Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Before we take up h nine forty one, let's return to h seven thirty nine, which is the bill. We had some conversation earlier with Ledge Council. I'm going to, in a few minutes, ask for a motion to concur with the Senate's proposal of amendment. The Senate did some good work, I think, on this bill, actually, and heard from other farmers who we hadn't had a chance to hear from or who maybe weren't aware that we were working on this bill. They added some language on conditions. We heard that that language may not be entirely and internally consistent. But I think that at this point, in order to move things forward, our best approach would be to vote to concur and then agree, and I'm saying this here publicly, that when the legislature is back in January, if there is a problem, it can be addressed quickly and in time for the growing season in 2027. But I wanna hear other everyone's thoughts before we go ahead here, then we'll we'll move along. Representative O'Brien or I'm sorry, Representative Bartholomew, we can start with you.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: I don't have anything to add from what I said earlier. Would support concurrent. Okay.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: I agree. I concur.

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: Okay, I'll represent Bert. I'm thinking about whether or not I'll agree with the same two things.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: I have a lot of thoughts,

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: Mostly to do is, I quoted John Adams in here when he went to trial to defend the soldiers in the Boston Massacre, the British soldiers. He said, Facts are stubborn things, and whatever whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. And it's because of the stance he took and the good work that he

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: did

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: that six of the eight soldiers were acquitted in that trial. And two others were given a lot of verdict of manslaughter versus murder, and it set a precedent for our country. Think that it was absolutely critical that we pay attention to the facts and our deliberation over things, especially in court, and not base it off of passions, inclinations, wishes, as much as I want to. First of all, my wish and my passion is that Parkinson's, the solutions for it be found. And then we continue to invest in research to find the root causes of solving and stop cancer and Parkinson's for this battle before it happens. My hiccup is that studies that we looked at to connect, that showed connection between Parkinson's and Paraquat, there were studies that did show it, but there were also studies that didn't show a connection. And there were significant ones. And the NIH was responsible for the largest study done on the subject. If there's any study I'm going to trust, it would be one coming to the NIH since they're the ones that are in charge of cannabis pharmaceuticals. The summer in fact for me is this. We're likely to answer any one question, does Paraquat cause Parkinson's disease? And the answer I have is that I don't know. I'd like to say I know for sure that it does, but now if I knew for sure, is really straightforward for me. It's a yes on this bill. But the thing that I do know is that there are farmers who use it and they use it very specifically and they use it very carefully and in limited scope by nature. I do know that they're no longer gonna have to that, whether it's in this case after December 2031. Now, if the chemical is no longer available to the whole country, I'm perfectly fine with that because

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: it

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: creates interstate equity, should say, that a farm in New Hampshire on the border might still be able to use Paraquat in four years, but if our farmers can't, they have to compete directly with those farmers. Or whether it's in New Hampshire or Massachusetts, or if you have to sell to wholesale to a company, you're going to compete directly with those farmers that are all around us. If it's a nationwide ban, then all those farmers are in the same boat. And it's a fair system. But when we're only banning it on our own farmers, they have to compete with those other farms that a lot of times have flatter fields already that have closer access to larger populations and a whole bunch of other things that can make it easier to be profitable. Our farms have it hard already. So that's why it's tough for me when I see the thing that I know is that I'm asking farmers to do something that's going to cost more and make their bottom line harder. That's the one fact I know. And on the other side, I don't know whether or not banning paraglut is actually going to do anything for Parkinson's. I wish I knew, but a larger study from a very reputable institution did not find Why did Sagenta pull their label? If they weren't. Also thinking that there was a connection between power block and Parkinson's. I don't know if I want go into the details of that, I do have things on here. But I can come to the conclusion pretty easily that court cases and pulling it from ops on label did not further the argument that Carrot Floss should be banned. So it's a hard work for me, and I guess I'd like to listen to other people before I say one way or another what I'm going do.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay, thank you. Representative Bartholomew.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Yeah, I guess I can just say that we spent a lot of time on this bill. I think it's probably, for me, this and the baby food bill are kind of tied as, In some ways, the ones that I feel the most connected to and feel like we work the hardest on and that I really want the most to pass. And that's because after hearing all the testimony from, you know, I don't even know how many people we had is a lot, including a lot of experts in academics who have spent their life studying this issue and who shared with us information from all kinds of different studies. And I know science is, it's like you can't always get every piece of evidence that you want sometimes when you make a decision. And there are so many factors that are pointing to the correlation between Parkinson's use and sorry, paraquat use and Parkinson's that it just makes me feel like we have to do something to phase this out, both for the benefit of the farmer themselves, who's doing the application, who's probably the most at risk, and for people in the surrounding community. I think our job is to support farmers and to support all Vermonters. And Paraquat is going to be my belief is that Paraguay is causing harm to vote. And so my vote is yes, we need to support the bill and have it move forward this year.

