livestock

The world's largest pork producer and consumer, China, has soared into the lead as the world's largest pork importer, accounting for one-fourth of the world market. China will import 2.4 million tons of pork this year, a million tons more than Japan, the previous leader, says a semiannual USDA report.

It used to be called "garbage feeding," tossing table scraps and unwanted, uneaten food to barnyard animals to peck or chew in a haphazard addition to their rations. With concern mounting on climate change and food waste, the practice of recycling scraps into livestock feed looks like a winning way to reduce food waste, says Inside Climate News.

A report written by a non-profit research center aligned with the organic industry said, “The best choice that consumers can make to combat antibiotic resistance and protect themselves from antibiotic-resistant bacteria is to choose organic.”

As the gray wolf population rises in the West, "states are trying to walk the line between the ranchers, who view the animals as an economic and physical menace, and environmentalists, who see their reintroduction as a success story," says a Stateline story reprinted by Route Fifty. The issue is drawn most starkly in Washington State, which allotted $3.3 million and invested thousands of hours of staff time in wolf management.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) wants to slash agricultural use of colistin, a last-ditch antibiotic in treatment of infection and disease in humans, by two-thirds, said Reuters. The regulatory agency issued its call at the same time the MCR-1 gene, which enables bacteria to resist colistin, was identified for the first time in the United States in a human and separately in a sample from a hog.

The author of a UN report on food production and the environment says governments should tax meat production to slow the global rise in consumption and the accompanying environmental damage, says the Guardian. "If we are all to copy-cat the way in which we feed ourselves in North America or Europe, the planet would be in deep trouble," said Maarten Hajer, a member of the International Resource Panel.

The Obama administration is pushing back against critics of its plans to overhaul fair-play rules for livestock marketing, saying opposition to the rules "demonstrates a complete lack of concern for honest, hard-working families." Congress repeatedly blocked USDA from issuing the rules but USDA has a window of opportunity that may close at the end of September, says DTN.

Without action to protect the efficacy of antibiotics and to develop new antimicrobials, 10 million people a year would die worldwide due to drug-resistant bacteria by 2050, said a study commissioned by the British government. The report called for coordinated action worldwide to reduce unnecessary use of antibiotics, pointing to animal agriculture in particular.

Livestock are blamed as a significant contributor to global warming because they emit methane, a greenhouse gas, while digesting their feed rations. An international team of scientists has identified a compound that can be added to feed that reduces methane emissions by up to 30 percent.

Government scientists in India "are working hard to reduce carbon emissions by making cows less flatulant," says the New York Times. The second-most populous country in the world is home to 280 million head of cattle and 200 million other ruminants, such as sheep, goats, yaks and buffaloes, together emitting 13 tons of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, daily. "So reducing animal flatulence might actually do some good -- especially in India, where there is little chance of cutting back the use of fossil fuels anytime soon," says the Times.

The troubles for the villagers of Sianyanga, Zimbabwe, began in the late 1980s, when the Nalomwe River, which watered the village, went dry. Soon, the shade trees died and the villagers' cattle herds suffered for lack of water and forage, says a Pacific Standard story produced in partnership with FERN.

Two months after USDA terminated a voluntary program for labeling grass-fed beef, nine farm and consumer groups asked the department to spell out the conditions for using the term.

The year-end blizzard in west Texas and eastern New Mexico killed at least 35,000 dairy cows, says the New York Times, adding, "many other animals developed frostbite and could still die. In West Texas, about 10 percent of the adult herd was lost."

Economic sanctions against Russia are magnifying the problems of French livestock producers, who have higher production costs than other EU members and nowhere to sell their animals in Europe's glutted meat market, says Politico.

California state agriculture officials ordered the recall of raw milk from a dairy farm in the Central Valley after tests found bird flu virus in a sample from the farm's bulk tank. The state Department of Food and Agriculture warned against consumption of milk from Valley Milk Simply Bottled on the grounds that it "may lead to infection with this rare, emerging flu virus." No illnesses were reported.