The Minnesota House on Thursday approved legislation which Rep. Paul Anderson, R-Starbuck, said combats infectious diseases in flocks and herds while eliminating wasteful spending and rejecting proposed fee increases.
Anderson co-chairs the House committee on agriculture, which assembled the bill. It spends $172.3 million in 2026-27 – a $17 million increase – to fund the agriculture section of Minnesota’s next two-year state budget.
“One of my top priorities with this bill is ensuring the Board of Animal Health has the funding it needs to respond to any future livestock disease outbreaks,” Anderson said. “They've had their hands full in recent years managing highly pathogenic bird flu, which has impacted our turkey and chicken flocks. Now that the virus has been found in dairy cattle as well, it’s more important than ever to protect our state’s livestock and poultry and the Board of Animal Health plays a key role in that mission.”
Anderson said provisions not in the bill (H.F. 2446) also represent victories. Namely, it excludes fee increases proposed by Gov. Tim Walz’s Department of Agriculture.
“Given the tough economic climate in the ag industry right now, the last thing we should do is raise fees on those working in agriculture,” Anderson said. “There were proposals to significantly increase grain inspection fees, including some that would have driven up costs by more than 200% for some grain elevators. It is good those fee hikes were left out of our bill.”
A conference committee will work to reconcile differences between House and Senate ag packages in preparation for votes on final approval.
“I’m glad we worked together and got this bill done,” Anderson said. “With a 67-67 split in the House, bipartisanship is a must this session and I thank the committee members for keeping that in mind so we could get this bill through the committee process. Now we’ll start working with the Senate to find agreement with them so we can get our work done on time this session.”
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