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

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

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: came in finally late in the beginning. I don't know if I heard everything. Mean, I heard a bunch of

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: stuff before I got here. I

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: believe there was, We would have passed it. Well, I'm forgetting the timing, but I'm sure you missed it.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Passed it out before you got I mean, I think It came

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: pretty early. Anyway, having been in the agricultural business most of my life, and seeing that, you know, a lot of things agriculture gets blamed for, and how hard it is, especially in the last twenty years to make a living. I always said that regulation was gonna kill the ag industry long before prices or anything else. You know? I think there's there's scenarios where we need to use these things to stay competitive and very good safe. So I guess I'm trying to look great until something better comes along or it's completely banned in The US. Great.

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

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: First of I'd like to thank Greg for his incredibly thoughtful The search and dealing with this bill, to here appreciate your awareness and willing to look at history where struggle and John Adams role is now with compassion to show, you know, for those brave soldiers That was the point. But all that and backdrop I have survived and will continue to survive against many headwinds in my working life. Their policies and requirements have made it difficult admit. But now we're the testimony that's been overwhelmed is the acknowledgment that paraquat is extremely toxic to human health and other forms of environmental health. It's deadly and dangerous. And some what I would have thought, and that's a bias, bias is that Turkey or Poland or China are less sophisticated societies than our democracy and the EU have all come to this decision and it's Whatever their equivalent of national institute of health, public health, public safety led to those bannings, I can't ignore that. I was proud to advocate for intelligent carve outs for agricultural applications out of pure empathy or food producers. But now, you know, we're in a crossroad, and maybe someone else, chairman, can answer this, is if Vermont is the only state in the nation that's taking this step, that gives me pause. But we're a nation in a world of nations that has taken this step and hoping that

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: I I

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: don't have the analytic ability to compare the different testimonies, but we have got a lot of test points, a lot of stuff. But I'm operating like my god and what's best for human health. And I'm gonna support concurring on this bill knowing that there are, you know, limits but they're putting the applications that are supportive of farmers and then talking with the council and the language while it's a little more ambiguous.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Ambiguous.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: You know with regard to strawberries are included and maybe it's not as clear as it should have been. I'm still going to support this bill knowing that the agency supports our carve outs, clearing for strawberries and to orchards, rape and other small fruit, same exemption during this phase out period. That gives me some hope for finding a safer, better solution for health and for agriculture and production. I'll leave it at that.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Alright. Thank you. Anything else?

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Yeah. I I you know, what I know about Barrequat and the people that I do business with, and nobody nobody handles it in my world. It is a tool in the toolbox, and I agree with what Jack had said about, you know, agriculture done in by the death of a thousand cuts. You know, and today on my way in this morning, people were calling in to the Chris Como show complaining about the cost of going out to buy cheeseburgers. And they're blaming it on all the wrong reasons. And the reason cheeseburgers are so expensive because we had a terrific drought for a few years. Oh, the West and the beef herd is now smaller than it's ever been ever been. And you have the new world screwworm in Mexico, so Mexico beef is not allowed into this country. The only beef that are really important is Argentina. We do get some from Australia. Brazil's kinda terrifying. But they're complaining about the cost of beef and, you know, and even as beef as high as it is, the American rancher is still dying, a death of a thousand cuts and going out of business. So everybody wants cheap food in this country. Everybody wants cheap food. Nobody wants to pay for it, but they want us to bear all the costs that have gone up in the last thirty, forty years. You know, we used to go buy cornmeal at $100 a ton. You're now lucky to get it for $2.40, and it's only a dollar a bushel more than it used to be from back then, $1.5 a bushel more, which should only be $50 a ton. But because of freight and everyone else getting paid more between there and here, you know, and we're getting the milk price now that we were getting in the nineties. You know, that's dairy. I I don't know the apple world so well. I'm glad we put the carve outs the way we did. And we can you know, what legislation does this year can be undone next year, the year after, the year after. And I mean, if, you know, I I am really leaning on that paraquat is gonna go because it's a agenda pulling out when you have a big player. If they're one of the big three and they drop their license and Cordova doesn't have it and Bayer doesn't have it, you know, now you're you're left up to

