Baylen Linnekin on Montana’s Efforts to Loosen Food and Agricultural Regulations

Montana is looking to loosen some food
regulations in the state. By passing a 2013 law, HB 630, Montana
legislators required regulators there to find ways to streamline
and loosen the state’s tangled web of food regulations. How complex
are some of the state’s overlapping livestock, produce, and health
regulations? At one of the listening sessions, Joel Clairmont, the
deputy director of Montana’s Department of Agriculture, explained
how in one instance he and several existing businesses were forced
by his fellow regulators to wait more than five years to cut
through the red tape necessary to establish a dried beef business.
In short, writes Baylen Linnekin, there’s no shortage of areas of
food and agricultural regulation that Montana’s legislators can’t
work to improve.

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