‘Is this legal?’: Agri-Stats, a widely used data analytics company for the meat industry, has been named in more than 90 lawsuits since 2016 that claim its data facilitate anti-competitive behavior and drive up meat prices. (Investigate Midwest)
Hearings on WOTUS: The Biden administration will hold public hearings during August on its two-step process to write a “reasonable, effective and durable definition” of the waters of the United States that would supersede the narrower Navigable Waters rule adopted during the Trump years. (EPA)
Mega-dairy power: Residents of Minnesota and Arizona say Riverview LLP, with thousands of dairy cows, monopolizes their local economies and is depleting and polluting the groundwater. (High Country News)
Bio-based-product review: The bio-based products industry contributes $470 billion a year to the U.S. economy, said a USDA report 10 years after the creation of its Certified Biobased Product label. (USDA)
Rural Covid rise: The rate of Covid-19 infections in rural counties has more than tripled since the last week of June and is climbing the fastest in the deep South and in Arkansas and Missouri, according to an analysis of recent data. (Daily Yonder)
Don’t let it burn: State and local officials in California prefer to stomp out wildfires as soon as they can and say the U.S. Forest Service ought to do the same, particularly in a drought year. (Los Angeles Times)