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: the generics. And

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: I didn't look into where the generics are produced, but I got an idea. And they're probably a lot of them are produced in the countries that don't use it. So you know, don't do as we say, fire product. So anyway, I'm gonna support this, but I'm also mindful that I plan on being here next year, god willing. And if we learn more and things aren't changing the way I think they're gonna change, we can permanently leave in special license and carve out for fruits and berries and tree crops. Because I do believe that they can control it. They can they have terrific drip mitigation, and they can apply it exactly where they want it to go and it stays. And as, you know, as we heard from Charlie Gray, and we've heard from Greg Burtt and the people, It is a lot like NeoNicks. NeoNicks on one one square inch in row. Paraquat is used in row. It's not used right well, the way we're permitting it, it's not used across the whole acreage. It's applied in a very specific area. And so we can look at this further, and I do take great solace in that, that we can go back and and but I I still think it's gonna go the way of extinction. So I will concur regretfully.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I wanna move things forward here. So is there a motion to concur? To concur with Senate proposal and amend the gift. Second discussion. Representative Bos-Lun, is there something you'd like to say?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Well, yeah, I just was gonna add. I just had a thought. It's kind of personal, but I think it's relevant in this situation. We're talking about health and causes and what you can do to mitigate harm. And I mean, I think everybody here knows I was diagnosed with cancer in the fall. And I immediately adopted a plant based diet because I had done some reading and there was pretty good evidence in my opinion that that diet was gonna help my body fight cancer better. And I know lots and lots of people who have cancer who don't believe that that's true and they're following a different path. But for me, I'm very convinced that my diet is actually helping to promote my wellness. And I have evidence that can show that. And somebody else might have evidence that whatever they're doing is working for them. And that's okay. But there are different, sometimes the evidence isn't all a 100% clear in every place. And I guess this makes me think in terms of Paraquat, we had some very compelling evidence that there was a correlation. If that's true, then it's our responsibility to support Vermonters by making this more restricted. I just kind of feel like that's my take on it, is that if there's a chance that we could reduce the harm by making this step, it feels like that's a responsible thing to do. And when I think about the people I've known who had Parkinson's, we want to do everything we can to avoid that. And even if this is not going to be as we don't know what the numbers are going to be in terms of how many people this might prevent Parkinson's from. But every case that we could prevent, that would be a blessing. So I'm just feeling that way. I'm feeling hopeful that we can support it and that it will make a difference.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All right. I guess we'll have the clerk. I have one question.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: It's favorable with some end menu?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: No, it's concur. And if that's not an option on the sheet, you could just write that. Yeah.

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: Okay. Send it. Send the proposal. Yeah.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Okay. And we are referring this as age seven three nine. Seven three nine. Is there a version or just

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: No. I think it's yeah. Okay.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: So maybe the the role of act of relating to the prohibition to do some sale of urine site in Paraclon made It's 05/13/2022. Say it's in the vote, is it? 11:16AM. John Bartholomew, how do you vote? Yes. Michelle Bos-Lun? Yes. Jack Graham? Gregory Greg Burtt? No. Jed Lipsky? Yes. Richard Nelson? Yes. John O'Brien? Yes. Chair Durfee? Yes. The vote tally is six yes, two no, and zero absent. Who will be reported as?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: You were the reporter, checked it, John. Thank you, Jed. I thought it might be May 14 by the time we finish this. I appreciate everybody's heartfelt, truly sincere input on this. Think it's one of those situations where realize that if the answer were easy, somebody would have figured it out before. So thank you, Jed. And this will be on the floor, it's up for action today, so you'll just have to briefly summarize the changes that the Senate made. You've got the side by side that Bradley showed us this morning, that it should be sufficient for that. And to say,

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: on this vote, we voted to confirm that you sent

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: a Yeah. Proposal of It's drop Yeah, to say it's drop vote count. All right. Bradley, thank you for your help with that bill. And now we're going to turn to 09:41. So we had left you yesterday, I think, Bradley, with a request to make a couple of small changes. You had shown us a version of nine forty one that picked up some language that we had from our version of the bill and dropped it in and pulled out some language from the Senate's version. So maybe you want to just go through all of that, whatever you'd like to do here to get back to this bill.

