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Agriculture authorities have slaughtered hundreds of pigs in central Taiwan in a bid to contain the island's first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in 12 years.

The Philippine Department of Agriculture recently approved Administrative Order No. 1 which adopts Annex 3 to the Codex Plant Guideline for the conduct of food safety assessment in situations of low-level presence of recombinant-DNA plant materials in food and feed.

Danish scientists have welcomed the first litter of pigs born to a transgenic clone used in the study of Alzheimer’s disease.

COUNCIL DIRECTIVE 2008/120/EC of 18 December 2008 laying down minimum standards for the protection of pigs (Codified version).

Meat production, including by-products was down 11.1% to 241 thousand tons in January in Russia, if compared with December 2008, as Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation (Rosstat) reports.

The Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture has sent a delegation to Russia to hold bilateral negotiations with respect to the trade of animal and vegetable products such as the importation of wheat or the extension of Brazilian exports of pig meat to Russia. (Original in Portuguese. Read Google translation here).

U.S. packers and swine finishers imported fewer Canadian swine last year largely because of unfavorable exchange rates early in the year, ongoing herd reductions in Canada, and uncertainty created by country-of-origin-labeling (COOL) toward the end of 2008. Total imports last year were 9.348 million head, almost 7 percent below a year earlier.

The number of cattle, hogs and sheep on Canadian farms all declined in 2008 and the number of cattle farms also fell, Statistics Canada said Tuesday. Hog inventories were down 10.2 percent to 12.4 million, continuing a 3-year downward trend. Because of falling prices, the Canadian government implemented the Cull Breeding Swine Program in 2008 to pay hog producers to reduce the size of their herds, the report said.

The Pig Meat Supply Chain Task Force will focus on helping the whole supply chain to thrive in a way that is sustainable in the long term. It will bring together key representatives, from all sectors in the pig meat supply chain to increase collaboration between Government and the various sectors in the industry.

Among the guidance suggestions, plants may elect to have a written protocol on handling fatigued or slow hogs. The protocol should explain measures that ensure all pigs are handled humanely and include procedures for tracing fatigued pigs through the process. The protocol should ensure that the requirements are met so that all pigs receive ante-mortem inspection.

The Philippines has imposed a temporary ban on the importation of animals from China that are susceptible to the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), following the outbreak of FMD in two provinces there.

In recent weeks, Russia has implemented a series of sanitary-phytosanitary restrictions that have slowed or halted U.S. pork sales. Russia has de-listed 33 U.S. pork slaughter, processing and cold storage facilities so they cannot export product to Russia. This represents 45 percent to 50 percent of U.S. pork production capacity.

This means Shanghai is one of the first Chinese mainland cities to put in place a system to deal with infectious diseases that's completely managed by information technology. Working with the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the new center is able to provide advanced warning about 78 diseases such as bird flu and hand, foot and mouth disease.

The $790 billion stimulus package pending in Congress includes some agricultural funding. The package's conference report passed the House on Friday afternoon by a 246-183 vote. It contains about $300 billion in tax cuts and an additional $311 billion in discretionary spending.

The UK pig industry is now down to 50 per cent of what it was a decade ago, but imports of pork last year declined by 50,000 tonnes to 358,000 tonnes. However, imports of bacon and ham increased by 8,000 tonnes to 263,831 tonnes. Exports of UK pig meat were a bright feature of last year with the total up by over 14,000 tonnes to 103,462 tonnes.