AgClips
Recent AgClips
Rural Mainstreet Begins Year Weak: One-Third Indicate Loan Defaults Biggest Banking Threat
Creighton University Economic Outlook | Posted onFebruary 22, 2017 in Agriculture NewsFor a 17th straight month, the Rural Mainstreet Index remained below growth neutral. • Almost one-third of bank CEOs indicated that soaring loan defaults represented the greatest Rural Mainstreet banking threat for 2017. • Almost nine often bankersreported thatlow agriculture commodity represented the biggest threat to the rural economic for 2017. • Eighty percent of bankers expect the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in the first half of 2017.
Video counters HSUS stance on antibiotic use
Meatingplace (free registration required) | Posted onFebruary 22, 2017 in Agriculture NewsHumaneWatch, a project of the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom, released a video rebutting Humane Society of the United States CEO Wayne Pacelle’s assertions on antibiotic use in animal agriculture. The video addresses Pacelle’s claim that overuse of antibiotics on farms is a public health menace, pointing to recent findings by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that show nearly one-third of antibiotics prescribed to humans are unnecessary.
Researchers make discoveries that without the help of primates would be impossible.
Monkey Research | Posted onFebruary 22, 2017 in NewsNHPs, mostly monkeys, are the bridge between smaller animals and people. 95 percent of animal research is conducted with rats and mice. But they can only tell us so much. Once a disease or drug is understood in smaller species, it’s often then studied in monkeys. Monkeys are more predictive of how a disease acts or how a treatment will work in people.Primate research has led to medical devices, treatments, advancements and cures that have saved and improved millions of lives.
Common weed could help fight deadly superbug, study finds
The Washington Post | Posted onFebruary 22, 2017 in NewsThe red berries of a weed found in the southern United States contain an compound that can disarm a deadly superbug, according to research published Friday. Researchers from Emory University and the University of Iowa found that extracts from the Brazilian peppertree, which traditional healers in the Amazon have used for hundreds of years to treat skin and soft-tissue infections, have the power to stop methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections in mice.
Washington orchardists take pay muddle to lawmakers
Capital Press | Posted onFebruary 22, 2017 in Agriculture NewsWashington tree fruit growers are asking legislators to set rules for paying piece-rate workers, effectively intervening in pending federal lawsuits spawned by a 2015 state Supreme Court decision. The ruling in Lopez v. Sakuma required growers to pay piece-rate workers separately for 10-minute rest breaks. The decision upset longstanding practice, left unresolved key questions and exposed growers to more lawsuits. The suits seek back pay for rest breaks for up to three years.
Absent Federal Policy, States Take Lead on Animal Welfare
Civil Eats | Posted onFebruary 22, 2017 in Agriculture NewsIn the opening weeks of the Trump administration, the state of animal welfare—as with so much other policy—is in upheaval. On February 9, the administration froze the implementation of the just-passed Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices (OLPP)—the only comprehensive federal law that regulates the welfare of animals raised for food. The freeze comes on the heels of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) removing Animal Welfare Act inspection reports from its website.
Tyson to convert all Tyson brand chicken products to No Antibiotics Ever
Meatingplace (free registration required) | Posted onFebruary 22, 2017 in Food NewsTyson Foods executives announced that all Tyson consumer brand products would feature chicken with No Antibiotics Ever (NAE). The company also unveiled a new logo.
How an Interoffice Spat Erupted Into a Climate-Change Furor
New York Times | Posted onFebruary 22, 2017 in Energy Newsfew weeks ago, on an obscure climate-change blog, a retired government scientist named John Bates blasted his former boss on an esoteric point having to do with archiving temperature data. It was little more than lingering workplace bad blood, said Dr. Bates’s former co-workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Dr. Bates had felt he deserved his boss’s job at NOAA, they said, not the demotion he received. “He’s retaliating. It’s like grade school,” said Glenn Rutledge, a former physical scientist at NOAA who worked with Dr. Bates.
Georgia nixes new poultry price discovery system
Meatingplace (free registration required) | Posted onFebruary 22, 2017 in Agriculture NewsThe Georgia Premium Poultry Price Index (GPPPI) will not be published due to a lack of available data, the Georgia Department of Agriculture said. The GPPPI was the department’s answer to the suspended Georgia Dock poultry price discovery system, which had come under scrutiny due to how high its prices have been compared with other pricing indexes amid federal litigation accusing the industry of price fixing.
Missouri AG shouldn’t make Proposition 2 partisan issue
Watt Ag Net | Posted onFebruary 22, 2017 in Agriculture NewsMissouri Attorney General Josh Hawley should be commended for his efforts to keep California’s Proposition 2 egg law from burdening Missouri egg farmers and egg consumers. At the same time, he should be chastised for trying to make it a partisan issue. Hawley’s office last week issued a press release that announced he would challenge the law -- that requires that eggs produced and sold in the state are laid by hens that have adequate room to stand up, sit down, turn around and extend their limbs without touching another bird or the sides of the cage -- “all the way to the U.S.