The View on Farm Bill, Labor and Other Federal Issues with Tyler Wenzlaff

And recently we've gotten, I'd say, what we could call some national attention.

We've had quite a few high profile visits come to our state within the last few weeks here.

We not only had Secretary Rollins, but also Secretary Kennedy and also President Trump.

Do you want to kind of share Wisconsin Farm Bureau's role in those visits and maybe just give us a brief summary of what all of those looked like?

Yeah, so we had the opportunity to help coordinate some of those visits and set up roundtables with each of those secretaries and also the president.

And so I think it really shows the power of Wisconsin agriculture and the power that Wisconsin farmers and rural residents have within the federal government at this point in time.

They understand that they were put here really by Wisconsin farmers and they understand that keeping them informed on what's happening at the federal government and what they're doing to help ease some of the pressures that the Wisconsin farmers are feeling.

And so what we did was help coordinate some of the members so they could speak with Secretary Rollins and Secretary Kennedy.

And we really spoke to about with Secretary Kennedy, the importance of dairy labeling.

So one of the things that we've been working with FDA, which is underneath Secretary Kennedy's Health and Human Services Agency, is the labeling of dairy as both milk and soy as a dairy product.

So under guidance by FDA, it says that anything that comes from a mammal should be considered a dairy product.

Well, they've also issued guidance that says, well, you know, even though soy is a product of nuts, that it can still be labeled a dairy product.

And we've been kind of working with them to clarify their guidance that this is not exactly, that consumers are smarter than what they think they are and that they can tell the difference and that milk that comes from nuts is not the same and does not provide the same nutritional value as those that come from cows or goats.

So we helped set up a visit with them and made sure that our members were able to speak with them directly, both Secretary Kennedy and Secretary Rollins.

And then also when the president came, we worked with the administration and his advanced team to make sure that we had members that were able to meet with him beforehand and speak to him on his roundtable about things.

the importance of Wisconsin dairy.

Unfortunately, one of our members was not able to speak, but, you know, we were able to get, we were able to have that opportunity and the administration recognized that Wisconsin Farm Bureau is a leader in ag policy, not only identifying issues, but proposing solutions to solve those as well.

Yeah, and I think as one of the staff members that sometimes helps you get ready for these visits, it's also important to kind of emphasize for especially our members listening to that these visits all kind of have sometimes a focus area.

So I think a lot of times our job is to try to find the right members to represent the different policy topics.

And I think for those who attended the different visits that we're a part of, I think they They felt like they were there and they could speak to whatever the topic was.

But I guess any other insider knowledge when it comes to these visits? And I was just going to say they move really fast.

So that's kind of my takeaway is sometimes we don't know about them until days before.

And so that's a it's a crunch time thing.

Getting three days notice is a lifetime.

Sometimes we don't, we don't even get that much.