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Although private flour mills in Montana maintain their own lab- 

 oratories to determine grade and protein content of grain, these 

 laboratories are not licensed by the Department of Agriculture. 

 No commercial laboratories equipped to perform these tests now 

 operate in Montana. 



The Legislat-ive Council recommends that Montana law 

 requiring grain protein testing and USDA grading at 

 the Bozeman Grain Lab be amended so as to make the 

 Montana State Grain Inspection Laboratory the only 

 official laboratory authorized to perform these 

 functions . (Appendix A) 



Agricultural Testing Fees 



With the exception of the Livestock Diagnostic Laboratory, all ag- 

 ricultural testing laboratories charge fees for their services to 

 private citizens who request such services. A comparison of fees 

 charged for one such service, seed quality testing, in Montana 

 and other western states is shown on Table 3 on preceding page. 



It would appear that Montana is not receiving fees commensurate 

 with those charged by other states for similar services. No 

 doubt the depth of analysis is greater in some other states, 

 such as California; however, even with California removed from 

 the comparison, western state average charges for the various seed 

 quality tests are about double those charged in Montana. 



It was the Council's opinion that all agricultural fees should be 

 reviewed for their adequacy in light of increasing laboratory 

 operating costs. Such cost reviews should be made periodically 

 in the future to insure that state general fund moneys are not 

 being used to support commercial or private laboratory activities. 



The Legislative Council recommends that laboratory 

 administrators in the Department of Agriculture and 

 the Agricultural Experiment Station conduct a detailed 

 review of the operating expenses of each laboratory 

 under their control and make adjustments to laboratory 

 fee schedules where necessary to make such fees re- 

 flective of all direct and indirect costs incurred in 

 providing the services for which each fee is charged. 



HEALTH LABORATORIES 



6, 7, 8. Institutional Health Laboratories 



The three institutional health laboratories, located at the Boulder 

 River, Galen and Warm Springs hospitals, perform similar clinical 

 services in support of medical care to the patients in residence 

 at the respective state institutions. These clinical laboratories 



