By Julie Tomascik
Editor
A Texas Senate committee left a contentious bill mandating increased studies of wild pig control methods pending after a hearing this week.
The wild pig population is expanding exponentially in the Lone Star State, leaving farmers and ranchers facing thousands of dollars in damages each year. But there is a division among stakeholders looking for ways to reduce the population.
The Senate Committee on Agriculture, Water and Rural Affairs listened as more than 20 farmers, ranchers and organizations testified on HB 3451.
Texas Farm Bureau (TFB) and other agricultural organizations testified in opposition to HB 3451.
The legislation would force additional studies by independent parties beyond the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requirements at the state level for use of a pesticide product as means for control of feral hogs.
“This bill may intend to focus on lethal feral hog baits, but it does lay out the path for any opposition to unnecessarily restrict or eliminate any pesticide used on the farm. The EPA evaluation and registration protocols, as we’ve heard, they do work,” Tracy Tomascik, associate director of Commodity and Regulatory Activities for TFB, told the committee. “The products are safe to use if approved. Texas does not need to be in the business of overregulating and disrupting the good work that is done on our farms and ranches.”
He noted that some have financial incentives to propagate this invasive species.
“The environment, our water and other wildlife all pay for their profit,” Tomascik said. “Do not be mistaken. This is not about a warfarin bait. It’s about their opposition to any feral hog bait.”
Farmers and ranchers testified that current control methods aren’t working.
“My family and our neighbors actually enjoy hunting feral hogs, but we can’t shoot or trap our way out of the issue that’s plaguing our state,” said Jared Ranly, a farmer, rancher and veterinarian in Falls County. “Environmental damage is staggering. Disease risks to humans and other animals are real, and the effect they have on families that make a living from the land is often heartbreaking.”
Toxicant baits, Ranly testified, are a viable next step and effective tool landowners should have the option to use.
“We will never eradicate this invasive species, but we can make more progress with more tools,” Ranly, who also chairs TFB’s Animal Health Advisory Committee, said. “SB 1454 and HB 3451 are very concerning because they will not only prevent the use of any toxicant for feral hogs in Texas, but also jeopardize all other products we use on the farm and ranch. Adding state level, tax-funded research and study on products already approved by the EPA is not only unnecessary, but wasteful.”
In addition to TFB, Texas Corn Producers, Plains Cotton Growers, South Texas Cotton & Grain Association, Texas Sorghum Producers and the Texas Ag Industries Association also testified in opposition to the proposed language.
Put a bounty on them Boars one price, sows another & pigs another,with permission from land owners to hunt
Evidently you have never hunted them, or tried to hunt them. It’s not likely you have had farming and ranching experience with them either. They are a scourge, leaving holes 2-3 deep and 3-4 feet wide in fields. Beats my equipment and me up, had to pay for expensive equipment repairs several times after hitting holes. The environmental damage and erosion along creeks and stream beds where they dig is also a major problem.
They have become primarily nocturnal, so night scopes and silencers along with other expensive equipment are needed. Secondly, even with silencers, you only get one shot in a brush area, maybe two if in an open field and running. Thirdly, who is going to manage and pay for the bounty program? I’ll let anyone come and try their luck hunting them. I’ve all but given up hunting them, as I hardly see them in daylight now.
I do not raise crops but horses. They are just moving in to my property. This message is to the people that protest using the warfarin on the wild hogs. You obviously do not raise cattle or crops, but when the prices go up in the market for produce or meat you want to know why. The farmers and ranchers are loosing crops and cattle because of the hogs. They also present a health threat to humans. My question is to you. How about if we, Texans, deliver a few hundred hogs into your neighborhood and let them eat your shrubs and flowers and terrify your family. Your children would not be able to play outside for fear of being run down by a hog. Please get a reality check and let us protect our ground the only way that it is going to work. Why should there be another study done when the EPA has already conducted one. Oh and then complain about how the government is spending useless money on the study. Please let Texas take care of the hogs.
We have a ranch with lots of hogs. Only thing we see that makes a difference is using the big (20-30′) round traps and catch 10-20 at a time…several buyers around for live feral hogs. We also hunt them but doesn’t dent the population very much.
-> I’m totally against toxins to control hogs due to many “unintended consequences”. I think TFB should be careful to take a position on this issue without surveying their membership.
Johnny Shirley has a suggestion worth considering…if the hogs are causing the millions of dollars damaged as claimed…have a defined period of bounty hunting each year and this may be less cost approach.
