In New 'Spray Box' Decision, Sid Miller Dances Himself Right Back to Where He Started

For the last two weeks, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller has choreographed a dizzying do-si-do with cattle ranchers, state and federal regulators and a despised, eight-legged critter.

It’s taken just 11 days for Miller to personally go to war with federal and state agencies over a pesticide spraying program, to call the agencies chicken for not showing up to a meeting, to draw the ire of powerful farm and ranch lobbying groups, and when all was said and done, to do a 180-degree turn in an attempt to save face. When the music stopped, so to speak, little had changed and nothing had been accomplished: a dance many Texas politicians know by heart.

It started last week, when Miller surprised cattle pesticide applicators in Raymondville after fielding complaints from South Texas ranchers that chemical spraying killed their cattle. Miller decided that Bayer’s Co-Ral, a chemical used to kill the disease-harboring fever tick, was being misapplied. He shut down 16 “spray boxes,” small, mobile metal chutes where cows are herded single-file and doused with poison to rid them of the fever tick. The pesticide was being applied in a confined, poorly ventilated space — a violation of the chemical’s federally approved label — and no licensed pesticide applicator was on site, Miller said.

The rebuke from the Texas agriculture industry, which stands to be decimated if the fever tick spreads from designated quarantine zones, was swift and loud. The Texas Farm Bureau said last week that Miller “has jeopardized the health of the Texas cattle herd and the viability of farmers and ranchers.” Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers called the decision “actually detrimental to cattle raisers who rely on the use of spray boxes to eradicate cattle fever ticks from their operations.”

Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/in-new-spray-box-decision-sid-miller-dances-himself-right-back-to-where-he-started/