ANNAPOLIS, MD (Sept. 30, 2011) \u2013 Five new agriculture laws go into effect October 1 in Maryland.\u00a0 The laws impact farmland preservation, invasive plants, veterinary practice regulations, and farm-to-school reporting requirements.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll five bills are important to the work and mission of the Maryland Department of Agriculture (MDA),\u201d said Agriculture Secretary Buddy Hance. \u201cWe are pleased to have the tools these bills provide to strengthen our programs and our abilities to serve the citizens of Maryland. We thank Governor O\u2019Malley and the General Assembly for their support of our important work.\u201d<\/p>\n
The agriculture-related laws adopted during the 2011 General Assembly Session that take effective October 1 are listed below.<\/p>\n
HB 214\u00a0<\/a> \u2013 Maryland Agricultural Land Preservation Foundation (MALPF) Critical Farms Fund allows MALPF to fully implement a statewide Critical Farms Program by finalizing the criteria a property must meet to be considered a \u201ccritical farm.\u201d As of October 1, MALPF will be authorized to provide interim or emergency financing (if funding is available) for easement acquisitions or fee simple acquisitions of a critical farm. Funding remains discretionary, but the bill also allows MALPF to solicit funds from other sources. HB 831<\/a>\u2013 Agriculture – Invasive Plants \u2013 Prevention and Control requires MDA to establish an Invasive Plants Advisory Committee (IPAC) that which will advise the Secretary on regulations that should be adopted to establish a risk assessment protocol for invasive plants within one year, and establish lists of invasive plants using the protocol within two years.<\/p>\n HB 751 <\/a>\u2013 Agriculture \u2013 Jane Lawton Farm to School Program \u2013 Reporting requires each local educational agency that participatinges in the Jane Lawton Farm-to-School program (i.e., also known as Homegrown School Lunch Week) to report to MDA by January 1 of each year about the types and amounts of farm products they purchased from Maryland farms. For more information about the program<\/a>.<\/p>\n SB 322<\/a>\u2013 State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners – Registered Veterinary Technician gives the State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners (SBVME) authority to adopt regulations that allow registered veterinary techs to perform certain medical procedures while working under the direct supervision of a veterinarian. Although the law takes effect October 1, the SBVME must amend its current regulations to articulate what those procedures are before a veterinarian can delegate those additional medical-related tasks. The Board\u2019s Veterinary Technician Committee is researching other state laws and regulations and will make recommendations for the Board\u2019s consideration.<\/p>\n SB 146<\/a>\u2013 State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners \u2013 Licensing permits the SBVME to direct an applicant, veterinarian or veterinary practitioner to submit to a mental or physical exam when the Board has reasonable evidence indicating that an individual is incompetent to practice veterinary medicine. For more information about the SBVME. <\/a><\/p>\n ###<\/p>\n Follow MDA on Twitter @MdAgDept<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ANNAPOLIS, MD (Sept. 30, 2011) \u2013 Five new agriculture laws go into effect October 1 in Maryland.\u00a0 The laws impact farmland preservation, invasive plants, veterinary practice regulations, and farm-to-school reporting requirements. \u201cAll five bills are important to the work and mission of the Maryland Department of Agriculture (MDA),\u201d said Agriculture Secretary Buddy Hance. \u201cWe are Read the Rest…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[107,81,87,145,13],"class_list":["post-603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release","tag-agland-preservation","tag-farm-to-school","tag-invasive-plant","tag-laws","tag-vet-board-2"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":604,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions\/604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFor more information about MALPF<\/a><\/p>\n