Rodney. I can see your point, however in a previous news letter from TFB you would have read that it is virtually impossible to keep the population in check with the hunting. That is already being done. The hog reproduces faster than they can be shot. And with the scientific study that has already been done, it is safe for other animals because of the amount of toxin they want to use, it would only affect the hogs system and kill them. And if all the ranchers spend hours out of each day trying to trap the hogs and wait for people to come pick them up, their day would just get longer than it already is. And yes I am a TFB member and I completely support the warfarin. I have also used it to keep down the mouse population.
As a Veteran who was sprayed with agent orange, which the government and Chemical company swore was safe and now I have several medical problems the V.A. Said was due to me being in the infantry and we were among the group in the service that were exposed the most to this poison. This has cost our country billions for medical care for Veterans. So with the company that makes this poison will make a lot of money, and AG commisioner who both say this poison has “no” or “minimal” risk. Then you should be very worried about their motive.You put good bounties on them and everyone with a rifle will be looking for the hogs.
Hunting them and trapping them is a lost cause, and is not very effective when trying to control large populations of pigs, We have 80-100 running through our property and our neighbors just destroying the ground with new holes every night 2-3 ft deep and 3-5 ft wide. It is hell on the equipment, not to mention the operator. It’s also difficult to level the ground around these holes.
Furthermore, there is not enough time in the day or night of a rancher or farmer to pursue these nocturnal critters. We hardly even see them during the daylight hours anymore.
No, poison is the only way that control of some form is going to work. However, I am not a big fan of Warfarin, there is an alternative that has been proven in Australia using sodium nitrate. It is much more humane and effective within hours. It is being “tested” in the U.S.
Why has that product not been expedited for use?
Chuck – the problem reported on Sodium Nitrite bait in the U.S. is that unlike Australian pigs, our wild pigs won’t eat it and our researchers have not yet figured out a bait that will entice them to eat enough of it to be intoxicating. Sodium nitrite is a lot like salt and in order to get enough consumption our researches have got to find a bait that makes them eat it on their own when there are non-salty options available.
I was under the opinion that the Aussies used an encapsulated form of nitrite in the bait. They also had found that hogs do not like salty items. Regardless, the sodium nitrate is quicker acting and more humane.
I have been a farm bureau member since 1980. My parents and grand parents were farm bureau members and now my four grown children are members. I have a bachelors of science degree from SFA and taught school for 27 years as an ag teacher. I testified for the bill in Austin yesterday and this is why! I gave the true facts to the Farm bureau office in Tyler when this was introduced and my Rep took the field study to the farm bureau state office. He came back the following week and told me that there position was set and I would have to go through the local level in October to change their policy! This study was done in 2015 by scimetrics and genesis labs the only producer that makes kuput. Both of these businesses are owned by a husband and wife from Colorado. This was not a study it was bought and paid for nonsense they made say what the wanted it to say. In the study they baited hogs for 3 weeks and when they applied the bait they had 354 hogs on camera. They poisoned for 30 days and recovered 28 hogs( 7 adults and 15 juvinlles had liver samples taken, the other 6 they were not able to sample the livers because the livers were not in good enough condition to sample.) that is only a 7.9 percent efficiency but they told the EPA they had a 97 percent efficiency because the hogs didn’t come back to the feeders at the mid-term and ending senses they said they were controlled. The label says every hog poisoned by kuput must be recovered and put18″ under the ground. They only recovered 28 out of 354 now they should have been liable for a poisoned hog that went on someone’s else’s place with poison in him or died on some one else’s place. Sid Miller called this the “apocalypse of hogs” but, what the farm bureau is to hard headed to understand is that according to A&M the hunters, outfitters,trappers, and meat processors are killing 600,000 to 750,00 hogs a year and by allowing this poison to be used a large part of this control will be gone! By Scimetrics own admissions it will be able to produce 300 pallets of the poison the first year. That’s 262,500 lbs of kuput. Texas A&M says it takes 20 lbs to kill a 200 lb pig and scimetrics says it takes 5.3 lbs to kill an 88 lb pig. Any way you figure that incomes up less than 50,000 pigs the first year which is not even 10 percent of the hogs that are being controlled now and by putting this” tool ” as Farm Bureau calls it out you will not cause the apocalypse of hogs but the apocalypse of the very land they are claiming to Protector of because if this poison is allowed to be used there could be as many as 500,000 to a million more hogs in Texas the first year when the trappers and meat processors are put out of business by the use of this poison! I agree that hogs are are problem, but putting all wildlife and the ecosystem and the people that eat these hogs at risk by using warfarin to kill these hogs there will be a major disaster here in Texas. According to Mark Saurez at the EPA in Washington there has been no studies done addressing the risk to humans by consuming the hogs and it’s their position is that a hog that has consumed warfarin should not be consumed by humans! This tool is a joke! The farm bureau is on the wrong side of the issue if you know the TRUE FACTS and not the hog wash that the the commissioner of agriculture has told about how “safe” this poison is. This might be ok to poison rats and mice but it should not be used to poison something people eat! If you don’t believe me do the research like I did and you will find out how dangerous this really is. That’s why we were asking that this product have an independent study done to find out the truth before it is used!
