Utah agriculture agency outlines bills to watch in upcoming legislative session

Amber Brown, legislative affairs director at the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, briefed a departmental roundtable on a slate of bills the agency is watching for the upcoming legislative session.

"I think we have bills that are getting numbered, like, fast and furious, probably, 400 numbered already, which is a little bit crazy to me," Brown said, opening her rundown of measures the agency has been tracking.

Brown listed a series of House and Senate bills that UDAF staff have reviewed or helped draft. Among those she named: HB 41 (water policy amendments that would add monitoring of critical watersheds and provisions for water reuse); HB 45 (irrigation amendments dealing with canal operators and recovery of damages); HB 47 (livestock watering rights and repeal of livestock water use certificates, plus procedures tied to Public Water Reserve No. 7 claims); HB 54 (changes to the hemp program supported by UDAF); HB 84 (vaccine amendments that would classify food containing vaccine material as a drug; UDAF said it is neutral and does not expect the change to apply to vaccinated meat); HB 94 (exemptions from dangerous-weapon provisions for farm custom slaughter licensees, supported by UDAF); HB 138 (food-labeling changes to require lab-grown meat be labeled); and HB 194 (beekeeping and veterinary-client-patient-relationship provisions that would let UDAF veterinarians prescribe needed medications for bee health).

Brown also described larger cannabis bills (including one she identified as H.B. 2203) and Senate measures such as SB 28 (extending the Livestock Brand Board sunset to 2034) and SB 64 (medical cannabis amendments). She said UDAF plans to run an annual cleanup bill to make small, non-substantive statutory updates and to reframe certain terms in code (for example, replacing the word "fertilizer" with "plant food" to better encompass biostimulants and similar products).

On conservation- and easement-related provisions, Brown said UDAF seeks flexibility to use funds that support agricultural conservation easement monitoring and enforcement by changing an account to an expendable special revenue fund rather than a restricted account. She also listed technical and programmatic changes being pursued for veterinary loan repayment eligibility, predator control fee dates aligned to the fiscal year, and allowing 10-year brand registrations as an option for livestock branding.

Brown flagged three recurring themes for UDAF this session: (1) ongoing water-related bills and water-optimization cost-share adjustments (she said language would allow up to a 75% state cost share for measurement, telemetry and reporting); (2) several cannabis-related bills that would affect UDAF programs and for which the department is coordinating requested changes; and (3) interest in a bill to make a pollinator program permanent (sponsored by Representative Matthews) and a still-unsettled raw-milk/permit-transparency proposal that may return after language concerns.

Why it matters: the bills Brown described affect how the department regulates hemp and livestock, how water and conservation funds can be spent, and the operational rules for small agricultural businesses such as farm custom slaughter licensees — all areas that can shape agricultural operations statewide.

Brown said UDAF maintains a bill tracker and offered to share the tracker with partners who want regular updates.

Ending: Brown closed by noting she would keep working with sponsors and the State Engineer where bills intersect with water rights and that UDAF would circulate numbered-bill lists to interested partners.