Page 846 of articles about news

Jim Fitzpatrick (57) has been appointed a junior minister at Defra, where he succeeds Jane Kennedy.

When it comes to allergies, pigs are not much different than people. Young piglets and other animals suffer from adverse reactions to soy, leading to a research project to understand the full impact of feeding soy. In doing so, research funded by the United Soybean Board, National Pork Board and QUALISOY can uncover ways to improve U.S. soybean varieties and soybean meal.

The Harper Government’s Economic Action Plan is supporting the livestock sector by making meat packing and processing facilities more competitive and accessible to farmers across the country. Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz along with Minister of National Revenue and Minister of State (Agriculture) Jean-Pierre Blackburn today announced that the three-year, $50-million Slaughter Improvement Program is now in place and will soon be accepting applications.

Decreased cereal quotas, lower milk prices, the pig cycle and the financial crises are the main reasons European compound feed production saw a slight decline in 2008 – 0.4% less feed was produced last year compared to 2007.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn has today announced the five successful projects to receive government grants to create energy from organic waste, such as food. Anaerobic digestion breaks down organic matter, such as animal manure and food waste to produce biogas, a renewable energy source for heat, power and transport and keeps organic waste out of landfill, which cuts greenhouse gas emissions.

During the last two years, 38 swine herds on the island of Bornholm have disappeared which leaves a total of only 94 herds. The number of animals has decreased by 3,000 head.

The University of Maryland School of Medicine's Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS) has been awarded $20 million from the National Institutes of Health to create a Genomic Sequencing Center for Infectious Diseases.

There was a rapid increase in farms using vaccine in the BPEX-funded PCV2 vaccination project in spring of last year with the percentage of farms vaccinating later levelling off at close to 70 percent. But figures from NADIS do not show a significant decrease in PMWS. The reason is that, as expected, vaccination, at least in the early stages, does not lead to a complete disappearance of disease from farms, explains NADIS.

According to figures from the Ministry of the Environment and Rural and Marine Affairs, the consumption of meat and meat products increased by 0.6% in the first three months of 2009 compared to the same period of 2008, arriving at a total of 603,030 tonnes. The consumption of fresh meat decreased but the demand for transformed meat products rose by 8.7% reaching 138,026 tonnes, which is 23% of the total sold. (Original in Spanish. Read Google translation here).

American swine producers have introduced a new program designed to allow an equitable exit by sow owners from the farrowing business. Producer Retirement Plan Chairman Chuck Wirtz describes the initiative as an early retirement program to allow producers who exit the industry to re-capture the unused genetic productive value of their sow herds.

The floods of 2008 are fresh in Iowa pork producers' memories less than a year after rising waters from the Mississippi and its tributaries flooded thousands of acres of crops and dozens of pig barns following heavy spring rains. Helping pork producers prepare for this and many other types of emergencies is the goal of the Pork Checkoff's new emergency action plan tool.

Paraguay meat exports totaled 245 million US dollars in the first five months of the year, which represents a 25% decline compared to the same period a year ago (328 million US dollars), according to the latest official reports.

A contentious proposal to compel US food manufacturers to contribute towards safety inspection costs took a step forward yesterday after the Food and Drug Administration signalled its backing for the idea.