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Bradley Shumman, Office of Legislative Council, so with respect to the changes that were made from yesterday, we just added the number of chickens. And so this is, section three, page six. So no, so this is the section of the bill that prohibits bylaws that have the effect of prohibiting the raising, feeding, or managing a livestock excuse me, managing of a poultry flock excluding roosters, personally use donation or sale. What we added here is for chickens, no bylaw shall have the effect of prohibiting the raising, feeding, or management of not more than six chickens or a number determined by municipality, which is whichever is higher. And so that's kind of the plug and pieces. Language is still being edited, but that is language.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. So maybe we can just pause here for a second.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Is

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: this on our tablet?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: On our devices? Version 4.1, Bradley?

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, is version

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: four one. So while folks are pulling this up, so we added the language for chickens. So for chickens, no biological health, the effect of prohibiting the raising, feeding, or management of not worth six chickens. The previous sentence says no biological health, the effect of prohibiting, or assessing a fee for the raising, feeding, management of poultry flock, excluding roosters. Okay. Is there a conflict between those two sentences? Because chickens are poultry?

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So it is, I mean, that's the struggle with kind of defining a number for chickens, but not other poultry is trying to put the language in here. I think it makes it work for chickens. So by law, shall the effect of preventing raising feeding or management of not more than six chickens or a number determined by the municipality, whichever is higher. And so, yeah. So it it sets out to do the limit for just the number of of chickens itself. An alternative way to do this would be just instead of using the word poultry, to say the birds that the committee is considering. So if the committee is considering a certain amount of birds, not amount, but certain type of bird, that could have the effect of putting it there or something of the sort. And

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think what we're trying to Well, we're trying to stay away from numbers to the extent that we can, but also recognizing that it's mostly chickens that we hear people talking about that that that where there's a desire to allow. I wanna make sure we talk about emus too, but before we do that, representative Nelson.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Well, I was scared to bring up e moves, and I said, wasn't gonna do it. And yeah. But I believe the most restrictive that we've heard on poultry was sex on chickens

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that we heard. Yeah, I'm familiar with I've heard about a four, but six is ballpark. Yeah, okay. And then

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: if a municipality not to be named has already an existing bylaw to prohibit Emil, Does this preclude that municipality? And it's a rather large one. Definitely pop up. This preclude them from excluding email emu, or do they still get to have their prohibition on emus?

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, the prohibition on emu is, an interesting one because

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: e

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: first you have to think about the farming as it is subject to the RAPs rule. And so if it's farming that's subject to the RAPs rule, that's in a different category entirely. And so a municipality could have a ordinance or a bylaw that prohibits the farming of emu, but if that farming is subject to the RAPPs rule, that farming activity could be considered, could be that farming activity could be permitted in the municipality because it's farming that's subject to the wraps, right, except with the exceptions that the committee has considered above with respect to with respect to parcel size. But if those exceptions do not apply, then a municipalities ordinance may override that. It's not the municipalities or it's not override that, but the the municipality might not be able to enforce the ordinance prohibiting EMU on farming that is subject to the wraps and is not subject to any other exception. Here, it says, you know, in forty four twelve, it says not notwithstanding any existing bylaw, the following land develop, provision shall apply in every municipality. So arguably, adding this provision doesn't necessarily affect things that are already on the books. I would want to research that particular piece a little bit more in-depth, but the reading of the plain language here states that notwithstanding any existing bylaw, so adding this might not affect existing bylaws, preventing ones from taking place.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So leaving that, the exist the notwithstanding side there, I think the conversation that we've had about poultry, no one in their head was thinking about emu or the other large birds that might be in the definition of poultry here. There's a reference to sixty s. A. Yeah, whatever that is. 1450. So that definition does include things beyond something that I could pick up and hold in my arms, let's say, I haven't been imagining that as something that we would want to allow people who want to have the right to grow their own food, and maybe in fact Emilie is grown for food or farmed for food, but in terms of backyards, I haven't been thinking about it that way. And I haven't heard anybody else in the committee now saying that they all along intended to new. So one way to solve this issue might be to say, to redefine poultry or use different language here for the purposes of this. I'm not gonna change six VSA fourteen, fifty nine, four, but say for our purposes here, we're talking about something else specific to small poultry. As far as farming of emu go, that currently may or may not be happening. I think I posed this question to the agency, and I think the answer was yes. Either there are or there have been a handful, a small handful of farms, which could be happening in Burlington historically because they were subject to the wraps. If they were subject to the wraps, that would have been allowed despite the bylaw there.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: How many did you do?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I'm sorry, you didn't mention the name, Richard, but we know, we've heard before in testimony that Burlington does have this bias.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Is there a number for how many?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: In the wraps? Yeah. Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: It's not 99 now.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: No, I think it's three. There is a number. Actually, I'm not sure what the number is, but I believe there is a

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Somebody can fact check that for me. What is the definition of What does it actually say that could possibly include fratites?

