What seems like a symbolic bill making its way through the Statehouse could be a boost for Indiana’s pork producers.
“We’re not sure where it’ll ultimately end up but it’ll be a fun drive while it’s going here,” says Indiana Pork Executive Director Josh Trenary referring to Senate Bill 21. The bill would designate the breaded tenderloin as the official state sandwich of Indiana.
“And we’ve got to thank Senator (Andy) Zay for this one because he came to us. He’s got a restaurant in his district that supposedly is one of the oldest purveyors of tenderloin in the state. And so, he’s excited about that and so are we and he’s trying to move this at the state level. So, in an environment where a lot of these hearings are a slog, you know, talking about the tenderloin for a while, it’s kind of fun.”
The bill has cleared the Senate and now awaits action in the House Government and Regulatory Reform committee. Zay is no longer the author of the bill as he resigned from the Indiana Senate in December after being appointed to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission by Governor Braun.
On the Indiana Ag Policy Podcast, Trenary also discusses HB1355 that would limit engineer authority at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
“The engineer at IDEM’s job is to make sure that it’s compliant with the law and compliant with the rule. What we find is too many times it devolves into that specific engineer’s preferences as to how they’d like to see a calculation done or a little nuance in approach to a design that they’d like to see where there are multiple other avenues that a professional engineer could take to make it compliant. And we need to back that off because it’s causing considerable delays in our permit issuance at the agency.”
Trenary says these changes can prove costly. One person testified that the proposed changes would cost them upwards of $45,000.
Watch the Indiana Ag Policy Podcast below to hear more from Trenary.
