With two weeks left in the congressional schedule for this year, time is running out for lawmakers to provide financial relief to agriculture, said two farm groups. "It is imperative that they address the well-defined and fully substantiated needs of farmers just trying to hold on for another season," said Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Senate Agriculture Committee chair Debbie Stabenow curtly rejected on Thursday a suggestion to divert climate change funding for agriculture to more generalized soil and water conservation work. “I know that there is a broad coalition of support standing with me,” she said.

In the two weeks since the USDA began accepting applications for coronavirus relief, it has paid $1.96 billion to farmers and ranchers through the so-called CFAP2, according to data released on Thursday. The average payment was $20,639 on the 94,959 applications approved for assistance.

An ambitious 10-year study undertaken by the National Institute for Health, which examines whether daily drinking can have positive health effects, is largely funded by the alcohol industry. It raises questions about the integrity of the trial and whether NIH employees broke the agency’s fundraising policies.

The National Institutes of Health has given the International Agency for Research on Cancer more than $1.2 million so far this year, says Chairman Jason Chaffetz of the House Oversight Committee. In a letter to the NIH director, Chaffetz blasts the IARC, part of the World Health Organization, for "controversy, retractions and inconsistencies," using its rulings on glyphosate and red meat as examples.

The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), created by the 2014 farm law, has hired Sally Rockey as its executive director. She begins work in September.

The agriculture sector should broaden its coalitions so it can land more research money, said Dan Glickman, former agriculture secretary, in a speech at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Less than 24 hours after a vote of confidence from the board of the Humane Society of the United States, Wayne Pacelle resigned as its chief executive due to complaints of sexual harassment. "Major donors said they would withdraw or reconsider their support," said the blog Nonprofit Chronicles. "Two of Pacelle's accusers went public with their charges. Others surfaced."

Seven of the 31 members of the board of the Humane Society of the United States resigned in protest of the decision to keep Wayne Pacelle as the group’s chief executive, said the Washington Post.

The U.S. appeals court in Washington "is breathing new life into a previously dismissed lawsuit alleging pork checkoff funds were indirectly used to benefit the lobbying efforts of the National Pork Producers Council," said Agri-Pulse.

One-third of U.S. consumers tried a new cuisine in the past year and two-thirds eat a wider variety of ethnic foods than they did five years ago, says a survey by the National Restaurant Association.

The "good food" sector, which includes Chipotle, Whole Foods and Applegate, are making inroads in the marketplace, but when it comes to policymaking, "their involvement on Capitol Hill, on issues from the farm bill to nutrition labeling, has ranged from limited to non-existent," says Politico.

A survey of professional chefs says the top food trends in 2015 are locally sourced meats and seafood, and locally grown produce, says the National Restaurant Association.

A survey of menus at the 66 largest U.S. restaurant chains found a new items on the menu contain 12 percent fewer calories, says a study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Under the name of “Tokyo Salad,” the Japanese subway operator Tokyo Metro is growing lettuce, salad greens, and herbs in a hydroponic warehouse under an elevated section of its Tozai Line, said the Mainichi newspaper.

For 15 years, USDA has allowed hydroponic crops to be sold as organic and, at a meeting this week in Jacksonville, Fla., the advisory National Organic Standards Board decided to let that practice continue. The board rejected, 8-7, a proposal to deny the USDA Organic label to hydoponics and aquaponics despite a long-running campaign to limit the label to plants grown in soil.

Francis Thicke, who owns a certified organic dairy farm in Iowa, is ending his five-year term on the National Organic Standards Board with criticism of the influence of “big business” on the USDA organic program and with support for an add-on organic label that “represents real organic food.”

On a 10-4 vote, the National Organic Standards Board sent back to subcommittee the contentious question whether bioponics, a term covering hydroponics, aquaponics and aeroponics, are part of organic agriculture, reports Food Safety News. "This means that food grown using hydroponic methods may continue to be certified as organic" if producers meet other criteria for the organic label, said FSN.

Chicken is America'a favorite meat, with per capita consumption approaching 110 pounds per person this year, roughly twice as much as beef. Five CDC scientists who analyzed U.S. outbreaks of food-borne illness in recent years say chicken caused the largest number of illnesses when outbreaks were ranked by food category.

Researchers at Iowa State University have pinpointed the virus that causes a mysterious trembling in piglets that in severe cases prevents them from nursing and can lead to starvation, said Feedstuffs. The affliction, sometimes called "shaker pigs" or "dancing pigs," dates back more than 90 years and is uncommon. The virus that causes the ailment comes from a family known as pestiviruses. Veterinary researchers used a new type of DNA sequencing to identify the virus causing the involuntary tremors. The next step is to develop a vaccine against the virus. The research team says the virus is not known to infect humans and does not affect the safety of pork from animals with the virus.

An additional 77 cases of salmonella were reported in the past week in a outbreak of food-borne illness linked to cucumbers imported from Mexico, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A report from the think tank Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy warns there are more and more cases of antibiotic-resistant infections around the world, "and the agricultural use of antibiotics plays a large part," says Modern Farmer.

The veterinary pharmaceutical industry strongly opposes an FDA proposal to collect more details about antibiotic use in livestock, said Agri-Pulse.

Researchers have found antibiotic-resistant genes are spreading to bacteria on Australian wildlife, says Macquarie University.

The Urban School Food Alliance, composed of six of the largest U.S. school districts, announced its members want antibiotic-free chicken to serve in their cafeterias.

The USDA is already recruiting employees to replace Economic Research Service staff workers who will not relocate to Kansas City this summer, said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on Wednesday.

A British consulting company will whittle down the list of potential relocation sites for two USDA research agencies in coming weeks with an eye to making a final recommendation after April, the USDA said on Wednesday.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will head the Department of Health and Human Services in the new administration, said President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday. “For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to public health,” said Trump in announcing the nomination.

The FDA lacked or had inadequate policies in place to identify risks to the infant formula supply chain when it received complaints about production at a plant in Sturgis, Michigan, said an inspector general’s report on Thursday. Months passed before the FDA warned consumers in February 2022 not to use some of the products made at the Abbott Laboratories plant, leading to a formula shortage.