Former Kittson County sheriff and Lake Bronson area deer farmer Steve Porter has been posting a series of remarkable Facebook videos attacking House DFL lawmakers--mostly Roseville Democrat Jamie Becker-Finn--for bills introduced to address chronic wasting disease in Minnesota's wild deer and farmed cervid herds.
Bluestem posted about the plan in MNHouse: Becker-Finn releases comprehensive plan to immediately address CWD outbreak.
Most recently, he's attacked Lou Cornicelli, wildlife research manager at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota's Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology in the College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources.
While Porter speaks with utmost confidence about his opinion, he's not being straight-forward with his information nor his opinions about lawmakers and scientists. Let's look at a couple of whoppers in one video.
Claim: The Board of Animal Health does a great job regulating deer farms
In CWD and Deer Farms a video that's at the moment pinned to the top of the Steve Porter's Trophy Whitetails' Facebook page, Porter says beginning at at the 2.02 minute mark:
Today I hear people saying, the Board of Animal Health, they're just not doing a good job with deer farms. Just simply not true. The Board of Animal Health is doing a fantastic job. They come out and inspect my deer farm. They're in touch with us. They're applying all the rules that have been drafted concerning deer farms. . . .
Fact: That criticism is grounded in the Office of the Legislative Auditor's report Board of Animal Health's Oversight of Deer and Elk Farms released last April. Among other things, the OLA found that:
- BAH staff do not systematically analyze whether deer and elk producers submit tissue samples for CWD testing for all deceased animals.
- From 2014 to 2017, about one-third of producers that reported dead deer or elk failed to submit tissues from at least one of those animals for CWD testing.
- BAH has, in some instances, failed to enforce deer and elk regulations. However, the board has improved its deer and elk program over the past several months.
- BAH and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) have struggled to appropriately share the information they both require to respond to CWD outbreaks. ...
Claim: The rules that already are in place require captive herds to be eliminated as soon as a single animal tests positive for CWD.
At the 13:27 mark, Porter says:
If I have one deer come up positive, I'm under quarantine. There will be no deer leaving my farm. Everything will be destroyed. The rules are in place. We already have all the laws in place to protect a herd in the state of Minnesota. The rules are fantastic. They're in place. If I get CWD and it shows up in one deer, I'm done. Everything I've invested is done. That's a harsh reality.
Fact: Not even close. We need only look at the history of the quarantined deer farm in Crow Wing County--a dead wild doe near this location proved to be infected with CWD--to understand the utter falsehood of this statement.
In December 2016, Forum News Services reported in CWD found in farm-raised deer in Crow Wing County:
Just weeks after chronic wasting disease was found in three wild deer in southeast Minnesota, the fatal brain disease has been identified in a farmed deer herd in Crow Wing County near Merrifield, Minn., the Minnesota Department of Animal Health reported Friday.
The herd of 33 mule deer and 100 white-tailed deer is registered with the Board of Animal Health. Two, 2-year-old female deer were slaughtered on the farm, and both tested positive for CWD, the board said. The deer showed no clinical signs of illness.
The Board of Animal Health requires CWD testing of all farmed deer or elk that die or are slaughtered and are more than 12 months old. Routine tissue samples were collected at slaughter from the CWD-infected deer. Those samples were tested at the University of Minnesota's Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and then forwarded to the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, for official confirmation. Those tests confirmed CWD.
"The affected herd has been quarantined," Dr. Paul Anderson, assistant director at the Board of Animal Health, said in a news release. "At this point, our priority is making sure no deer leave or enter the farm while we work with the owner to determine the best course of action for the herd. We're also working closely with the Department of Natural Resources and the United States Department of Agriculture as we develop plans."
More recent reports noted that two deer were found to be infected in December 2016. Was the herd destroyed? Jeepers: no. On October 30, 2017, KSTP's Kevin Doran reported in After Farm Found to Have CWD, Deer Farmer Welcomes Chance to Combat Disease:
. . .Half-a-million people have purchased licenses to hunt deer in Minnesota this fall. Some pay even more to hunt for a huge buck on a preserve like the 112-acre Trophy Woods Ranch in Crow Wing County. The property has double-high fences to prevent deer on the farm from mingling with deer in the wild.