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It says any domesticated bird. They're not domesticated. They are considered domesticated animals because of farm. They're used in farming. So Where

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: are you seeing a reference that ostriches and rat tights are domesticated? I googled up. Asked if e mules are considered poultry, and they are because they're raised for meat, eggs, and wild weather.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Don't think we can rely on Google necessarily to answer this question first, but Ledge Council Yeah,

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: and the rats themselves, I mean, say for ratites, and ratites include ostriches and emu. And so I think that's a pretty strong indication. I imagine a municipality might want to say that, you know, emu and ostriches are quasi domesticated animals or something of the sort, and maybe try and go to litigation on that. But I think inclusion of ratites in the rats is strong indication that these ants are investigated.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. So having established that and having, I think, established that we don't intend to prevent municipalities from regulating

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

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: we'll need to make some change here correctly.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Well, if it says not withstanding any existing bylaw, following not withstanding any existing bylaw. So if they have a bylaw already prohibited in emails, we're not coming over the top of them, are we? With this, Bradley, I

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: kinda I I mean, that's that's that's the plain reading of the statute. I wanna, just research a little bit of litigation on this because I know it's a sensitive issue. But, so there's there's that tactic, the plain reading of the statute says, you know, if there's a bylaw on the books because notwithstanding any existing bylaw. But, you know, let let me just kinda look into some specific research on that piece. That said, you know, if a municipality is now that this is an issue well, you know, this, not including EMU in the exception, would potentially solve it for municipalities to have it on the books. But for things like in the future and looking forward and things of that sort, that would be a different question.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. I also don't think that we want to say, if you have a bylaw on the books today for emu or for chickens, that you're just going to get to keep having that bylaw. I think the point of this is to say you can't do these things. If that's the way that the language on the bottom of page five would be interpreted, then I think we need to revisit that.

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: Okay, okay. I always get confused with sort of notwithstanding, what is in this context, what would that mean, notwithstanding any existing bylaw?

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So that would mean ordinarily, that would mean an existing bylaw could this does not address existing bylaws. So if it says notwithstanding address existing bylaws, it doesn't address existing bylaws. Bylaws.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. Well, that's a little

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: bit of a catch.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Let's definitely think more about that.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Where did this whole poultry thing come from? Because originally it was just gonna be chickens, I thought. And now we're venturing not only into poultry, which turns out to be things like emus, but also the number means that municipalities can regulate from six to 99 chickens. So

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: two questions there. When did it go from chicken to poultry,

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: or did it go from chicken to poultry? Originally, was just going be sort of a carve out for chickens. Like, people have chickens. Yeah, I think that

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: there may be some disagreement on that characterization. I think we talked about chickens, but I believe that I was convinced because I had thought about this, that when the three groups of stakeholders came together to agree that there was agreement on poultry, or something more than chickens anyway. Okay, so it morphed into that, right? Yeah, so I may be that's my understanding. As far as the numbers go, Bradley, I think yesterday you suggested that the language that we have here would now give the municipality the ability to can't prohibit, but they can regulate. And that could mean that they could say, you can only have 10. That's really it. Or you can only have 40, whatever. But no lower than six with this new language for chickens.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: No lower in that they if I have three chickens, they can't touch me.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: The town can't sits can't set a limit that's lower than six.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: If you have three chickens or pets.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, so the answer is yes, yeah. Bradley, I shouldn't be giving legal answers. That's right.

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: Bradley, can you provide a little more clarity on the language here specifically about chickens? For me to help, just help me understand it. For chickens, known by law shall have the effect of feeding the renaming of not more than six chickens or a number of children by to this municipality, whichever number is higher. Can you explain that a little bit more? So

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the municipality could not prohibit raising, feeding, or management of chickens up to six chickens having six chickens. So they could prohibit having seven chickens or eight chickens or something of that sort. And then they also there's clarifying language in there that also says that they can set a higher number if they want. And if there is a higher number, the higher number is the one that that would go into effect. That's a bit of a belt and suspenders approach about the higher number piece, but it just sends a signal that you can have a higher number if you want.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: So it's almost as if the municipality is restricting itself as far as what where state can restrict.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, yeah. It's confusing.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: And

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: that number came from where, the stakeholders? The six?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Nope, came from us. And we don't have to keep that number. But I think we, last week or yesterday, said, how about six? The league of cities and towns weigh in on that number issue at all. The league hasn't weighed in. They weren't here yesterday, so they yeah. And I haven't heard from them. Yeah.