Wow. That’s a lot of opinion to take in. You’re interpretation of the study is wrong because you’ve confused census data from surveillance with the actual experimental units of the study. You’re also picking and choosing numbers from different sections of the study to confuse anyone that may read your comments. 311 pigs were counted on the .005% concentration study location for hog feeder visitation comparison and half way through the toxicant application period there were only 4 pigs left on hog feeder visitation comparison surveillance census counts. When you include data from test sight #2 the total surveillance reduction is the 97% recorded from surveillance.
You’re purposefully leaving out that the study also Very High Frequency (VHF) tagged and GPS collared a subset of those hogs in the study location so that they would have individual, trackable pigs to use in the study. 100% of the pigs that kept their VHF or GPS tags were located when the beacons stopped moving and upon necropsy were found to have died from bait intoxication. That’s where the 28 recovered and reported dead hogs came from. Those are the tagged hogs. They’re only a subset of trackable pigs from the toxicant bait locations out of the more than 300 head seen in surveillance.
There’s no intention of using that warfarin product all across Texas. Where hunting and trapping work to control the population there would be no reason to use an alternative method. Thus hunting and selling meat from an invasive species, that’s more likely than not carrying zoonotic disease could still go on to the tune of 600,000 pigs or more. If a pig is blue – don’t eat it. Your support of that bill is advocating that no one should be allowed to use any toxicant product. That bill would unnecessarily require products already approved by the EPA to use Texas tax dollars to re-study and see the same outcome. That kind of law works in California. Not Texas. Then there’s backdoor attempt to prevent any of those required unbiased studies to be funded because the Texas budget was rigged to not allow any money to ever be used to study such a toxicant for feral hogs. That’s a true fact. Also, if the product manufacturer didn’t pay for the original study then there would be no available pharmaceutical, pesticide, vaccine, or other developed product that we all use daily because there would be no benefit for the manufacturer to make it. The opposite of free enterprise
Those 600,000 to 750,000 head of pigs are mostly shot for fun by people wanting the experience. Even if a warfarin toxicant is available those people will still get out and look for a moving target to shoot. That’s the experience they want. Before I was born Texas didn’t have this feral hog epidemic with numbers like we have today. People were not making a profit from hunting pigs. Quail were numerous. Landowners were not worried about a crop ruined and their livelihood gone for the year. Endagered species weren’t as threatened. Texas water had less E. coli and salmonella. Cattle were not exposed to so much Lepto spirosis and people eating wild game weren’t exposed to it either. The list goes on and on. The common denominator is feral hogs. I’ve had my experience with this invasive species. I’ll continue doing my part on my land to remove them. I want to experience Texas without millions of invasive wild pigs and this tool will no doubt help get us all there.
I am wanting to hunt pig for food for my family. Don’t know where to start to get a land owners permission to do so in Henderson county. Thanks
Thanks for clarifying the skewed results from Bruce’s rant. Makes a lot more sense, especially about the 97% kill ratio.
If poisons are used to control wild hogs, hunters will no longer be able to hunt them for food. A pig that has eaten poison would be dangerous for a human to eat. We almost lost a dog that had eaten a poisoned rat.It seems strange to me that a good food animal like this is not more widely hunted.
They really are widely hunted but hunting has not slowed down the damage to Texas. Land, water and other wildlife, especially the endangered ones are being devastated by theses pigs. Most of the hunted hogs are not consumed by people. There’s risk associated with eating them. Wild pigs carry brucellosis and humans contract it from them – its called undulant fever. Among other diseases they’re also full of parasites.
