The National Pork Producers Council Tuesday petitioned the Department of Transportation for a waiver and exemption for livestock haulers from regulations that NPPC says could harm animal well-being. The petition was filed on behalf of the pork industry and other livestock sectors and requests the waiver and exemption because of concerns about the Electronic Logging Device Rule.
The petition also asked the agency to address incompatibilities between the transportation of livestock and the department’s Hours of Service rules. Those regulations limit truckers to 11 hours of driving daily, after ten consecutive hours off duty and restrict their on-duty time to 14 consecutive hours, which includes nondriving time. The Department of Transportation did recently issue an interpretation intended to address shortcomings in its Hours of Service rules, exempting from the regulations and from any distance-logging requirements truckers hauling livestock within a 150 air-mile radius of the location at which animals were loaded. NPPC also supports language included in the transportation fiscal 2018 funding bill that would delay the ELD mandate for one year for livestock haulers.
From the National Association of Farm Broadcasting News Service.