KALAMAZOO, MI - The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture praised the work being done by farmers in Michigan, is impressed by innovative work being done in Kalamazoo to develop animal medicines, and promised to support all of it by lessening regulatory hurdles and being more on producers' needs.
"Trade is important. Labor -- a legal farm workforce -- is important, and deregulation is important," Sonny Perdue said on a Feb. 1 visit to animal health company Zoetis Inc. But, he said, "We need to take the handcuffs off some of these (agricultural and animal product) producers and allow them to do all that they know how to do."
On the fifth anniversary of Zoetis' rise as an independent company through its spin off from Pfizer Inc. and its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, Perdue visited the company's research and development headquarters in downtown Kalamazoo along with Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder.
Kalamazoo was one of four stops the secretary made in Michigan on Thursday to glean input from farming and agriculture professionals. It is information that is expected to help him shape policy and the 2018 Farm Bill, which is to be debated this year.
Perdue and Snyder sat for a brief round-table discussion Thursday afternoon, speaking to about 500 company workers.
"My role is to bring a vision to USDA broadly," Perdue said. "And that's what we're working on right now. My stated goal, and we repeat it many times at USDA, is to be the most efficient, the most effective, the most customer-focused agency in the federal government."
As part of that, he said he is working on greater collaboration between the USDA and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which oversee food safety and approve the marketing of pharmaceuticals in the United States. Zoetis, which development, manufactures and markets vaccines and medicines for livestock and pets worldwide, deals with regulations administered by both agencies.
But when asked what Zoetis most wants from the federal government, Catherine Knupp, president of research and development for Zoetis here, said it wants a clearer path to getting innovative products to the market.
"I love his statement with respect to creating a collaborative environment between the FDA and the USDA," she said of Perdue. "We work with both agencies on a daily basis and we do note some differences. So I'm inspired by what he's trying to accomplish with inter-agency collaboration. That would make a huge difference for Zoetis."
She said, "Being able to have a pathway that really supports new product innovation, being able to have a predictable regulatory process and to know that it's going to move swiftly ... By all of us working together, we don't end up with questions that we wish we had known about sooner."
Zoetis Chief Executive Officer Juan Ramon Alaix said, "We appreciate the leadership of the USDA in providing a strong regulatory framework that promotes innovation and ensures the health and safety of animals as well as people."
He thanked Perdue and Snyder for helping the company celebrate its fifth anniversary. Thanks to the governor included those for the state's efforts to make it easier to recruit and retain talented workers.
Knupp said, "We couldn't be more excited by what the state of Michigan is doing. We hired over 100 colleagues into the state of Michigan last year. Many of them were from the state but we were also able to bring in a number of highly educated staff from outside Michigan because we have an environment that is friendly for them."
Perdue, who is a former governor of Georgia (2003-2011) and the only secretary of agriculture who has been a veterinarian, said Michiganders "like to brag that Michigan is probably the No. 2 state regarding the diversity of many different products." He said the success in that has really been its people and their creativity.
"It's not unlike agricultural people elsewhere," he said. "But the resilience and even with low commodity prices right now, the hopefulness, the optimism. I think agriculture people typify, they embody, the optimism that President Trump sounded last Tuesday night at the State of the Union. They just take whatever comes and they keep getting up and they keep getting better as they go forward. The productivity of the American producer has just been phenomenal and we've seen a great example of it here in Michigan."
Perdue, who was appointed secretary of agriculture by Trump in 2017, was the so-called "designated survivor" during Tuesday's State of the Union address. He was the member of the president's cabinet chosen to skip the speech to ensure the continuity of government in the case of a catastrophe. He watched the speech from an undisclosed location.
On Thursday morning, he visited Grand Rapids where farmers expressed concerns about finding migrant labor to help harvest their crops (as the broader debate over immigration reform continues) and about how the North American Free Trade Agreement has affected them.
Perdue assured them that they have to support of the Trump Administration and he warned that changes may be coming for welfare recipients who have grown dependent on federal food assistance programs "as a lifestyle."
Perdue also introduced Farmers.gov, a new USDA web site that hopes to provide American farmers with "one-stop" access to government programs.
Asked what he will take with him from his visit to Michigan, Perdue said, "I will take back to Washington that agriculture continues to need that safety net that we will talk about in the 2018 Farm Bill (and) about how producers can continue through their purchase of crop insurance to have the safety they need to withstand disasters that may occur at any time."
Zoetis CEO Alaix greeted Perdue and Snyder along with: Kristin Peck, executive vice president of the corporation and president of its U.S. operations; Michigan Sen. Margaret O'Brien, R-Portage; Carl Bednarski, president of the Michigan Farm Bureau; and Jamie Clover Adams, director of the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.
Zoetis is based in Parsippany, N.J., but the headquarters for its research and development in Kalamazoo. Among an estimated 9,000 workers it has worldwide, about 700 involved in veterinary medicine research and development in downtown Kalamazoo and in Richland Township.
It also has about 300 workers at two manufacturing sites here - its Global Manufacturing and Supply facility at 2605 E. Kilgore Road site and a much smaller site at 7725 Portage Road in Portage.