For a lot of farmers and ranchers in the north central Texas area who claim they are having problems finding ways to rid themselves of these unwanted pests. Perhaps, if they would not try to charge a fee to a person who is willing and capable of working with the landowners to remove some of the animals they may get more offers of assistance. If you’re charging a $100.00 or more per person to help you remove a problem, then you don’t really have a problem, you’re just being greedy.
It’s far from greed. Those farmers have entered the market of a sporting industry created in Texas. They’re simply trying to recuperate lost production and expenses they incur when they put their land back together after getting destroyed by this invasive species. And they’re doing it at the market rate. Now there certainly are people that have great luck with trapping and hunting but most folks with a gun are out to shoot “some” pigs and that simply doesn’t work and doesn’t make a significant improvement to the problem at hand.
We have two places in S. Texas. Both are bordered by either creeks or a river. You can come shoot for free any time. Good luck seeing them, it ain’t easy hunting em on brush land and river bottoms even with feeders.
Trapping is much more effective than hunting. Successful trappers are using sophisticated methods such as wi-fi cameras, motion sensors to determine when to slam the gate………… They charge you to come and setup their equipment, and make money from selling the pigs. Not sure what the rate is, but I know you won’t retire wealthy. It’s a lot of work.
I understand that the hogs are destroying land and hurting cattle ranchers. That is definitely not good. If warfarin or any poison for that matter is used to kill hogs in an area, how can one be sure that the sausage they eat has not been contaminated by poison unless they buy organic meat? I know very little about this topic, but can see how further research on the effects poison would have on land and on humans eating products from the poisoned land would be very good.
The EPA and US Fish and Wildlife study the potential risks for your questions before they ever make a pesticide available for use. The warfarin bait that was almost used in Texas also had a dye in it that would turn the internal organs, fat tissue and muscle a bright blue color just in case a hunter shot a pig that had consumed the toxicant. Warfarin is not hardly water soluble either so it really can’t get into our crops or grasslands. Oh and the organic label doesn’t mean it’s pesticide free or any safer to eat than conventionally produced food. There are lists of synthetic products allowed for use when raising organic products.
Chuck. Please check the chemical you refer to as being used in Australia. I belive it is sodium nitrite, not sodium nitrate.
The hogs tear through my fences to get to the fields and have completely ruined my grain crops the last 2 years to where it’s not worth trying to thresh. We baled it for cattle feed when the hogs started hitting it hard and then they tore apart the rolls.
The hog population is well beyond what we can control through hunting, unless you have wide-open ground and are doing aerial shooting. Trapping works but is time consuming, and the price for live-hogs is way down to where it’s often not profitable to haul them to a buyer.
Warafin had a lot of problems but sodium nitrite sounds promising.
There’s a lot of misinformation about the warfarin product that was proposed and it led many people astray. There are places where effective, long term trapping is successful, hunting is successful, and helicopter shooting is successful. Why would someone having success with those options even consider something different. However those options don’t work everywhere and that leaves other places in Texas still dealing with the problem and not having any viable solution. That warfarin bait would have been an effective option in those scenarios. Even if you believe it would have had problems, I personally do not, you can’t deny the damage done to Texas by wild pigs each day far exceeds the potential harm from using a product in certain scenarios where there are no other good options.
The feral hogs have invaded our hay fields at least three times in recent years leaving large craters that make haying difficult. I have tried hog traps, both cages and pen with minimal success. The concept of corralling a herd in a large round trap is promising. A description of techniques, location, baiting, etc. would be very helpful and might show us what we are doing wrong. Thank you!
Feral hogs have visited our property just south of Milton Creek north of Livingston on three occasions leaving huge holes that make haying difficult. We have had minimal success with a hog trap made by the Centralia high school FFA but none with the round trapping pens which corrals a whole herd at once. Luck of the draw or are we doing something wrong?
Comments as to how improve are methods would be appreciated. Location? Baiting? Instructions on a one way entry and no exit method of placing cattle panels?
Thank you
I’m no trapper but here is a good resource for designs and techniques. http://feralhogs.tamu.edu/ All of those designs work well under certain circumstances and scenarios. Check with your local county extension agent and they might have a local resource to give you a hand. Good Luck!
JB has expressed a view that pops up sometimes. Farmers generally shy away from allowing people they don’t know to roam their property with guns. The liability issues are staggering. But that detracts from the point. With a population in which at least a million sows (conservative estimate) are capable of having three litters per year with (again conservative) 8 pigs per litter solving this with hunting is a lost cause. They are wily and you’d never shoot more than few on any given night. Trapping can be more effective, but again, the math doesn’t work.
