The president of the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association says the “master matrix” rules for confined animal feedlot operations in Iowa are working properly and don’t need strengthening. Mike Cline, of Elgin, says it’s critical those regulations are left intact and that there’s one statewide regulation in place for all producers to follow. “We’re strongly in support of one master matrix for the whole state and not have it divided out into a county decision where we could have 99 different decisions across the state,” Cline says. “We’ll be in attendance of any meetings that we can be following it and keeping everybody up to date on where they need to go and give comment on.”

Activist groups are petitioning for putting stricter master matrix rules in place. Cline says the state’s water is being protected by the current rules and changing them now doesn’t make sense. “All the bases are pretty well covered with the current master matrix,” Cline says. “We always need to keep evaluating where we’re at. All of the safeguards are in place and everybody should rest assured that everything’s being watched over.”

He says producers and their animals use the water and don’t want to see any contamination or environmental damage to it. “We would be the first ones to notice any ill effects,” Cline says. “We just don’t want to do the wrong thing and we would be constantly vigilant of watching for anything that might need to be adjusted or changed.”

He says producers and consumers need to work together to enhance the state’s water quality and putting some type of moratorium in place on CAFO operations would be disruptive and hurtful.

(Radio Iowa)