A new law in Maine allowing municipalities to regulate local food production and processing has prompted USDA to warn the state it will take over all meat and poultry inspections there unless the rule is fixed. Maine has five state-licensed facilities, 30 custom facilities, 51 small poultry processing facilities and 2,714 small retail processing facilities. [node:read-more:link]
Reimert Ravenholt, a physician at the Seattle Department of Public Health, was puzzled. It was the winter of 1956, and for weeks now, local doctors had been calling him, describing blue-collar men coming into their offices with hot, red rashes and swollen boils running up their arms. The men were feverish and in so much pain they had to stay home from work, sometimes for weeks. The puzzle was not what was afflicting them. That was easy to establish: It was Staphylococcus aureus, or staph, a common cause of skin infections. Ravenholt happened to have a lot of experience with staph. [node:read-more:link]
The USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service in Texas has established two special Environmental Quality Incentives Program sign ups to help farmers and ranchers that suffered damage to working lands and livestock mortality as a result of Hurricane Harvey. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program is available to help farmers and ranchers treat the on-farm/ranch problems caused by the high winds, rainfall and flood waters due to Hurricane Harvey along the Texas Gulf Coast. [node:read-more:link]
One of the disadvantages of industrial-scale use of poultry litter as a fuel is the high cost of hauling litter off the farm, because litter is high in moisture and isn't as energy dense as coal. Excel Energy plans to buy the Fibrominn 55-megawatt poultry litter-burning power plant in Benson, Minnesota, and shut it down. The plant has been in operation for 10 years and it is still the only one of its kind in the U.S. [node:read-more:link]
In the St. Clair neighborhood in Pittsburgh’s South Side–a community struggling with poverty and filled with vacant lots–it can be hard to attract new residents. A development in planning now will try something new to achieve that: a housing complex will come with its own 23-acre urban farm. [node:read-more:link]
The friend politely declined, which set Kennedy to thinking. His family drank conventional milk. Did that make him a dad who didn’t care about his kids’ safety, or the environment? That would be odd, since he was nominated for an Oscar for his film about a community garden blooming in South Central Los Angeles. [node:read-more:link]
The World Wildlife Fund, with support from U.S. egg farming groups, is launching a study to better understand the environmental impact of various types of egg production used around the globe. United Egg Producers President and CEO Chad Gregory, speaking at an area briefing in Des Moines, Iowa, on August 29, said the study could potentially provide additional credibility to arguments that cage-free egg production is not the best option for the environment.Since McDonalds Corp. announced its plans to sell only cage-free eggs at its restaurants in the U.S. [node:read-more:link]
A dairy-industry lobbying group has urged food companies to stop using labels such as “GMO-free” for marketing purposes, saying they have turned to "fear-based" labeling.The National Milk Producers Federation, based in Arlington, Va., says food manufacturers are raising fears about of things like genetically modified organism products, synthetic animal-growth hormones and high fructose corn syrup.In its “Peel Back the Label” campaign, the dairy industry trade group says nearly 70% of American consumers look to food labels when making purchase decisions, but that some of the information is m [node:read-more:link]
Tractor giant John Deere just spent $305 million to acquire a startup that makes robots capable of identifying unwanted plants, and shooting them with deadly, high-precision squirts of herbicide. John Deere, established in 1837 to manufacture hand tools, announced it had acquired Blue River Technology, founded in 2011. Deere already sells technology that uses GPS to automate the movements of farm vehicles across a field to sub-inch accuracy. [node:read-more:link]
Homestead Capital, a $575 million private-equity fund, was founded by Daniel Little and Gabe Santos, both of whom have personal ties to agriculture. Because of the many uncertainties involved in farming, outside investors are sometimes unwilling to take a long-term investment approach, making some farmers skeptical of working with outside investors.Santos and Little, both 39, try to establish a local presence with their regional managers and local farm operators. [node:read-more:link]