Tracy,
I challenge you to put a copy of the 2015 Scimetrics study on the Farm Bureau website for all the members to study for themselves and let them decide whether I’m misinformed! They will see that the efficiency for the product was calculated by using a formula to calculate the efficacy of rodenticide products in the field (Henderson and Tiltin 1955, literature cited, this formula was used to test actinides against the brown wheat mite.) I don’t think comparing a hog to a mite makes much sense!
You want to talk about misinformation?!
• JD Glasscock testified in Waco at the public comment session held by TDA that Gene Richardson in the Farm Bureau state office told him that the hog died within 135′ of the feeders, if the label is followed! Where is the research data to show this result?
• Kaput is an anti-coagulant, not an instant killer. It can take several feedings and several days for a hog to be killed by warfarin. According to Dr. Tyler Campbell, it took 30 days to kill one of the hogs in his study in Kingsville in 2008.
• Also, I called Representative Cole Hefner office to see if they could find out some information from TDA for me when this first came out. Britney in his office called me back to say Walter Roberts in the legislative affairs and external relations department for the TDA office told her “one bite of the poison killed the hog” and that “no one ate the hogs anyway”.
• I have hundreds of customers who eat these hogs every year. I’ve been hunting, trapping and killing hogs since 1981. My wife and I personally process from 200–300 hogs a year since 1993 and we don’t wear gloves! If they are “so diseased” as you say, you would think my wife and I would be dead or diseased by now!
• Anyone knows not to eat the meat from a blue hog! But what about the 24 hours that the hog has eaten the poison and the blue dye has not yet shown up in the fat? The EPA says 24 hrs. The hunter won’t have any idea if it has poison in it and what if he takes it home to his family to eat and his wife is pregnant and she eats that hog meat with warfarin in it. TDA’s own toxicologist said that the amount of warfarin a pregnant lady should have is “zero “. Who takes responsibility for that?!!
Feral hogs roam, they leave and don’t come back to the feeders. The boars travel for miles looking for sows to breed and all of them are always looking for new food sources. In the study they had no fencing to keep the hogs there to see if they got killed by the poison or not. Scimetrics trapped and released 61 hogs with tracking devices. In plot 1 they found the first dead hog on the 6th day and in plot 2 they found the first dead hog on the 8th day. There was also hunting on the property during their study. Of the 23 hogs fitted with transmitters at the start of the treatment in plot 2, 8 hogs were either killed by hunters or had VHF ear tags fall off. Of the 15 radio-tagged remaining hogs in treatment plot two, 8 were found dead and 7 remained alive at the end of the study! One hog that was shot by hunters had the blue dye in its fat, and was counted as “controlled.” Overall, they only recovered 28 dead hogs. They can’t count a hog as controlled and dead until it is put 18” under the ground like the label says! I’m not picking and choosing numbers! Just because a hog doesn’t show back up to the feeders don’t mean they were controlled!
If the people doing the study can’t recover all the hogs and bury them how can a farmer find all the hogs like the federally mandated label says they have to do?! And by the way, this was going to be able to be used all over the state so don’t say it’s just for certain areas. We wouldn’t want to misinform anyone would we?!
The bottom line is this, according to Scimetrics the poison was going to cost $168 dollars for 25 lbs.! According to A&M It takes 20 pounds to kill a 200 lb. hog! That’s $ 134.40 then you have the cost of three to six weeks of pre-bating and don’t forget the cost of the feeders required @ $275 and up! Plus the cost to bury the hogs because there is no other legal way to dispose of the hogs right now! They used 90 feeders in the field study and 98- 25 lb. buckets of poison at $168 per bucket and the labor for 2 months and expense to bury 28 hogs. Put the pencil to that! That really is a cost effective isn’t it?! This is craz
Mr. Hunnicutt,
We don’t own that study and can’t post it. We are also not in the business of increasing governmental regulation or wasteful spending at a national or state level and that’s exactly why we opposed those bills presented in this legislative session. The product has been removed from Texas so we’re arguing over water under the bridge.
You may disagree with application of a particular statistical formula but the numbers don’t lie. Thank you for expressing how test plot 1 was highly effective and test plot 2 with a different concentration of active ingredient was less effect. You mentioned they found the first dead on day 6 after bait presentation. The key word is found. How long does it take a wounded hog to die?
