A Conversation With….Phil Wyrick

When former state legislator Phil Wyrick was named director of the state Livestock and Poultry Commission in January, many folks in the horse community sat up and took notice. Wyrick was instrumental in helping pass legislation creating the current EIA law. Given his history, would he focus more attention on statewide equine issues than his predecessor?
To find out what the new commissioner has in mind, editor Lisa Broadwater spend some time shadowing Wyrick. Actually, this “Conversation” covered a couple of conversations: the first after Broadwater audited a Commission meeting in Hot Springs and the second during a trip to the livestock sale at Lewis’ Tuesday auction in Conway.

Horsemen’s Roundup: I noticed at the Commission meeting, there’s no one here representing the horse industry.
Phil Wyrick: No. I may be representing the horses, if you think about it.

HR: So you’re the de facto horse industry rep. Is that because of your EIA involvement?
PW: Yeah. And I’ve had horses for years. In the last 15 years, I’ve had registered Quarter horses and registered Paint horses. There’s hardly a week goes by that I’m not on a horse.

HR: How much of your job involves the horse industry?
PW: It would be hard to say a percentage. Bob Harbison, the assistant veterinarian, is probably spending about 75 percent of his time on horses, dealing with EIA. He would be the one who would do the field contacts and tell the folks what they had to do and follow up to make sure infected horses were destroyed. He’s in the office with me. He keeps updates of the infections of the hot horses.

HR: In the meeting, you said you were thrilled to have this job. Why?
PW: It’s in your blood — why do you like horses? Why do you like farming? When I was a kid and everybody was reading funny books, I was reading farm magazines. I just love it.

HR: You have a ranch/farm. What do you call it?
PW: I call it Esquire Land and Cattle. I call it a farm because I’m in Arkansas, but everybody else calls it a ranch. We have registered cattle. When I work cattle, I work them on horses.
When I have time, I do some trail riding. I’ve gone to Wyoming the last three years. Last year, I took a little Paint mare I raised. Do I enjoy that type stuff? Absolutely. The Western way of life has always appealed to me. I’ve probably got every John Wayne Western movie on video that there is, and I’ve watched every one of them over and over and over. When I grow up, I want to be a cowboy.

HR: Where is your ranch?
PW: Actually, I’ve got one in Perry County. I have a cabin there where I stay a lot. We run cattle there. Then I’ve got one in Saline County and another one in Little Rock. I guess I’m the largest cattle producer in the city limits of Little Rock.

HR: Some horse people didn’t feel there was much support from the previous commission. Where does the horse industry fit in your plans?
PW: First of all, I can’t get the businessman out of me. That’s almost as deep as somebody who loves livestock. The fact is, the impact the horse industry has on the state of Arkansas is over $4 billion. I don’t think in the past people put the dollar figure to the horse industry. And with the growing interest in equine activities — gee whiz, we never used to see an aluminum trailer going down the road. It was sideboards on a pickup truck — that’s how you moved your horses around.
But with those kinds of emphases and the dollars being put in there, I think this industry is starting to raise an eyebrow and say, ‘Wait a minute.’ But it hasn’t been that way in the past.

HR: One of the reasons some horse people are happy about your appointment is the work you did on establishing the EIA law. For those folks who don’t know, explain your involvement.
PW: In 1997, a fella named Charles Coussens came to me. And he said, ‘Will you carry this bill?’ I asked him to tell me what it was. He did, and I thought, ‘That sounds reasonable.’ It’s very similar to the brucilosis in cattle at one time. There was a lot of resistance against that.
And he said, ‘Yeah, we’ve tried it a couple of times, and there has been some resistance.’ I said, ‘Well, there won’t be much on this; it makes sense.’ After I signed on, my belief as far as legislation was I would always stay with any legislation I had committed to unless there were things that was never brought to my attention at the start that would change the direction.
I never saw anything that I thought was wrong. I thought, ‘This will help the horse industry; I have horses; I appreciate that.’ So I said I would do it. Then they told me how many times they had tried it in the past. They had filled the Capitol up with folks — the resistance was unbelievable. They would shut down committees, I understand, with protests.

HR: Why didn’t people want the law?
PW: They said, ‘I don’t want you out here testing my horses. My horse may have that swamp fever, but she’s just as good as she’s ever been.’ Now, you and I know that’s not true. She may not be a horse that actually goes down because of it, but she passes it on.
It really struck me, when a fella called me at home one night. He was so polite: ‘Senator Wyrick, I understand you’re carrying this bill.’ I said, ‘That’s true.’ and he says, ‘Why are you doing that?’
I said, ‘Look at it this way: If you believe in liability insurance on your automobiles, you want that guy driving around out there to have liability insurance in case he hits you so he can pay for your automobile. You want to make sure that guy who lives next-door doesn’t have the swamp fever, as we call it, and will infect your horse. Then you’d have to destroy your animal — it’s a protection.’
And he was just so nice and understanding. Then he says, ‘I would prefer you didn’t carry this bill.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m gonna have to.’ And he says, ‘Well, Senator Wyrick, if I ever see you, I’m gonna kick your ass.’
That told me right then that there’s a lot of emotion in it, and it was gonna be difficult. And it was difficult.

