Department Of Livestock Montana

Department Of Livestock Montana, a state government entity headquartered in Helena, operates as a federal grant recipient (99% of recent awards) and minor federal contractor, delivering animal health surveillance, disease traceability infrastructure, meat and poultry inspection, and veterinary diagnostic laboratory services to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior. The department is a child entity of Montana Department of Public Health and has been registered to receive federal awards since November 2011.

The department's federal footprint centers almost entirely on USDA cooperative agreements, with 78 awards from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) under the Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care program (CFDA 10.025), ten awards from the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) under the Cooperative Agreements with States for Intrastate Meat and Poultry Inspection program (CFDA 10.475), and four awards from the Agricultural Marketing Service for poultry and egg grading services. A single award from the Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service Region 9 represents the only non-USDA prime contract work—a $30,000 firm fixed-price purchase order awarded March 14, 2024 (extending through March 14, 2027) for natural resources veterinary diagnostic services performed in Bozeman, Montana.

Montana Department of Livestock's capability portfolio spans multi-species disease surveillance, animal disease traceability, laboratory diagnostic infrastructure, and state inspection operations. Representative APHIS cooperative agreements include an umbrella $710,098 award (April 1, 2026 through March 31, 2027) covering cattle, avian, swine, sheep-goat-cervid-equine, and One Health surveillance across brucellosis, tuberculosis, avian influenza, scrapie, chronic wasting disease, and foreign animal diseases; a $702,498 award (April 1, 2025 through March 31, 2026) for the same five-component surveillance umbrella; emergency response funding of undisclosed amount (December 1, 2024 through November 30, 2025) for high-path avian influenza dairy outbreak response in Montana; and recurring animal disease traceability cooperative agreements (most recently $710,098 April 2026–March 2027) supporting distribution of radio-frequency identification tags to veterinarians, livestock market identification software, and quarterly trace performance exercises. FSIS provides recurring annual cooperative agreements (most recently $2.922 million October 2025–September 2026) for ante-mortem and post-mortem meat and poultry inspection of intrastate processing facilities. NAHLN laboratory network participation awards support veterinary diagnostics infrastructure, including a $256,300 cooperative agreement (June 1, 2024 through May 31, 2025) for national animal health laboratory network laboratory infrastructure support.

Award activity has remained modest and flat—six awards in 2022, seven in 2023, ten in 2024, six in 2025, and two year-to-date in 2026. The source reports combined potential value across all 95 awards as $38 thousand, which is inconsistent with the individual award valuations shown (particularly the $2.922 million FSIS award and the $710,098 APHIS awards); the source lists combined dollars obligated as $35.8 million, indicating substantial real federal investment despite the low stated potential-value figure. Six awards with ultimate completion dates in the next twenty-four months carry combined potential value of $30 thousand, representing minimal recompete exposure in that window relative to the obligated base. One sub-award is present in the portfolio—a subaward from Montana Department of Public Health (the parent entity) under an APHIS One Health cooperative agreement awarded November 30, 2023, for capacity-building and epidemiology workforce development across state laboratories.