livestock

A newly filed Senate bill would require the FDA to withdraw its approval of the use of medically important antibiotics in food animals unless drugmakers show there is no risk to human health.

Producers will see sharply lower hog prices this year - down 26 percent from 2014 - due to larger livestock production, says the USDA's Livestock, Dairy and Poultry Outlook.

Dickinson County in northwestern Iowa, by asking for a temporary moratorium on new, large-scale livestock farms, "could become the next battleground" over massive feedlots, says the Des Moines Register.

Five environmental, animal welfare and community organizations filed suit in federal district court in Washington, DC, to force EPA to set air pollution standards for large livestock farms.

Efforts by drugmaker Merck to re-introduce its growth-promoting drug Zilmax to the market are "stuck in a kind of veterinary purgatory," says the NPR blog The Salt.

Genetic resources in crops and livestock can play a crucial role in feeding the world and "much more needs to be done to study, preserve and utilize the biological diversity that underpins world food production," said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization...

Corn futures prices are the highest in five months and "are expected to remain firm to slightly higher" for the near term, says economist Darrel Good of U-Illinois.

A large number of the medically important antibiotics given to cattle, hogs and poultry now sold over the counter to livestock producers will come under veterinary control in the next couple of years, says the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.

Livestock producers can anticipate strong returns in coming years in a "mini-boom" that could last for several years, says Purdue economist Chris Hurt in a university news release.

Livestock disaster aid cost more than $4 billion this year, more than expected, says Agri-Pulse, "even as auditors were finding that earlier payments under the program were rife with errors."

The FDA program to phase out use of antibiotics as a growth promotant in food animals "may allow some injudicious uses to persist," says the Pew Trusts' Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming.

The algae bloom that shut down Toledo's drinking-water supply for two days this summer has put the spotlight on agricultural runoff, although farmland is not the only source of the pollutants that cause the explosive growth of the cyanobacteria, says...

Pork production during the final three months of this year is forecast to be 5 percent smaller than the year-earlier figure, keeping prices for slaughter hogs high, says the monthly Livestock, Dairy and Poultry Outlook report.

Alpacas are the latest animals in the livestock version of a speculative bubble, says Modern Farmer. It says the industry, which boomed in the early 2000s, emphasized breeding over developing a market for the alpaca's chief product, their fine, soft fleece.

Adding calcium oxide at a 1 percent blend rate to distillers dried grains (DDGs) makes it easier for cattle to digest the ethanol co-product, say Purdue researchers.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia refused to re-hear a meatpacker lawsuit challenging USDA's country-of-origin meat-labeling rules, said Feedstuffs.

The "slow atrophy of public funding" for plant-breeding programs "means that farmers have been left with fewer and fewer seed choices over the years and are ill-prepared to meet 21st Century needs," says the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

The farmer-funded National Pork Board "will use an online marketing campaign to counter a critical television documentary on antibiotics use in livestock," says Reuters.