HR: What was the goal of that law?
PW: Number one, it would test once a year. Before, it was a test only when you sold the horse. Well, it was very hard to enforce.
The new law basically spelled out the quarantines if you had a hot horse. It told what you had to do if you did — you had to put the horse down; before, you didn’t have to destroy it. You could quarantine it on your property. But who could monitor that? This law made it where you had to test every horse in Arkansas once a year and if you sold the horse it had to have been tested within six months.
To tune it up even more, we added the EIA verifier, which was passed in the last session. Now we’re putting someone at the gate of every event.
For instance, I went to a local rodeo recently and made an inquiry. I said, ‘I don’t believe that guy is checkin’ horses over there, which means he doesn’t have a verifier.’ So I made a point to take off that Saturday night and go find that event and introduce myself. I’m standing there at his gate comin’ in and the guy says, ‘I know all these guys and girls. They have a negative Coggins on all their horses.’ I said, ‘You just know ‘em all?’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah.’
I politely explained that the law says you have to have a verifier that’s checkin’ papers. ‘Oh, they’re all okay,’ he says. People would come up and he’d say, for my benefit, ‘Hey, you guys have got your papers, don’t ya?’ ‘Oh yeah.’ ‘Well, come on in.’ And he was not doing anything that most people aren’t doing.
So I said, ‘You just broke the law.’ Then I went out and started harvesting papers. Sure enough, I had one guy who says, ‘I’ve got a horse back there but my sister has the papers and she’s gonna run ‘em down here...’ And I said, ‘Sir, your horse cannot legally be here. You have to have papers on that horse to be at an event.’
That’s what’s gonna happen when the verifiers are out there. So a horse owner may not believe in the law; he may think it’s a bunch of bunk. But if he don’t get to go to that event, he’s going to be upset so he’s gonna think, ‘I’ve gotta have my papers because they’re checkin’ papers over there.’

HR: You’re in the process of adding more verifiers?
PW: We just passed the regulation today. When you pass a law, you have to figure out how to apply it: Who are the verifiers and how do they get certified? That’s what we were doing today.

HR: So what did you decide?
PW: The regulations state such things as you have to have a class from a recognized teacher. Steve Jones with the extension service is going to be in charge of the EIA program. Farm Bureau is interested in helping out. But it’s going to come from Steve.
We think there needs to be consistent information going out. There has been some information put out that varies from class to class. We want a single source; we also, with the extension service, have 75 counties and 75 extension services. So we have a place to distribute it.

HR: Back to that conversation about you going to the rodeo and checking Coggins. Do you see yourself making calls?
PW: Yeah. Certainly, my time will limit that. On the other hand, I’m showing my people in the field I mean business. And that’s one of my priorities.

HR: Where are we in the grand scheme of the EIA problem?
PW: We don’t even know how many cases we have because so many horses haven’t been tested. The only we’ll find out how big a problem we have is to get 100 percent of our horses tested.

HR: And what percentage have we tested?
PW: I would guess only about 30 percent. In 1997 we flew in the USDA veterinarian, who is an expert in the EIA problem, to testify. He said, if you could get every horse tested in Arkansas, identify and destroy the reactors, you would never have to test again. It would take about five years. So if we could have complete compliance with the law, we could actually do away with the EIA problem.

HR: You said today that you’ll make yourself available to anybody who wants to talk to you. So if a horse person has a beef, they can call you?
PW: My number’s in the Little Rock phone book. I’m not a professional horse trainer; I’m like 99 percent of the other people who pick up the Roundup. I’m a horse lover. I enjoy it; it’s a recreation for me. I do use them in my cattle operation. I like the connection between a horse and man.
But only when problems are brought to my attention can I act them. The horse industry brought me the EIA problem. That’s why I carried the bill. And I was the sole sponsor. Normally, you get co-sponsors to help carry something. I couldn’t get anybody to be on the bill with me! That was a real eye-opener.

[Several weeks later, at the Lewis auction, Wyrick is chatting with EIA inspectors Larry Pilkerton and Andy Foster as they await the arrival of an EIA-positive horse.]
HR to Pilkerton: How often have you seen the director out here?
LP: This is my third time.

HR: Is it unusual for a director to come out?
LP: Yes. Before we were standing alone. Now we’re not.

HR: Has his presence been felt yet around here?
LP: Yes. Folks aren’t used to seeing a director here. They aren’t used to have a director where they could talk about how they feel. It makes a difference.

HR to Wyrick: When you come out here, do you have much interaction with the people at the sales?
PW: Of course, I know the lay of the land. I was here before I was director; that’s part of what I’ve always been interested in. What Larry was talking about is, everybody has their own way of handling things. The other director was more comfortable in the political scene and very effective. But as times change, for instance on the EIA, it’s important that we get out here and say, ‘Hey, I support this. I’m not just being told to by the legislature.’

HR: What do you do when you’re here?
PW: I’ve got the cattle people on one side of the barn and the horse people on the other. When I leave this side, I’m gonna go see my cattle people. When I leave the barn, I’ll go to Dardanelle to a Tyson poultry plant and will see a guy that’s getting ready to retire. He’s worked for the agency for 30 years and has never met a director. So I’m doing things a little bit different. People do appreciate somebody is head of the agency coming out and seeing what the problems are. That’s what I’m going to do.

HR: Any final words?
PW: This interest in EIA regulation and enforcement is not a flash in the pan. As long as I’m here, that’s going to be one of the things we’re very interested in.