Vermont agriculture secretary warns federal funding uncertainty could affect produce-safety, cooperative agreements

Anson Tebbetts, secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets, told a legislative committee that federal funding makes up roughly 40% of his agency’s budget and that changes at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration could affect state programs, inspections and cooperative agreements.

“I wanted to start maybe just with a brief overview of our proposed budget, which you guys know already, but I wanted to just to highlight, you know, our proposed budget is about $60,000,000 21% comes from general funds, state dollars, 35% from special funds, and about 40% of our budget at the agency bag is federal funds, and the remaining 4% made up of interdepartmental, transfers,” Tebbetts said. He added that programs reliant on USDA or federal funding were temporarily paused early in the federal administration’s transition but have largely resumed.

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