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: Based on that reading, does that mean that if I had seven chickens, the town would technically prohibited me from having chickens?

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: It's the seventh chicken. So

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you could have up to six. Okay,

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: that's Depends how good your chicken beliefs are.

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: So the intention is that we don't wanna prohibit people from having four chickens up to you want to make sure people can have six chickens no matter what the regulations, right? We don't want them to put a regulation in saying you can only have two chickens. Oh,

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: I I don't know why

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: I'm getting something to feed on this.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: No. No. No. It's should be

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: pretty straightforward. But I almost think it should say or management of not less than seven chickens instead of more than six because we're saying that you can have six chickens.

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: But you can't have more. Don't want to prohibit more than six chickens either. We just want to be regulated. Well, badly Regulation might say we don't want you to

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: have any. Don't know. We want a family to be able to feed themselves. A large family.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Six might not be the number that we settle on ultimately, but if if six is the number, then Bradley, does this language work? Or is it representative Nelson was saying, you know, it should be not less than seven.

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Not less than seven. I I think they're observational equivalents, but I can I can try to play around with language to make it clearer or easier to understand? Not more than six is the drafting language that we use when we're putting in numbers. And so you'll see that throughout our our our our statutes and things. You know? In this context, does it make sense to kinda stick to the the normal course of drafting? Perhaps not. So let me let me just kick it around with the editors. This draft is unedited, so I could get around with the editors a little bit to see if we get better language that just keeps it a little clearer.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I I mean, I think that my first reading of this, it works. And if this is the way we normally do it, then I wouldn't have concerns, but we can double check.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, yeah,

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: yeah, doesn't hurt.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: This sentence is a little hard to digest, but I wanna make sure I'm understanding correctly. When it says Nobody at all should have the effect of prohibiting or assess for, the prohibiting means prohibiting the birds, and the assessing of feed means they can't. Assess

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: of feed, that's correct, yeah.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: That's correct, yes. We talked about six, but what do we do about turkeys? So turkeys,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: according to this, I think we meant it to mean that a town couldn't prohibit you from raising turkeys. And a flock would mean more than one, but that the town could say, you can only have two turkeys, if that's what it decided. By not having a number, it's basically saying two, could limit it to two, three, any number up to whatever the rap's number is.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: I think we decided that two was a pair that had to be three for a flock, but

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: don't see that. Okay, three.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: So just for clarity, so municipality could regulate three ducks or seven chickens?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yes. Potentially,

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: yeah. Yeah. I mean, if they if they chose to define a flock as three three ducks or two ducks, they can have two ducks, then they could prevent having three.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: We are doing a sort of carve out, right? But there's poultry, which chickens are part of, but then within that subset, have

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: more special language. Right, yeah. And this goes back to, I guess, to your question of, is it chickens that we really care about or is it all poultry? It's not all poultry because it's not emus, but which ones do we care about? And we need to figure that out here.

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Did you mean, so emu are poultry?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So would you like

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: to put exclude ratites in there too? Well, I was

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: gonna say we need to figure that out. We need to figure out what we're gonna do to address that question. I see that Mr. Collier had a hand up. Well, before we leave this section, did you wanna add something?

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture)]: Yeah, thank you very much. Steve Collier from

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: the Agency of Agriculture. I don't think that poultry flock is defined in any way.

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture)]: And so I don't think that creates a clear line that the pounds can set whatever limit they want. I don't know how to define poultry flock, it could be two birds, it could be a thousand birds. Like without defining it, I think you're going to create a lot of confusion which is why we settled on small backyard poultry flock, which is also vague, but it is small and it is backyard. So there's at least some time, but poultry flock, I think that's gonna lead to litigation if somebody wants to cap the number. So whatever you want to do is, especially if you're gonna put a number for chickens but not put a number for the other things, I think that suggests that there is

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: no limit on the other

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture)]: things, potentially. It's at least an argument that if you're capping one but not the other, so you could do, if you wanna do six or any number, I think you could do poultry flock excluding roosters and ratites for poultry, you know, have the number for all poultry and chickens in all of our discussions has been sort of the most innocuous thing that you can have, so I don't, think you if you're gonna have a number of I don't think you wanna allow more turkeys than chickens probably just because

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: of the distinction. So just

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture)]: a suggestion. But if I were reading that and trying to enforce it, I I wouldn't know how

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: to determine I wouldn't know

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture)]: how, I would say I could regulate poultry, but I don't know how I could limit the number of poultry based on that language. Chickens now you could, I think, but poultry flock, there's no, you can't look up a definition and get a number.

