How Minnesota drowns would-be horse teeth floaters in excessive licensing laws
In 2006, the Institute Justice published a report titled “The land of 10,000 lakes drowns entrepreneurs in regulations“. This report detailed the numerous ways Minnesota prevents people from working by placing burdensome requirements on certain occupations.
In particular, the report detailed licensing laws in 11 occupations: sign hangers, horse teeth floaters, taxicabs, household good movers, manicurists, estheticians, cosmetologists, barbers, flower vendors, mobile food card vendors, and plumbers.
One occupation that stood out as having the most restrictions in the report was horse teeth floating. Horse teeth continuously grow, and they require floating. Floating is the practice of filing down the sharp points of the teeth to make them flat for more efficient chewing.
As the report states, horse teeth floating is
a manual skill that can be learned with hands-on training and a basic understanding of horse skull anatomy —no anesthetics, invasive procedures or power tools are required. It is painless to the horse, relieves discomfort and maintains the horse’s ability to chew properly.
Yet, despite the low-risk nature of the job, getting licensed in horse teeth floating is an uphill battle.
Horse teeth floating licensing
In Minnesota, the Minnesota Board of Veterinary Medicine regulates teeth floating. To legally practice horse teeth filling, an individual can either become a licensed veterinarian or follow the rules under Minn.Stat.156.075.
Veterinary school is very costly, takes a lot of time, and may not include horse teeth filling. Therefore, following specifically getting licensed for teeth floating is usually the option pursued by most applications.
According to Minnesota law,
(a) A person may perform equine teeth floating services after submitting to the board the following:
(1) proof of current certification from the International Association of Equine Dentistry or other professional equine dentistry association as determined by the board; and
(2) a written statement signed by a supervising veterinarian experienced in large animal medicine that the applicant will be under direct or indirect supervision of the veterinarian when floating equine teeth.
(b) The board must waive the requirement in paragraph (a), clause (1), and allow a person to perform equine teeth floating services if the person provides satisfactory evidence of being actively engaged in equine teeth floating for at least ten of the past 15 years and has generated at least $5,000 annually in personal income from this activity.
There are a lot of issues to unpack with these rules. But let’s look at (b), for example. There rarely, if at all, exists an applicant with 15 years experience to any occupation. This, therefore, leaves (1) and (2) as the only choices. These options have their obstacles.
First, requiring new applications to go through incumbent workers in the industry incentivizes anti-competitive behavior. Experienced veterinarians have an interest in warding off their competition. But even if one is successful in getting a letter, getting certified by a private certification program is no walk in the park.
Private Program Certification
For so long, the board only recognized the International Association of Equine Dentistry (IAED) as the acceptable private certification program. To be certified by the IAED, someone must pass a practical exam. This brings us to another problem: Minnesota does not allow any person to practice horse teeth filing without getting licensed. Applicants are forced to go to other states that do not regulate the practice.
Furthermore, even after getting through the trouble of acquiring experience, an applicant must be a member of IAED for 9 months and also be sponsored by an existing IAED-certified member before they take the practical test. To sponsor someone, an IAED member must evaluate the candidate’s work, which leaves applicants at the mercy of their competition. Worse yet, IEAD is an international organization with few or no members in the state of Minnesota.
This process sounds even more bewildering when you realize that Minnesota does not regulate the dehorning of cattle and goats or the castration of swine, goats, and sheep, or the docking of sheep, and indication that these standards likely do not exist for safety. If safety was the concern, these other similar occupations would get the same treatment.
Horse teeth floating licensing now
It has been years since this report came out. However not much has changed with this law. In fact, the only thing that the Veterinarian Board has done is to approve 4 more private certification programs that applicants can go through. However, these are not more welcoming.
The Academy of Equine Dentistry, for example, has a 5-level course (two weeks for each level) program that costs well over $12,000. Students take an exam to advance to the next level of the program. Repetition of any level costs even extra money. The Equine Gnathological Training Institute in Idaho has a 6-session program that costs at least $12,000 for someone who has to go through the entire program. The Equine Dental Providers of America do not offer training to applicants, only continuing education.
Safety or barrier to entry?
If licensing was about safety and quality, there would be more uniform standards among similar occupations. Additionally, we would see rules providing applicants with flexible options for obtaining experience and education.
Safety and health are certainly important. Arbitrarily burdensome licensing rules for horseteeth floaters and other occupations, however, signal that licensing likely has little to do with consumer safety and could merely be a tool for keeping out the competition.