Owner Kevin Schmidt is a deer hunter himself, a farmer and a scientist.
Doran is being very generous here; according to Schmidt's Facebook page, he studied mechanical engineering from Dunwoody Institute of Technology, which doesn't offer degree programs in biology. But we digress:
...Schmidt's business came to a halt right before Christmas.
"On Dec. 22 I got a call from the Board of Animal Health saying I had a suspect CWD test," he said.
He was shocked because deer farms are required to test every animal after it dies and CWD had never been detected on his farm.
"It was a big surprise, not only to us, but to the Board of Animal Health and the USDA," he said.
Last fall, CWD was also found at a deer farm in Meeker County that Schmidt had exchanged some deer with in 2014. . ..
The Board of Animal Health said it couldn't identify the two deer farms where CWD was found last fall. It does confirm the Meeker County farm was bought out by the USDA and depopulated.
Schmidt confirmed he's the other farmer, and he refused a buyout. Because of that, his deer farm is now quarantined for five years.
The Board of Animal Health confirms there have been zero positive CWD results at Trophy Woods Ranch since the last test in December. . . .
No, Schmidt didn't have to destroy his herd. In fact, he wasn't required to do so last fall when more deer on his farm came up positive for CWD. The Morrison County Record reported in Deer farm in Crow Wing County infected with CWD in 2016 identifies additional cases:
Chronic wasting disease was detected in four harvested samples from farmed deer at a quarantined farm in Crow Wing County. The farm has been under movement restrictions and monitored by the Board since December 2016 when two white-tailed deer tested positive for the disease. The Minnesota Board of Animal Health confirms recent samples were CWD positive in four deer.
• 9-year-old female mule deer.
• 1.5-year-old female white-tailed deer.
• 2-year-old male white-tailed deer.
• 2-year-old female mule deer.
“We’ve been working with the herd owner for the past two years to monitor the deer and look for any new detections of the disease,” said Assistant Director Dr. Linda Glaser. “The biggest change following this new detection will be to extend our deadline to monitor the herd.”
In short: more monitoring and more quarantine, we suppose. In another video, Lou Cornicelle and CWD, Porter asserts that the farm has been depopulated, while discussing how that farm was started on what had been a dumping ground for carcasses of animals shot who-knows-where; an investigation showed that the ground was littered with dead animal bones, that could be the source of CWD. Nothing like carefully locating one's trophy buck farm in a bone yard.
But there's more. At the Duluth News Tribune, John Myers reported in Field reports: Minnesota lawmakers, hunters target CWD:
Minnesota deer hunting groups and DFL lawmakers last week week unveiled a package of new bills that they hope will pass during the 2019 legislative session and help battle chronic wasting disease.
The effort would allot more state general tax money for the Department of Natural Resources to combat the always fatal deer disease. Currently all of the effort has been paid for by deer hunters though a license fee.
The coalition also wants more money for the University of Minnesota to develop a fast, effective field test for CWD so hunters can find out quickly if the animal they killed is carrying the disease. Researchers want $1.8 million to develop a portable, inexpensive CWD kit. Currently, testing is expensive and takes at least five days to get results.
The lawmakers and hunters also want to crack-down on deer and elk farms that have been hotbeds for CWD outbreaks. They want laws to require double fencing, and higher fences, around deer farms. And they want to require farmers to depopulate - kill all their animals - if any of the herd tests positive for CWD. Now, it's up to the farmer to decide, allowing them to keep other, potentially CWD-positive animals on the landscape. (The only way to test for CWD is after the animal is dead.)
The bills also would seek state money to buy-out deer farms that want get out of the business. And one proposal would impose a moratorium on any new deer farms in the state. There are already some 400 such deer and elk farms in Minnesota.