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So potential in that realm, a potential change if you wanted to if the committee wanted to regulate the location of where a person was keeping these, because I believe the Senate version said backyard, But you could add a small backyard poultry flock of not more than six birds, excluding roosters or ratites to add that clarification and achieve that goal. And obviously, all those are policy decisions. You don't necessarily have to include those things, but that is possible to put that language to refer to poultry broadly. Think our Well, sorry. Go ahead, Greg. Actually, one thing I did want to flag because Steve brought this back up for me too is, is the committee also considering someone who has six chickens and then wants them to also be able to raise three emu or I guess it's not emu anymore, but three geese or whatever it is, right? And so is the committee envisioning a total of six birds versus certain types? That is another thing for the committee to consider because that is a specific kind of issue. Someone could have a mix of chickens and ducks and things of that sort. And how would that work?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And again, historically, under the law before Taft Street and maybe today also, a town could any town in Vermont could say, you can only have three chickens, and you can only have one duck, and you can only have one turkey. It could put limits on all of those. It could presumably say, you can only have three poultry of any kind. It could have had that kind of a bylaw. So whatever we do, presumably it's going to be giving more leeway, less leeway to the town and more opportunity to the family that wants to raise their kids. Okay. Jack.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Just a comment. Spend

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: a lot

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: of time on our restrictions. I can tell you from thirty plus years of creating zoning laws and stuff in our town policies, you're never gonna get it right. So you gotta pick something and Could change it in five years or whatever that

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Good advice.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Just won't happen, somebody else figures something out.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And I think that we do want towns to be able to have the ability to have a bylaw that says you can only have x number. Feel like that's something we want, at least for some poultry. Not for chickens.

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: To represent, if I may just briefly, and to represent a bigger point, I think regardless of what the committee chooses you know, it might there's a good chance it's gonna might have been litigation, whether we have small backyard poultry flock as the definition, whether we have a number for chickens but not other poultry and things of that sort. And that might be acceptable, right? And that might just be a natural outcome of adjusting and changing these things. But it is likely, especially as you heard with the main litigation, right? You could have a parcel size and if we're allowing municipalities to do setbacks for a chicken coop or something or requiring a chicken coop in the first place and then setbacks for that chicken coop, you can imagine a small parcel of land that doesn't have the appropriate setbacks and think, well, does that prohibit me from having chickens? And that would end up in litigation. Litigation on very similar language is ongoing in Maine. It has not been resolved. But even if it is resolved in Maine, that doesn't mean that's how it's going to get resolved in our courts.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So what I wanna hear now from the committee is just on this question about backyard or front yard poultry, what do you feel strongly about? When we wrap this up, you want this bill to do this or to not do that, Greg? I would like

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: to see not assessing a fee still in there, make it as few words as possible, as simple as possible, and maybe you have to leave something up to the towns to figure out on the definition of the law.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Good, thank you. John?

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: For clarity, so

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: this whole thing came about because we're talking about sub wrap numbers of livestock, and some stakeholders said, let's do a carve out for chickens for that small backyard flock, which however we define that. That exists in Vermont, we felt like let's not have municipalities have complete control over the people who have their small backyard flock. That's sort of how we got to this point.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: While we're having this discussion about fixing the wrap, fixing the exemption, fixing municipal regulation, we're going to fix that at the same time. Let's go in and expand the right to grow food. So plants, chickens, poultry, that towns just have been able to regulate. They haven't generally regulated them, but they've had that ability. Restrict that ability.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Far as fixing the problem, right? We've never really heard of I can't have six chickens because this town has no, don't have six chickens. Yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yes. So again, I want to just And I realize we've been sitting here for a bit, and it's getting close to lunchtime and we want to wrap up. Just thinking about how can we direct Bradley for the afternoon to work on this language, other things that we feel strongly about that we want to do or not do here.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: The big thing is protecting the multibillion dollar agriculture sector that's in tier one. Not too many age. That's that's a big thing that we've gotta protect. And whether it's poultry or cattle, beef, dairy, sheep, dairy, goats. And we're putting a lot of effort into these small backyard flocks, and the right to grow food, which, you know, we we believe that people have a right to grow food. And maybe the simplest thing was just to leave it at small, and let towns determine what small is. And I I worry that if we make this too restrictive, that next year, there's gonna be a contingency in this building from Chittenden County or or or Rutland or Brownboro or Hart Hart, you know, Hartland Hartford. Hartford coming after us saying, you know, what did you do to us? And you need to fix this again. Perhaps they gotta be allowed to have some autonomy in their one age, you know, their their their downtowns, their their where they have water sewer sidewalks and high density housing. So if we leave it at small, that gives them some but, you know, excluding roosters and ratites, if we so if we so decide to do that, or we may not have to do it at all, we just leave it small, that gives them some autonomy over that and and see what happens. And if they go after and say you can only have four chickens, well, maybe we can say, geez, that's not real reasonable. And some people would say 600, but anyway. We never had one witness who said I was prohibited from having my small backyard flock.

