrong, but I believe it was in the 120 range, and they provided, I think it was close to 12,000 or 13,000, but it provided us additional information. It was the first time that otters had been tested. And we have opportunities to continue to collect liver samples from these three species and then go ahead and thank them when we do have opportunities to actually get them tested. But every single year we can easily collect this information. The challenge lies in getting access to other species and trying to figure out additional ways to test them That's comparable to what we have.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: How many

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: base stations in the cell a year? About like eight? In

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: help with the study. We don't

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: have that number because that's a device. But we can certainly look into getting some sort of estimate on that number.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: There's no requirement for reporting

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: a number of patients. I mean, our education effort has been geared toward making sure people know they're supposed to use one. You know, when we get the, we've been able to convince the stores to stock them right next to the mates and to tell people they need them when they buy.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And if you have some guy, they'll be starved, right?

[Dave Huber (Deputy Director, Division of Plant Health & Administration, VAAFM)]: This was part of the educational campaign prior to this committee making it, second generation anticoagulant rodenticides, a restricted use pesticide. And the stores were more than happy to put up our posters and some stores even said, we'll pan out of three base stations, anyone who buys a bucket of this product because it's the label, it's the law.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So we're running out of time here.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: John, do you have a question? Yeah, Steve, since you work in this business in Florida, is there a consistency sort of toolbox and strategies from pest management professionals or pest control companies as far as, we had Cabot Aguilar, safety director yesterday. So the New Jersey company that they source, they say, okay, here's our challenge. Would that be pretty similar to a Dorito factory in Florida?

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: Well, yeah. And actually I worked up, it was actually up here in the Northeast I was doing it. The standard training for road management is based on integrated pest management and involves identifying what the food sources are, sources of entry, eliminating those, minimizing any possible access to food or water, and then monitoring the population and then applying the material that you need to control and rotating the materials too. You don't want to continue to use the same baiting material all the time because rodents get, you know, learn to avoid it. And then they're pretty crafty. You know, having the proper numbers of traps and in locations and properly positioned.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: It can be pretty elaborate. There's almost like an industry standard.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: Yeah, mean, you'll find some differences from company to company, but the general education about how to manage rodents is pretty well established and it's based on it. And

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: perhaps you're not the ones to answer this, anyone on screen or YouTube. What happens if a restaurant has a road inside or a food processing company, bread hen, that bread bakery, they can't go inside, what happens?

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: I can speak to that because one of my roles was to do quality assurance for the services provided. And so for restaurants and grocery stores, tends to be regulated by the Department of Health. I Grocery think stores might be regulated by us. Anyway, restaurants tend to be regulated by the Department of Health. And so they actually do the restaurant break and everything. And so they have protocols that require cleaning and sanitation if they find a rodent infestation. Food processing facilities and food warehouses are held to a higher standard under food quality laws and food quality standards that are actually international for commerce. So there are a number of third party standards that are established that if you're a manufacturer or a warehouse and you want to sell your product into the marketplace, you have to meet those standards. And those are you get audited by independent third party who come in and if they see rodent activity, they will fail you. And that's where you might lose your market and have to stop operation. There have been cases of that. So the pest management processes for those facilities are pretty strict and you have to maintain a real high level of control.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Did you have a question, representative Lipsky?

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Yeah. Just for an example, it's the Vermont Food Bank, their major warehouse in Barrie.

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: They've been probably. Yeah. I haven't been there myself. But, yeah, I have I have audited food banks and a lot of them, they have to meet the same standards. Right.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All right. We 've been sitting here for a long time. Should prepare for our, that's a red light, come on. Just a quick housekeeping matter, thank you all. I'd like to ask the committee just on a quick straw poll to because we forgot to do this earlier on the paraplot bill to authorize Legis Council to be working on something. We actually already did that. You saw a draft. We we're gonna continue the conversation tomorrow, and I'm thinking that we may want to give some direction now then to Bradley. So this is not a vote for passing anything. This is just to because there's a short form bill, and for short form bills, we need to have a committee okay to do that. Jed, I don't think we need given the time, I don't think we need to write it down. But if you could just call our I will just do it, in fact, to make it simple. So I is to, yes, have the Legis Council work on some language. Michelle, are you in favor?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: Oh, I don't know what bill we're talking. We're talking about the redundancy No,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: no, Sorry, this is seven thirty nine, the It's Paraguat just short form. Oh. Yeah, it's a short form bill in order to have But in order to be discussing it, we need to have a vote of the committee. Okay, aye. Okay, thank you. John? Aye.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yes. Yes. Any? By special permit, Okay, go ahead. Yes. Yes.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Alright. Greg, I don't know if you hear her dad or able to.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Yeah. I'm I'm here. Yeah. I'll yes. Same same as Richard Nelson.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you. I'm joining, yes, Nelson. Okay. Thank you. I should have done that earlier and I'm stage zero. Yeah. Thank you. So we are back tomorrow at nine. We're gonna hear about we're gonna hear from an expert on fertility control for redempticide, and we'll have another tax schedule tomorrow. But thank

[Steven Dwinell (Director, Public Health & Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM)]: you all.