"It's a good package. We have our annual meeting coming up and I'm pretty sure our membership is going to get behind most or all of these,'' said Craig Engwall, executive director of the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association.
In short, Porter's remarks are simply misleading. In CWD and Jamie Becker-Finn, Porter talks about "knuckled-headed" lawmakers, first going after DFLers for betraying the farmers in the DFL brand, claiming that they lost their way when someone came to them with lies about deer farms and CWD.
That should be a big surprise for Representative Rick Hansen, who may represent South St. Paul, but still farms and hunts on the Fillmore and Freeborn County farm where he was raised. Unlike Mr. Schmidt, Hansen earned a degree in biology. Becker-Finn? A deer hunter who grew up in Northern Minnesota, Bluffland Whitetails' Legislator of the Year in 2018, and careful lawmaker who reads the law carefully, as her career as an assistant district attorney might suggest..
Porter says:
And these people without even knowing the laws, drafted up bills, ignorantly, and moved forward. It was ignorance. Why do I say that? Because the CWD laws that are in place right now....deer farms must be enrolled in a CWD plan. They're administered by the Board of Animal Health. They are doing a good job.
Jamie Becker Finn, you're out of touch. You're attacking Minnesota farmers because you bought a lie. You bought a lie from someone. You didn't know what was going on. You didn't do your homework and now you're trying to pass legislation shutting down farmers. Minnesota farmers are under attack
Mostly Porter recycles the same claims as in the first clip, finishing with a slippery slope argument that implies Becker-Finn wants to confiscate guns--which might make it difficult for Hansen to hunt on his property.
The action really comes in the comments, where the peanut gallery goes on about everything from Becker-Finn's Evil Metro bias to an assertion that Becker-Finn's CWD bills are model bills written by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.
[UPDATE February 26] Last week, we contacted ALEC's Public Affairs Coordinator Dan Reynolds about whether ALEC had crafted any CWD model bills. Back from a vacation, Reynolds replied via email:
All of the American Legislative Exchange Council model policies are listed publicly on our website. Of all these model policies, there is only one mention of Cervidae farming. It is within the “Right to Farm Act.” This model policy supports those who would want to farm Cervidae animals, such as deer.
There are no American Legislative Exchange Council model policies on Chronic Wasting Disease. Please also note that model policies are developed within our task forces and voted on by the members of the task forces. [end update]
On Sunday, posted Lou Cornicelle and CWD, attacking Dr. Cornicelle as a liar. Deconstruct it for yourself.
Who is Steve Porter?
Porter shares the story of his entry into deer farming in his videos more than once. In 2007, the Pioneer Press reported in Big bucks pay dividends for deer rancher in northwestern Minn:
As a lifelong deer hunter, Steve Porter says he thought he knew whitetail behavior when he got a game farm license and bought a buck fawn and three does about 15 years ago.
He quickly found that time in the deer stand was no match for hours of watching the animals up-close-and-personal.
“They’ve made me a liar,” Porter said.
Porter, 41, and his wife, Peggy, own Steve Porter’s Trophy Whitetails, a family venture that includes a traveling seminar and display of live trophy bucks and raising deer with an eye toward quality genetics.
It’s a serious business that means big bucks in more ways than one.
Porter was appointed Sheriff of Kittson County when Kenny Hultgren retired for health reasons in 2017; voters rejected Former his first and only relection bid in 2018 by a substantial margin in 2018--and recent news reports put Porter back in the sheriff's office, though he received a medical leave in January.
In 2016 and 2018, Porter contributed $500 to state representative Dan Fabian's campaign committee. The 2016 contribution isn't remarkable, though the 2018 contribution came during the session, after a time during which Becker-Finn and Hansen had been pushing Fabian to consider the subject of CWD. Had Porter been a lobbyist, the contribution during the session would have been illegal; but as an activist and deer farm owner, the cash was perfectly legal. At the time, Fabian chaired the Minnesota House Environment and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Committee; Hansen now chairs the Environment and Natural Resources Finance Division.
Photo: Steve Porter's pet bucks at a middle school.
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