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: Did we ever have?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We had no witness that said I was prohibited from having or a thaw of chickens. There, I think, may be a town, as it turns out, that does prohibit them, but that's anecdotal, and we never had testimony of that. Before we wrap up, since the question of camels also came up, so I'm gonna leave poultry for a moment here. Camels, there is such a thing as farming camels in some parts of the world. Camels or camel lids are listed in the wraps with a number. So we've got farming of camels covered just the way other livestock is covered in a non farming situation, so where somebody's not making $2,000 in sales, doesn't have whatever the number is in a backyard, if a town historically has wanted to say no camels, can say that, right, in a non farming situation. And this doesn't change that, Bradley?

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: For camels and this particular exception?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: In this bill. In the bill, okay.

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So camels would be the exception up to a bylaws chapter shall not regulate. So camels are livestock that are subject to the wraps. And so a municipality if that farming activity is subject to the wraps, the person can have their camels unless it qualifies for a different parcel size exception. So municipalities can rate can regulate the raising, feeding, management of livestock of less than one acre. And on one to four acres, a municipality can only regulate it if the secretary of agriculture does not. And the secretary of agriculture will regulate it if there's sufficient land base for nutrient waste management. So so so, there are circumstances where if a municipality had a prohibition on camels, then in certain circumstances, in certain parcel sizes, is feasible that that camel farming could be subject to the rats and not eligible for municipal regulations.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Got yaks in there?

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yaks. Yaks.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: My major had spurned. He ran down the lanes over there in a little pit.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Got horns like this. Go to

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: the fence. And they're all over

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: the place. I've heard yaks on my farm.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: It's well over 8,000 under 8,000 feet.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Oh, they do they do decline? That's fine. They're sort of like yaks.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: That's not their normal environment.

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: Are

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: yaks, would they fall under cattle, cows or vice versa?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: They're like a horse cow. They're totally in the cow family, they can interbreed.

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: Not Not a horse. Not with with a We need

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: to fix that, or at least understand that. Just

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: throw that out, not in the water.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. Take note, yeah.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: She's getting better to cover her up. Why

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: did did camels come up when it seems like like all these things, which are covered under the wraps, there's almost nothing to the wraps that we have to cover.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: The city of Burlington approached us yesterday.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: We didn't believe that's enough.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: They had concerns about this impact on cannabis. Because they have an existing bylaw that said no cannabis.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And how does that work then with the rats when state law crosses

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: that? Yeah, so historically state law said that if you were farming camels then You'd be a Yeah. The town can't From Burlington. Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Burlington changed their Or their charter. Yeah. And then that Trump's bailout.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: They're saying they don't want to have people allowed to farm camels if they're a farm, or they don't want backyard camels.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think, if I interpreted it correctly, was they didn't want their regulation on prohibiting camels to be overturned by something that we were doing, including if you were Well, don't think that So historically, it didn't apply to including if you were a farm. Maybe they were referring to what you've been able to do since Tap Street, which is prevent farming of camels, if you wanted to. Right, but I don't know. Yeah. Think that it's more like you can't just have a can.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Bad camel. They probably could spit out. Okay.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think we'll pause here.

[Bradley Shuman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Can clarify my instruction for the chickens piece?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I'm not sure we gave you our names, sir. Okay. Good. Outstanding. We wanna wanna I'll look into that piece. Yep. Yep. Then I think we all need to, what's the right word, not sleep on this, because I want to let people be thinking about it this afternoon.

[Unidentified committee member (referred to as 'Jack' in roll call)]: Yeah,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: so think on this. Think on this.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: So we're not gonna make a decision until tomorrow or maybe we're gonna come back? Yeah. Well, let's see.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Let's see. We have a long afternoon scheduled, but it could be shorter. If we have time, we may regroup this afternoon.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: What's going on in morning?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We got very We're gonna talk about this. Come back to