Demand for healthier sunflower oil for potato chip frying is spurring a debate about whether millions of blackbirds should die to make it easier to raise the crop.

Demand is rising for NuSun, a sunflower variety that produces oil with less saturated fat and no trans fat, said John Sandbakken, international marketing director for the National Sunflower Association. Saturated and trans fats help clog arteries and increase the risk of heart disease.

One big reason for NuSun's increased popularity is the decision by the Frito-Lay snack food company to use NuSun oil to cook its major brands of potato chips, Sandbakken said. The company announced the switch in May 2006, and sunflower plantings need to rise by 600,000 acres next year to meet the new demand, he said.

But a big roadblock to increased sunflower production is blackbirds, which feast on the oilseed crop.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates the birds cause about $10 million in damage each year to sunflowers in North Dakota, which produces about half of the nation's sunflower output. Last year's North Dakota sunflower crop was valued at $158 million.

The North Dakota Legislature is considering a bill to spend $79,500 to help in a federal effort to control blackbirds. One of the methods would involve baiting and killing the birds.

"We're looking for any and all possible silver bullets out there to deal with this problem," Sandbakken said.

State Sen. Terry Wanzek, R-Jamestown, said he once grew sunflowers, but hasn't done so in a decade because blackbirds can eat away a farmer's profit.

"We've surrendered," he said. "The birds won."

Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society, said finding a blackbird solution may take more money than the Legislature appears willing to provide.

"I have to sympathize with the problem. You're basically … trying to keep birds from eating birdseed," he said. "It's a tough problem. I don't expect the solution is going to be as easy or cheap as they would like it to be."

The money would pay for part-time workers, hired by the North Dakota Agriculture Department, who would help the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services agency with blackbird control.

The project would include common methods, including noise cannons that scare the blackbirds, as well as a new one - poisoning blackbirds with bait along gravel roads. The birds land on gravel roads to get the grit their gizzards need to help digest food.

"Roadside baiting, coupled with existing methods, may be the answer," Sandbakken said.

Supporters of using poisoned bait say other control methods only move blackbirds from one field to another, while opponents say the poison will kill more than just blackbirds.

"The first thing that comes to my mind - aren't pheasants kind of important to you folks up there?" said Butcher, whose office is in Washington, D.C.

Research in Louisiana and Texas of a similar blackbird baiting method in rice fields found that mourning doves and meadowlarks were most affected of all non-targeted birds. Both birds are prevalent in North Dakota, and the western meadowlark is the state bird.

"The chemical will interact with mourning doves and meadowlarks in Texas identically to a meadowlark and mourning dove in North Dakota," said Kevin Johnson, an environmental contaminant specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The agency, which has opposed blackbird baiting programs in the past, does not take positions on state legislation, spokesman Ken Torkelson said.

The National Audubon Society is opposing the bill, said state director Genevieve Thompson. "It just seems like a more integrated approach that does use nonlethal methods does make more sense," she said.

George Linz, a research wildlife biologist at USDA's National Wildlife Research Center in Bismarck, said blackbird control does involve a variety of methods.

They include using noise cannons; removing cattails, which provide habitat for blackbirds; and seeding small "decoy" sunflower plots to draw birds away from larger fields.

However, the tactics often cannot handle the onslaught of about 70 million blackbirds that come through the Northern Plains each year, Linz said. "A lot of these nonlethal techniques just get overrun by the blackbirds," he said.

Poisoning migratory birds is illegal, but Fish and Wildlife allows the killing of blackbirds without an agency permit if the birds are damaging crops or about to damage crops, Johnson said.

The agency denied a permit in March 2000 for USDA to poison about 2 million blackbirds in the Dakotas. The permit requested a spring baiting, when the birds would not have been damaging crops. It was intended to cut down blackbird numbers when the sunflower crop matured in the fall.

Johnson said officials also worried that other birds would be killed. If the roadside baiting program also affects non-targeted birds, "then we're back to that same issue," he said.

The blackbird baiting program would include monitoring of other bird species. Linz said the bait would be put in trays, using woven wire to screen out pheasants, doves and other birds.

"A key point from the research standpoint is to make sure that you don't have a non-target, non-blackbird hazard," he said.

Tom Young, a sunflower farmer near Onida, S.D., said blackbirds are a problem in the northern counties of that state.

"I know of a couple of growers that have not gone back to flowers because blackbirds deterred them," he said.

Dean Sonnenberg, who raises sunflowers in northeastern Colorado near Fleming, said blackbirds also are a problem in that state.

Sonnenberg said some of his crop suffered blackbird damage until he took down a fence the birds were using as a perching place. He has avoided planting rows of trees, called shelterbelts, near his fields to deny shelter to blackbirds, he said.

"In the South Platte river valley where there are both water and trees the problem is very real … but so far very little has been tried in Colorado," he said. "It does become a great discouragement to anyone who has suffered significant damage."

The bill is SB2179.