Assistant House Majority Leader Kate Webb, a sponsor of Vermont's GMO food labeling law, is scheduled to testify at a House subcommittee hearing on federal regulation of the foods on Wednesday.

Rep Collin Peterson, the Democratic leader on the House Agriculture Committee, uses his legislative successes on the 2014 farm law - retention of sugar subsidies and creation of a new dairy subsidy program - as talking points for re-election, says Bloomberg. Peterson's district leans Republican and the GOP congressional committee is spending heavily on ads to defeat him. "Farming defines the towns that dot the region’s two-lane highways. Along with (sugar) beets, the district is the nation’s biggest producer of turkeys and the fourth-biggest of corn and soybeans," says Bloomberg.

Farmworkers who are exposed to infected poultry or dairy cattle as part of their jobs should be tested for bird flu even if they show no symptoms, particularly if they did not wear protective equipment, said the Centers for Disease Control on Thursday. The CDC revised its safety guidelines after researchers reported that 7 percent of unprotected dairy workers carried antibodies in their blood indicating infection by the H5N1 avian flu virus.

While the risk to the general population from the H5N1 avian flu virus remains low, an assessment rated its future pandemic potential as moderate, the same as previous assessments, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "The results of this IRAT [Influenza Risk Assessment Tool] validate the pro-active, coordinated U.S. government response," said the CDC in a weekly report on bird flu.

Blood tests show "there is extremely low to no population immunity" among Americans to the H5N1 avian flu virus, said the Centers for Disease Control. Most of the population would be vulnerable if the virus mutated to become more readily contagious, said the CDC, but it has identified two candidate vaccines that would offer "good cross-protection" against it.

Trump appointee William Perry Pendley served unlawfully as acting head of the Bureau of Land Management for 424 days, a U.S. district judge ruled in ordering Pendley's immediate removal from office. Chief District Judge Brian Morris, based in Great Falls, Montana, said he would hear arguments in the near future on which of Pendley's orders must be vacated, reported Drovers.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said he took over the 70,000-person department certain that “I got 30 percent of the crew that’s not loyal to the flag,” meaning President Trump and his agenda, reported the Associated Press. Zinke said he’s pursuing a major reorganization that would move much of the department’s decision making outside of Washington in an effort to break up entrenched attitudes.

The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol says it could use a 2005 anti-terrorism law — the Real ID Act — to all President Trump’s border wall to be built through a national wildlife refuge in Texas, without having to conduct an environmental impact studies. The studies are usually mandated for any new construction on federal lands under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, in New England as part of his ongoing review of national monuments, told Reuters that the United States can become a “dominant” energy force by boosting mining and drilling on federal lands.

The Urban School Food Alliance of 17 of the largest U.S. school districts will provide training to districts across the country on how to purchase high-quality food while keeping costs low, said the Agriculture Department on Wednesday.

With a massive recall of infant formula underway, the USDA encouraged state and tribal officials on Wednesday to ensure that WIC recipients could exchange their recalled baby formula and use their WIC benefits to buy replacement products. Abbott announced a recall of three of its formula brands last week.

From lettuce to cookies, avocados to cheesecake, the last few years have seen a number of high-profile food recalls. According to the CDC, an estimated 48 million Americans get sick each year from foodborne illnesses. But the question of whether such outbreaks are getting worse is complicated, due to a combination of improved detection technology, a looser approach to regulation, and growing consolidation in the food industry, as Leah Douglas reports in FERN's latest story, published as part of Time magazine's special issue on the Science of Nutrition.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>

In a look back at last November’s recall of romaine lettuce, the FDA says that although “one farm cannot explain the entire outbreak,” it is now able to identify potential sources of E. coli contamination by using technology that can track foods from field to consumer.

If a new Food and Drug Administration draft guidance is implemented, food recall notices could begin to include the names of retailers that have sold the contaminated foods, the agency said Wednesday.

The USDA would create its third version of the food box intended to feed hungry Americans under legislation introduced by House Appropriations chairwoman Rosa DeLauro on Tuesday. The bill would require the USDA to provide boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables to schools, food pantries and youth organizations for distribution.

State agriculture officials called for continuation of USDA's $5.5 billion food box give-away program, now under review by the Biden administration. "With some enhancements, we can extraordinarily expand the benefits of the program by allowing more producers to contribute and increasing the amount of food we can share with families in need," said Barb Glenn, chief executive of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA).

The Trump administration put an additional $500 million into the Farmers to Families Food Box, allowing the stopgap hunger-relief program will run through the end of the year. More than 110 million of the boxes have been delivered but the program has faced charges of inequitable distribution of aid.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue solicited votes for President Trump in violation of the 1939 federal law that bars partisan activity by federal officials while on the job, said a complaint filed by a good-government group. The complaint cites Perdue's comments at a produce packing shed in North Carolina, where Trump announced a $1-billion extension of the administration's food-box giveaway program.

The U.S. agricultural trade deficit, forecast at a record $30.5 billion this fiscal year, will narrow in the near term as exchange rates improve and trading partners gain economic strength, said the Agriculture Department in its 10-year agricultural baseline.

U.S. farm exports will be the smallest in four years due to lower prices for wheat, corn, and cotton, said the Agriculture Department on Thursday. China would remain the No. 1 customer for food and ag products, with Mexico a close second.

A federal grand jury indicted four poultry industry executives on a charge of conspiring to fix prices and rig bids for broiler chickens, announced the Justice Department on Wednesday. The charges were the first in "an ongoing federal antitrust investigation into price-fixing, bid rigging, and other anticompetitive conduct in the broiler chicken industry," it said.

Consumers like the goals of regenerative agriculture, but they don’t want to pay more for food produced with the climate-friendly practices, said a Purdue University survey released on Wednesday.

Agricultural processor Cargill said on Wednesday that it would support the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices on 10 million acres of North American farmland over the next 10 years.