Cooper Farms Chief Operating Officer Gary Cooper told members of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee that producers’ ability to formaldehyde and rodenticides is very key to preventing animal disease outbreaks on their farms.
Cooper was speaking on July 10 as a witness for the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), but his testimony revealed that these chemicals are very important not only for Cooper Farms’ pork operations, but also its turkey and egg operations.
The topic came up when Rep. Jim Baird, R-Indiana, expressed concerns about the “weaponizing the pesticide registration and registration process,” on behalf of federal regulators.
Cooper responded, saying that formaldehyde and rodenticide are “two very key tools” livestock and poultry producers have.
Benefits of formaldehyde
“Going back to my younger days with my dad, he used formaldehyde in the hatchery and the breeder farms to kill off viruses and bacteria. My brother and I have used it throughout our operations,” Cooper said, adding they do that while still “doing everything that needs to be done” from a regulatory standpoint.
The value of formaldehyde was proven, he said, in the fall of 2023 when highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) was detected on one of Cooper Farms’ turkey farms.
After Cooper Farms worked with the Ohio Department of Agriculture and United States Department of Agriculture to depopulate and compost the turkeys, and proceed with the disinfection process, they still needed to take special care to disinfect the barns’ dirt floors.
“About the only thing that going to really kill that high path AI virus really well is formaldehyde,” Cooper said. “If we didn’t have that, I’m not sure that we would have been cleared to put turkeys back in that as soon as we did, which was about 72 days, which is really good.”
Benefits of rodenticides
Once again referring back to his younger days, Cooper said that his family had cats in the barns to control rodents. That isn’t realistic in the more modern times.
“Now you have to have rodenticides,” he said. “Rodenticides are very important in our own particular company. We use a rotation of three different ones that we buy wholesale. They’re all commercially approved.”
The company’s 425 contracted family farms also use these rodenticides, putting them in pet-proof boxes, and placing them “all around the barns.”
He said having these chemicals prevents the spread of disease through rodents, which “as we all know are big carriers of diseases,” which Cooper said includes not only HPAI in poultry, but also porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) and porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDv) in pigs.
Without rodenticides and formaldehyde, “we’d have an absolute mess,” Cooper said.
