By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
A new livestock export facility on Farley Lane in south Del Rio was formally dedicated Wednesday by Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller.
Miller also presented plaques and a certificate to Del Rio City Council members and City Manager Matt Wojnowski, naming Del Rio a “Go Texan Certified Retirement Community.” The commissioner also dedicated a plaque to the memory of long-time Texas Department of Agriculture employee Jose Sanchez.
“I appreciate you all coming out and sharing in this day. We’ve been working on this project for quite some time. We did it one piece at a time, but we finally got it done, and we’re going to dedicate it today,” Miller said as he welcomed those attending the event.
Before dedicating the new facility, Miller presented representatives of the city of Del Rio with two plaques and a certificate naming the city a “Go Texan Certified Retirement Community.”
Del Rio City Council members Jim De Reus, Alexandra Falcon Calderon and Steven Webb and City Manager Matt Wojnowski, Assistant City Manager Manuel Chavez and Economic Development Director Ori Fernandez were on hand to accept the plaques, certificate and Miller’s accolades.
Miller said “Go Texan” is the Texas Department of Agriculture’s global marketing campaign.
“One of the parts of our ‘Go Texan’ program is a very rigorous, very in-depth, hard-to-obtain certification to become a ‘Go Texan Certified Retirement Community,’ and it’s really hard to get, but we’re going to award this to the city today because they went through all the steps to do this. They really had to do a lot of work to get this, and they’re only the 19th community in Texas to earn this, so it says a whole lot about your community,” Miller told the audience.
Next, Miller and Deputy Agriculture Commissioner Fred Vest unveiled a plaque dedicated to the memory of Jose Sanchez, who worked for the Texas Department of Agriculture for 19 years. Members of Sanchez’s family were on hand to join the state officials in unveiling the plaque.
Vest recalled Sanchez as a dedicated worker, family man, friend and mentor to other TDA workers.
After the facility and audience were blessed by a local priest, Miller led livestock export facility staff, members of the Sanchez family and city of Del Rio representatives in cutting a ribbon to dedicate the new export facility.
“This new facility is important because Texas leads the nation in agriculture exports, so this is where we run any animal that is going to be shipped, mainly to Mexico. This is one of our five ports. We have four total on the Rio Grande from El Paso to Brownsville. We have this one and Laredo, and we also have one at the airport in Houston, where we air-freight horses going to Europe or the Middle East,” Miller said after the ceremony.
“In this new Del Rio facility, we’ll be running mainly cattle, horses, sheep and goats that are crossing into Mexico. This is state-of-the-art, the newest facility, except for our Houston facility, and I actually got to design this one, and the way I did that was to get input from the employees,” he added.
Miller said the new facility includes a 30-stall horse barn with ceiling fans.
He noted the Del Rio facility is the only site other than Houston with a barn.
“It’s specifically for upper-end horses. They’re for polo players, horse shows, racehorses, rodeos, breeding stock, and we now have a nice facility to be able to take care of those animals and keep them safe,” Miller added.
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