I’m not sure what distance from the feeder you’re referring to but I will reaffirm that if you follow the label, do not expose the pigs on your property to pressure that would cause them to move sites, then for several weeks they shouldn’t have any reason to go anywhere. If that scenario played out then the bait could be successfully used. I’m certain that it will be similar to a person purposefully feeding the invasive species so they can keep them in a particular area and charge people money for the experience of shooting them for sport.
You’re correct on the note that anti-coagulants are not instant killers. Well neither are bad hunters, poor shots, wrecked cars, snares and traps. To chastise a toxicant bait for duration to death means you should chastise each method. Not every bullet is put right behind the ear of a pig.
On the TDA folks you mention, it sounds like at that time there were people that didn’t know much about the product in question. I don’t know them or what their job is but maybe you called the wrong folks at that office or called them before that person was fully familiar with the label. That could happen.
I’m very happy you and your family have not been negatively affected by these wild pigs. But the results are evident and overwhelming. Pigs carry diseases and some pigs carry a whole lot of diseases. Personally, wild pig would be the last thing I offered a pregnant woman for a meal. We know they carry leptospirosis and brucellosis and that’s a dreaded risk a family should be worried about. No matter how well you clean and package that animal you can’t see those diseases. May luck be with you as you continue.
The blue doesn’t abruptly appear at 24 hours post consumption. I’ll ask you to consider that blue dyed bait is still blue as soon as it enters the mouth and stomach. The bait will be blue in the stomach as it’s broken down for absorption and it will still be blue when it enters the intestines and continues absorption. You’ve already stated that you do a great job of processing hundreds of hogs a year so I’m confident that you will realize there is bait in the digestive tract of a hog that has eaten a blue dyed warfarin product less than 24 hours earlier. I can imagine an intrepid master degree or PhD student would jump at the opportunity to study the speed of blue dye absorption from 0-24 hours post consumption in feral swine. Sounds like one of those studies that would never get funded due to the budget stunt pulled in Austin.
I agree that hogs will roam but by your own admission you told a lot of people in Austin that you feed feral hogs on your property to the tune of about 4,000 pounds a month so that they are healthy, taste better and are plentiful for your sport hunters. That tells me you’re able to keep those hogs in certain areas with feed. The same practice should work for baiting.
If a product were ever to be available for use I hope you could work with your neighbors and family to not disturb the hogs you hunt. I also hope your hunters would not eat that old rangy, roaming boar hog looking for a new sounder.
I agree economics are another limiting factor and that’s one more reason it will not be widely used on top of the limitations dictated a the label. However, with the same math of a 200 pound pig, that 20 pounds of bait would work on 5 pigs weighing 40 pounds each. Five fewer snouts plowing the dirt is a win. It’s not a blow-out victory but it’s a win. And when combined with all other methods or control we might have fewer hogs in Texas.
Hi Tracy,
Mr. Hunnicutt approaches this discussion with a different perspective because of his actual experience with hogs which I understand to be considerable. Listening to your line of logic against Mr. Hunnicutt’s experience is like listening to someone who will tell you how to raise your kids before they have actually had any of their own. I don’t mean that to sound disrespectful toward you because feral hogs are not your profession. But it adds considerable weight to Mr. Hunnicutt’s argument that feral hogs are his business profession.
I have not studied the feral hog issue to the extent of Mr. Hunnicutt and some others that are involved in this but I do have some experience with hogs, animal behavior and environmental science. Hogs because we have an abundance of them on our ranch in Colorado County, animal behavior because I’ve spent a significant part of my life in the country with animals, and the environmental sciences comes from our close association with the Baylor University Department of Environmental Sciences. This doesn’t qualify me as an expert, but just some practical observation of my own and based upon the experience and extensive background information that I have received on warfarin poisoning from Dr. George Cobb of Baylor University who has vast experience in federal pesticide testing.
There are two reasons why this entire subject is still very relevant:
1. If this were “water under the bridge” then Senator Perry would not have scheduled the hearing that we all recently attended and those who testified would have stayed home. But it was addressed in the hearing, and is still a subject of importance because of the concern that legally the original registrants of Kaput could return to Texas and again seek to register the product – and we wish to insure through the two bills that have been introduced that if that happens – the product must be independently tested.
