Local poultry growers and legislators representing them in the Delmarva region are expressing their concern about new Department of Homeland Security regulations that would put chicken houses among potential terrorism targets and would require growers to follow risk assessment and prevention protocols aimed at chemical facilities.
Coastal Point • RUSLANA LAMBERT
The Department of Homeland Security considers the propane stored at area chicken houses at risk to a possible terrorist threat.
The new interim rule for the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standard (CFATS) technically became effective June 8, but the impact on poultry growers did not become clear until DHS recently released a related list of some 400 chemicals whose presence in quantity at a facility requires operators to fill out a security risk assessment form and potentially regulate who has access to their farms.
That list is due to go into effect later this month, just in time for the fall-winter season for area poultry growers, as they’re looking to make sure their flocks can prosper through colder weather.
The issue is a threshold in the chemicals list of some 7,500 pounds, or 1,785 gallons, of propane gas, which is used to heat chicken houses as growers raise the birds from chicks to market size.
“These rules have a disproportionate impact on agricultural businesses and farmers,” said Jim Thrift, vice president for the Agricultural Retailers Association. “The agricultural community not only has to comply with the new rules on propane but a number of other common agricultural chemicals used in food production and farming.”
According to the National Propane Gas Association, farmers — many of whom store propane on their farms for crop drying, poultry brooders, hot water heating, farm vehicle fuel — would be adversely affected by the rule. Propane is used in many agricultural applications, they pointed out, such as baby chicken warming or weed control between crop rows.
At 7,500 pounds or more of propane on-site, facilities are required to undergo an extensive Web-based questionnaire to collect information on propane usage. The Top Screen questionnaire is being estimated by DHS to take 25 hours for the average farmer with one or two listed chemicals at their facility to complete online. It is aimed at assessing the potential risk of terrorism at the location at which the propane is stored.
The questionnaire assesses the level of damage that could result from a terrorist incident at a given facility.
Representatives of the American Propane Gas Association have suggested that the survey will include facility and personnel identifying information, such as the address of the facility, the potential loss of life and injuries on or near the facility as a result of a terrorism incident, and whether a “flammable release worst-case scenario” might create exposure to a residential population of 1,000 or more.
Once the survey is completed, DHS will use a computer program to determine whether the facility is deemed “high risk” by calculating the populations at risk and potential consequences of a terrorism incident. If DHS determines that a farm is at high risk, the department will require two additional reports from the farm facility.
A security vulnerability analysis, including an asset characterization, risk assessment, threat assessment, security vulnerability assessment and countermeasures analysis, will have to be completed within 60 days. A security plan also must be developed within 120 days, addressing each vulnerability, and describing how security measures will address potential modes of terrorist attack and how security measures will meet or exceed DHS-mandated performance standards. Violations of the regulations could result in fines of as much as $25,000 per day.
DHS estimates that between 1,500 and 6,500 facilities are affected by the new regulations, while more than 40,000 may be required to fill out the Top Screen questionnaire to determine if other aspects of the requirements apply.
Industry trade groups and legislators are already pushing for an exemption from the regulation for poultry growers, particularly those on small, family farms who may not have the time, money or technology to complete the survey or institute new security measures.
Local grower Traye Matthes, who raises chickens for Allen Family Foods and previously did so for Purdue, has more than 12,000 gallons of propane stored across several locations on his farmlands. He doesn’t think his farm is a target for terrorism, though.
“I don’t think it’s a risk factor, myself. I think they’re just blowing water,” he said this week. “I think they need to start worrying about the food and stuff coming across from other countries,” he added.
In Selbyville, Mack McCary, who grows chickens for Mountaire, has 21,000 gallons of propane on his farm. He agreed that the risk of terrorism on Delmarva’s poultry farms appears low.
“I find it hard to believe,” McCary said. “If I’m a terrorist, I’m not going to blow up somebody’s chicken house, I’m going to try to blow up people. Somebody has too much time on their hands. I can see them blowing up a gas station where people are filling up their cars, but not a chicken house.”
Matthes said he has been relying upon the poultry companies to keep him and his peers informed about the new regulations and their impact on his farm but that individual growers haven’t really been told yet what they’ll need to do or when.
“They didn’t really give us much on it,” Matthes said, recalling some literature Allen had sent to him a while back. But it doesn’t really concern him, he said, at least for now.
