Page 901 of articles about news

USDA released its monthly Cold Storage Report this week, showing meat and poultry stocks are entering freezers at a faster pace than a year ago. The combined beef, pork and poultry inventories on Dec.31, 2008, at 2.193 billion pounds, were about 13 percent higher than the previous year, and 14 percent higher than the five-year average.

Pork Marketing Canada's Choose Canadian program is a voluntary national labelling initiative involving pork processors and retailers that identifies Canadian pork in the retail meat case. The label which bears a Canadian flag and the words "Canadian Pork-Porc Canadien" is easily identifiable and is intended to differentiate pork produced in Canada from imported product.

U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab announced today that USTR is modifying the list of EU products subject to additional duties in connection with World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement rulings in the EU – Beef Hormones dispute. The modifications, which also help respond to a court-ordered review, make additions to and deletions from the list of the products subject to additional duties, change the EU member States whose products are subject to the duties, and for one product, increase the level of the additional duties.

At its meeting today (Friday), the Board of AHDB agreed to provide a financial contribution to promote the Red Tractor Logo. It decided to pursue State Aid Approval immediately, as a prerequisite for any investment decision on consumer promotion activity.

Led by the University of Saskatchewan, the FOBI network is a multidisciplinary initiative composed of private, public and academic members from the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary, Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development, Feedlot Health Management Services Ltd., Prairie Swine Centre Inc. and the Saskatchewan Research Council. The FOBI network will focus on creating higher quality livestock feed from ethanol waste, also known as co-products or distillers grains. The research will explore the integration of livestock production and wheat-based ethanol production, and focus on creating new co-products and new markets for existing co-products and Canadian farmers.

U.S. livestock production has shifted to much larger and more specialized farms, and the various stages of input provision, farm production, and processing are now much more tightly coordinated through formal contracts and shared ownership of assets. Important financial advantages have driven these structural changes, which in turn have boosted productivity growth in the livestock sector. But structural changes can also generate environmental and health risks for society, as industrialization concentrates animals and animal wastes in localized areas.

According to data from the Statistics Office of North Rhine – Westphalia, approximately 700 piglet producing herds disappeared during the last year. A census in November last year showed a total of 4225 herds, which is equivalent to 14.3% fewer than the year before. (Original in German. Read Google translation here).

Cattle and hog producers facing hard financial times now have until September 30, 2010, to repay cash advances under the Advance Payment Program (APP). The extension of the repayment deadline for livestock advances was announced today by Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz. In addition, the first $100,000 of each producer’s advance will continue to be interest-free.

The Department of Health confirmed that one farm worker in the Philippines has been infected with Ebola-Reston antibodies, officials announced Friday. The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) said this is likely an old infection contracted more than six months ago. The person is healthy and has had no serious illness in the past 12 months, said Dr. Enrique Tayag, director of the Department of Health's National Epidemiology Center.

The first study documenting methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in swine and swine workers in the United States has been published by University of Iowa researchers. For the study, investigators analyzed nasal swabs of 299 swine and 20 swine workers from two different production systems in Iowa and Illinois. At Production System A, the overall prevalence of MRSA was 70 percent in swine and 64 percent in workers. At Production System B, all swine and human samples were negative for MRSA.

The Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI), the Livestock Development Council, and the NMIS — all attached agencies of the Agriculture department — have put on hold plans to apply for pork export accreditation from South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan, NMIS Executive Director Jane C. Bacayo said.

While Chile’s chicken exports increased by 61.5% compared with the previous year, pig meat exports decreased by 9% mainly due to the temporary closure of the Japanese and South Korean markets after the detection of dioxins above the permitted levels in several cargoes. (Original in Spanish. Read Google translation here).

The OIE has informed about de reoccurrence of foot and mout disease (serotype Asia 1) and a new strain of the disease (serotype A) in China.

The U.S. government's final rule on mandatory country-of-origin labelling (COOL) for meat and other foods will go back to U.S. President Barack Obama's new agriculture secretary for review. Obama has directed U.S. federal officials to delay for 60 days the effective date of regulations passed in the Bush administration's final days that haven't yet taken effect, the Reuters news service reported Wednesday.