COLUMBUS—The voter-approved Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board will tackle downer animal and euthanasia issues among its first orders of business, with hopes of submitting recommended care rules by the end of summer.

“Those issues are the ones that have a great deal of both federal and state rules and regulations already in place,” said Agriculture Director Robert Boggs. “So, unlike some of the other commodity sorts of issues that are going to take a lot of study and a lot of research, we believe that we can move forward on those fairly soon. ... We merely have to indicate which ones we are going to hold as the ones livestock producers have to follow.”

Both issues also are among the provisions included in a proposed constitutional amendment that the Humane Society of the United States hopes to put before voters this fall. That group has until June 30 to submit upward of 400,000 valid signatures in order to place the issue on the November ballot; Karen Minton, the humane society’s Ohio director, said the group has about 300,000 signatures in hand.

Among other provisions, the ballot issue would require the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board to ban strangulation of cows and pigs as a form of euthanasia, require those animals to be killed in a humane manner and prohibit the transport, sale or receipt into the human food supply of cows or calves that are too sick or injured to stand and walk.

Boggs and other members of the state board said Ohio farmers already follow such practices in relation to livestock euthanasia, and federal rules ban downer cows from entering the human food chain. Read More…