By Paul Sousa, Director of Regulatory and Environmental Affairs

Dairy producer’s work ethic was on full display as the Producer Review Board (PRB) meeting on Monday, September 22, for a marathon 6-hour session with no breaks. As in past meetings, divisions among participants were evident, reflecting the difficult issues before the board. The meeting was scheduled to start at 10 a.m., but began at 10:15 as attendees navigated the new CalExpo location in Sacramento. Everyone eventually made it to the meeting room for a full board roster and both alternates present.

The meeting started with Chair Will Dyt acknowledging that the PRB is dealing with difficult issues, but asked that the board and attendees be respectful, especially toward CDFA staff. He mentioned that as Chair, he would work to minimize disrespectful behavior. The two new board members, Fred Leyendekker (Visalia) and Travis Kamper (Riverdale), introduced themselves.

Turnover of board members was then discussed following the recent resignations of Jim Vieira, John Moons, and Arlin Van Grongingen. Maintaining a full board remains a challenge. In response to this, the idea of reducing the number of board members from 15 (established during standalone quota program discussions) to 12, which had been the prior standard, was raised. Chair Dyt then asked attendees to share their views on the causes of turnover and vacancies. Responses included the contentious nature of meetings, intimidation, feeling outnumbered, and the threat of lawsuits against individual PRB members. The board then voted unanimously to recommend to the Secretary reducing the number of positions on the board from 15 to 12. The board also voted unanimously to recommend the following five nominations to the Secretary to fill the one remaining vacancy: Lucas Deniz, Johnny de Jong, Stephanie Moreda-Arend, Ed Machado, and Manuel Monteiro.

The board then received updates about Avian Influenza and New World Screwworm from the State Veterinarian, Dr. Annette Jones. Dr. Jones, who is retiring at year’s end, received recognition for her work on behalf of California dairy farmers. The minutes were then approved unanimously by the board, with one change. Then, CDFA provided a staffing update, introducing several new staff working on the QAP.

CDFA also updated the board on the recently concluded referendum. All the ballots with qualifying postmarks had arrived at the CDFA office, and it appears that the threshold for a valid referendum has been met. However, there is one issue that CDFA is contemplating before opening the ballots and beginning the count. During the voting period, Mr. Craig Gordon hand-delivered 53 open ballots to CDFA. CDFA is now determining how to address these ballots, which will delay the announcement of results. There was also discussion on how the ballots are counted at CDFA and potential oversight of the ballot-counting process.

Funding held by CDFA’s Dairy Marketing Branch prior to the FMMO was reported as available for disbursement: $3,595,000 to fund research benefiting both dairy farmers and processors. CDFA is holding a meeting on October 23 to help identify the industry’s top research priorities. More information can be found here. The Pooling Branch also has a similar amount of separate funding that CDFA plans to disburse by sending a check for $3,300 to each active dairy as of December 31st, 2025.

After some discussion of the need to raise the assessment to maintain an adequate balance, the board voted unanimously to recommend to the Secretary a 1% increase in the assessment rate, bringing it to $0.039 per pound of SNF, or $0.339 per hundredweight.

Until this point, all motions had passed unanimously. The next agenda item, hardship requests, prompted more debate. There was discussion about a hardship request previously granted by the Secretary despite the board’s prior denial, which raised the stakes of the topic. There was a lengthy discussion on what constitutes a hardship, what discretion the board or CDFA has in defining it, and what information should be included in requests.

The board voted unanimously to table the first hardship request to obtain additional information, as it was a unique case. The board then tabled the second hardship request on a split vote. The three remaining hardship requests were each denied on a split vote.

The board had reached the end of the agenda, and it was approaching 4 o’clock. This summary does not include all presentations to the board but highlights key items. At this point, board member Konyn asked if there was any interest in revisiting his proposal, which was the subject of a referendum earlier this year. There was a brief discussion, but no clear action was taken to revisit the idea. Konyn shared his perspective on efforts to advance the proposal and subsequently resigned from the board. The meeting was adjourned at 3:56.