Great NY State Fair’s new parking restrictions draw divide, burden vendors
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Jeanne White, who runs Simme Valley Farm with her nephew, has been taking bulls to the Great New York State Fair’s Beef Cattle Barn since 1978. However, due to the new restrictions on vehicles inside the fairgrounds, she said this year could be her last.
“Go back to reality and let us come in and out as we always have,” White said.
The new rules, announced July 2, restrict all vehicles inside the fairgrounds from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., including vendors’ personal cars and livestock trailers.
Kathleen Rey, associate director of public information for the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets, cited several “near-miss” incidents that endangered fairgoers in previous years at the NYS Fair, as well as a recent incident in Syracuse’s Washington Square that nearly injured pedestrians, as reasons for the change.
Animals that arrive at the fairgrounds after 8:30 a.m. cannot be offloaded from their trailers directly into the fairgrounds, as was previously the case. Instead, they must be led from adjacent parking lots to their stalls, which exposes them to cars and other usually unfamiliar stimuli.
White said her animals, which range in weight from 500 to 1,800 pounds, aren’t used to being handled in the dark.
“When you get them upset, they can do damage quickly to you, people around you, equipment that you’ve got with them,” White said. “You can’t control something that large if they get upset.”
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The rule changes have led to backlash on social media, with commenters calling the NYS Fair management out of touch with actual safety concerns. They’ve also cancelled the barrel racing and horse pull events, two long-running NYS Fair traditions.
Nathan Wooster is the president of the New York State Horse Pullers Association, an organization that supports horse pulling competitions and promotes the sport. He said the changes created a time constraint that was incompatible with most of the horse pullers’ schedules.
Horses would have to stay on the fairgrounds from the load-in time at 8:30 a.m. to the load-out time at 11:30 p.m., a period of about 16 hours, so handlers couldn’t leave early to deal with other obligations, Wooster said.
“Most of us are just blue-collar guys that do this as a hobby, and most of us travel three, four hours,” Wooster said. “We just didn’t feel like we could get enough horses there to put on a show with the regulations they had, so rather than having two teams show up, we left it on good terms with (the NYS Fair).”
In addition to longer attendance hours, White said vendor parking was changed because of the rule switch-up.
In prior years, vendors were allowed to camp, park their trailers and graze their competition cattle in a designated area on the fairgrounds behind the Beef Cattle Barn. Because no vehicles are allowed on the property while fairgoers are in attendance, that space was eliminated. Now, farmers have to compete with fairgoers for parking spots and camping sites have been restricted to designated areas away from where animals are kept.
Vendor parking isn’t the only thing changing this year. Live cow-birthing presentations, long a staple of the NYS Fair experience, were also suspended over animal welfare concerns. The decision was celebrated by PETA and other animal rights organizations.
Not everyone is impacted by these changes, though.
Sara Kerrick runs Sorrell Hill Milk Co., a dairy farm in Baldwinsville, NY, with her husband. On Wednesday, they brought five Holstein cows to the Fair. She said the rules made little difference to their load-in process compared to the four fairs they’ve worked at in the past, but acknowledged that vendors loading in during the NYS Fair might have a different experience.
“We haven’t seen a huge impact on our schedule compared to other animals that are showing in the fair,” Kerrick said. “I think maybe the hype got a little bit blown out of proportion.”
Kerrick noted some changes, like stricter parking passes, but acknowledged that public safety was a bigger concern than minor challenges like those posed to her by the rules.
Others, like the Horse Pullers Association, weren’t as lucky. Wooster said his members never want to lose a pull, and the NYS Fair always drew a large crowd for what he described as a dying event. Some members of the board were in favor of attending despite the potential issues, and the organization left on good terms with the fair.
“They tried to work with us,” Wooster said. “It’s just that the parameters they gave us will not work.”
Like Wooster, White said she doesn’t have any hard feelings. She’s happy to continue showing her cows at the fair if the changes are reversed, she said. The Kerricks, however, remain undeterred.
“The dairy industry as a whole faces a lot of adversity and challenges,” Kerrick said. “Some people have faced more of a challenge than we normally do, but we’re here, we’re ready to talk to and educate the public and share our love with them.”
