The House voted Tuesday night to give South Carolina a seat on the federal Peanut Standards Board.
The federal board was created in 2002 to advise the federal government on peanut standards. But South Carolina doesn’t have a seat.
The current board is made up of 18 members from three regions: the Southeast: Alabama, Florida, and Georgia; the Southwest: New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas; and a third region: Virginia and North Carolina.
The bill, from Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., would add South Carolina to the Virginia-North Carolina region. Wilson said the change is needed because South Carolina produces more than 8 percent of the nation’s peanut crop.
“As a state, South Carolina is the fourth-largest peanut-producing state,” Wilson said when he introduced his bill. “The boiled peanut was designated by the state legislature as South Carolina’s official state snack in 2006.”
House lawmakers agreed and easily passed the bill 394-1. The only “no” vote came from Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.
