Jacklin Experts Dispute Findings, Regret No Input

Fri., Oct. 3, 1997

By Karen Dorn Steele karend@spokesman.com

Jacklin Seed Co. hired its own experts to duel with a national panel that has defended a Washington State University study on grass-field burning.

This summer, the company asked The Gallatin Group, a public relations firm, to hire economists to critique the WSU study.

The economists wanted to interact with the panel conducting an external review of WSU’s cost-benefit study.

“We were never given that chance,” an angry Don Jacklin said in an interview Thursday from his Post Falls home.

So Jacklin and his brothers Doyle and Duane, company co-owners, decided to time the release of their experts’ scathingly critical report to the Thursday release of WSU’s favorable peer review study.

The Jacklins were critical in a press release, calling the WSU peer review a “complete whitewash.”

“We remain incensed that a university could conduct such research that so undervalues and misrepresents our industry,” they said.

Don Jacklin declined to say how much his family paid to hire the professors and public relations firm.

Their experts are Robert Halvorsen of the University of Washington, and James Opaluch and James Grigalunas of the University of Rhode Island.

They say the WSU researchers made “conceptual errors” in their cost-benefit analysis that exaggerate the public health benefits of reduced field burning.

Now it’s time to call a truce, Jacklin said. He’s leaving the company this fall after its sale to the J.R. Simplot Co. is complete.

“There is nothing to gain from this. We’d all be better off if (WSU) would now put their efforts into finding alternatives to field burning,” he said.

The family also plans to continue its generous donations to WSU, Jacklin said.

“We think this was bad science, but we’ll continue to support WSU. I’m hoping to go to the Rose Bowl this year,” the WSU alumnus said.

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