2. Because the “policy” position that TXFB used to justify its position is a general feral hog policy is not specific to a toxicant such as warfarin that has a slow acting kill mechanism that allows the hogs to travel a considerable distance before they expire. As an example: I as a rancher may agree with TXFB general feral hog policies, but TXFB has no policy in regards to warfarin. I pointed this out to Gene Richardson at TXFB and he agreed and stated that Kaput had emerged so quickly that there was not time to develop a specific policy – and according to him, there had not been time to receive input from TXFB members as to their position on this type of poison.
In regards to the time to expire:
It is not valid to compare a hog wounded by a poor shot with warfarin poison. Wounded hogs often do recover, but if not – they will find some location around vegetation and water and eventually they die. But wounding a hog is the exception and not the rule. Warfarin poison death on the other hand is the rule and not the exception. As such, if it works as it is supposed to – it means that every single poisoned hog will die an excruciating – death lasting from a few and as much as even 20 and in one case, 30 days before expiration. During this time, they will bleed out of the eyes, nose, mouth and anus not to mention the massive hemorrhage of internal organs. Our group has contacts in Australia where warfarin was banned and according to their experience – it caused the hog such considerable pain that they would squeal throughout the night for several 24 hour cycles and that is why it was banned. They did use a higher dose, which would indicate that the rate of suffering may be slowed considerably for a low dose but the method of kill is the same. We are surrounded by water on this ranch, and we would be continually listening to this as they get onto our creeks and into our wetlands where they eventually will die.
Regarding pregnant women and hog meat:
Every form of meat both game and farm raised are dangerous to eat if not properly prepared even by those who are not pregnant. When was the last time you ate out at Chipotle? Pregnant women have been eating wild game meat for thousands of years without serious repercussion and HEB with is fresh meat section is a fairly recent modern phenomenon. To date, we have no wide spread reports of individuals contracting disease fr
Mr. Glasscock,
I may not be a retired ag teacher, feral hog hunting outfitter, a holder of large land masses or a Baylor grad. I will also refrain from a cheeky line about staying in a particular hotel last night. Nevertheless, no disrespect is taken. But I will lend your line of logic to my situation and level with you. I have studied the feral hog issue to great extent and I do have years of personal experience with the animal. I don’t make money off of them but rather, like most people suffer from their destruction.
If I’m not qualified to comment on this topic then who would be? This is about approval of a pesticide and the qualified agencies have made their decision. I’m going to follow your theory now. Therefor someone who is not in the profession of evaluating these studies should not question them. It adds considerable weight to the EPA argument that a warfarin based toxicant does not pose a significant risk to humans or the environment. It is after all – their profession.
The death of a wild pig is not pretty nor do I imagine it would be pleasant to hear. I grew up raising a couple hundred pigs at a time (the domestic kind) and I know how high pitched a pig can get. If you hear a squealing pig rest assured it’s a similar squeal heard after a poorly placed gunshot. Either way Texas would be better served to have fewer wild pigs tomorrow than it does today and landowners should have the ability to utilize approved methods to remove them.
I actually refuse to eat at Chipotle for personal reasons and haven’t darkened their door for about 10 years now. I prefer Freebirds anyway. I concur there has not been widespread disease outbreak sourced to wild game. For centuries pregnant women have consumed it but those pregnant women were not afforded millions of wild pigs to pick from. So I can see where they would not have had many issues. Maybe the more important point in this topic regarding little to no disease issues among people eating wild pigs is that relatively few people actually do eat them. Maybe the feared exposure isn’t as high as some would make it out to be. I’ll leave it at that.
People have mentioned bald eagles and golden eagles numerous times during the last couple months and I get it. However, I’ve not seen their concern expressed on the devastation to ground nesting birds done by feral hogs (think quail, ducks, killdeer). Amphibians and reptiles are just as important too. It’s just another example of picking one species over another to support a mission and it’s hypocritical.
Oh and I’m an experienced hunter as well and I always eviscerate prior to processing. That way with the guts removed the meat isn’t exposed to being spoiled. Experienced hunters know that too.
Tracy – thank you for again responding to our comments. You have expressed your position as have so many on this controversial issue. We all are hoping for the best possible answer to a common problem – feral hogs. Hopefully something will come along that will really help our farmers and ranchers that has been responsibly vetted. One thing that has come out of this discussion, the hearings and the media attention is that more communication needs to happen before a plan is enacted, rather than after. I believe everyone including the good people at Texas Farm Bureau would agree on this. Best regards – JD