“Until the companies tell us, that’s when I’m going to do it,” Matthes said. “All of our security measures come out of the company. We do what they say we’re supposed to do.”
McCary said he hadn’t received any information on the regulations from Mountaire.
“The only thing I’ve heard is through the newspaper or DPI,” he said, though he recalled some inquiries by growers with legislators that hadn’t yet yielded a response that he was aware of.
Matthes and McCary said they both already restrict who has access to their farms, due to concerns about spreading diseases such as avian influenza. Only fuel, electric, feed delivery and service personnel are allowed on the farms.
“Purdue has a mailbox out front that says ‘Stop,’ and you’re supposed to fill out a form when you come onto the farm, with the time and date you were there,” Matthes noted. “I’ve heard in the past, through agents for the UDSA talking about how, in the future, we’ll have security cameras on the farms, watching who’s coming on and what’s going on.”
Matthes said he expects that the large poultry corporations for whom most local growers work will end up handling the new regulations on a corporate level.
“I think that’s what’s going happen. They’re going to do it. They pay for the fuel. We just store their fuel on the farm,” he emphasized. “I think they’re going to have to fill the form out themselves for each and every farm. We’re just storage. It’s their fuel, because that’s how we compete on chickens — fuel, feed and size.”
U.S. Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and several of his colleagues on Capitol Hill are hoping that it won’t even go that far. Carper, who is a member of the Senate’s Homeland Security committee, joined Maryland Sens. Barbara Mikulski and Benjamin Cardin this week in questioning DHS’s decision to impose the regulations that would affect poultry farmers.
A letter from the legislators to DHS said the new regulations may affect as many as 20,000 individual family-owned and operated poultry farms nationwide, requiring them to complete the Web Based questionnaire, which “could take days to complete for many farmers who lack the time and technological resources to complete it.”
“We are very concerned about the interim final rule that was recently issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regarding the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standard (CFATS),” the legislators wrote. “Farmers are concerned that this rule and the subsequent regulations that come with it are unnecessarily burdensome.”
“The raising of poultry is a major industry and a key driver of economic growth in our states,” they wrote. “Given the serious threats that are currently facing our country and the limited resources of the Department of Homeland Security, please explain why this initiative is a good use of federal dollars. We urge you to ensure that no unnecessary burdens are placed on the poultry industry.”
Those federal dollars could total between $2,300 and $3,500 per farm for enforcement and regulatory costs, according to DHS estimates, leading to estimated costs of more than $1 billion for the regulation of propane alone.
Bill Satterfield of the Delmarva Poultry Industry trade group urged the group’s members to oppose the regulations earlier this year.
Typically, he said, a poultry farm will have 1,000 gallons of propane for each chicken house. “Therefore, a majority of the poultry farms in the United States may have to comply with this regulation and complete a registration and a Top-Screen analysis,” he said. “We estimate that this will include 20,000 individual family-owned and operated poultry farms.”
He said DPI believes DHS has significantly underestimated, at 40,000, the number of facilities that will be required to comply with the regulations and, therefore, the cost of compliance and the impact on small business. “The DHS’s estimate of 25 to 30 hours to complete the registration and Top-Screen presents a huge and nonsensical burden on these small businesses,” he added, “and is likely to be underestimated for these growers because of travel time and lack of computer skills.”
DPI has asked members to state that they believe the Screening Threshold Quantity (STQ) for propane should be increased. Most of the farms, Satterfield said, will be regulated because of the inclusion of small (500 and 1,000 gallon) propane tanks. Many poultry farms have multiple tanks and often are separated by a significant distance or a building.
“The worst-case scenario of an explosion from a 1,000 gallon tank is only approximately 500 feet for a 1 psi over-pressure condition,” he added. “This type of incident is enough to break widows and cause injuries due to glass shrapnel at that distance, but is not likely to cause structural damage. The only damage likely to be caused within 500 feet of most of these small farms is to the poultry house itself.”
Satterfield said DPI is strongly recommending that the DHS consider adding a footnote to the listing for propane, indicating that all propane storage tanks of less than 1,200 gallons do not need to be counted toward the threshold amount.
Carper and his colleagues are also pushing DHS to raise the threshold on propane to exempt poultry farmers before the rule is implemented later this month.