Iowa wants to make changes to its water-quality monitoring rules that would remove 44 lakes and rivers from the federal impaired waters list. It's a move some environmental groups say could endanger public health.The Iowa Department of Natural Resources proposes switching to an average value method that uses multiple water samples to measure E. coli bacteria instead of single samples that catch spikes in bacteria.  [node:read-more:link]

The Food and Drug Administration will soon be micromanaging a wide range of farming-related activities for many farms. [node:read-more:link]

 Lynda Cochart did not realize her water was contaminated with coliform bacteria until she contracted MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant skin infection. She believed it came from the water in her well in Casco, Wisconsin. “There’s no other way I could have gotten it,” she said. A year later, U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist Mark Borchardt tested her well while testing others in Kewaunee County. He found total coliform bacteria at levels too dangerous to drink. Cochart lives between two dairy farms with over 1,000 cows each. [node:read-more:link]

A recall has been issued on raw milk sold by North Texas distributor K-Bar Dairy over worries that some of the products contain a drug-resistant bacteria linked to fever, swelling, fatigue and other symptoms. The small, family-operated dairy farm is in Wise County, about 40 miles northwest of Fort Worth and 60 miles northwest of Dallas. It produces around 120 gallons per day of raw milk, a type of milk that has not been pasteurized to kill harmful microorganisms.A person who drank raw milk from K-Bar was hospitalized with symptoms of fever, joint pain and fatigue. [node:read-more:link]

On a sweltering morning, John Gilbert bottle-feeds calves with a small, converted bucket, while his 3-year-old granddaughter struggles to hold a wriggling kitten. [node:read-more:link]

When federal meat inspectors found bovine tuberculosis in South Dakota cattle earlier this year, the official ear tag paired with that animal helped pinpoint the Harding County herd where the cattle had originated. From there, state animal health officials went to work testing neighboring herds that might have been exposed in an effort to contain the disease that South Dakota had been rid of since 2009. [node:read-more:link]

Ignore the following at your own peril:  The Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) is working its tail off to get an animal “welfare” title into the 2018 Farm Bill.  You’ve been warned. [node:read-more:link]

 "A lot of people in this country think of immigrants based on what they hear on television or read in the news or Internet," Wood says. "We want people to know that, every day, they eat or drink something an immigrant helps produce: wine, or a glass of milk, or cheese, or the hotel bed they sleep in."In 2013, Wood's family hired Pedro, a short, mustachioed man of 47 with a thick head of black hair. He has been in the U.S. for 13 years, leaving behind a large family in Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico coast, where he raised cows. [node:read-more:link]

The Trump administration plans to come to the bargaining table during this week's opening round of NAFTA talks with a proposal aimed at protecting U.S. produce farmers from cheaper Mexican imports, POLITICO has learned. The plan would essentially make it easier for growers of fruits and vegetables to allege that Mexico is selling produce in the U.S. at below-market prices by allowing American producers in a given region to band together to bring an anti-dumping case backed by seasonal data, said Joel Nelsen, head of the USDA advisory committee that crafted the recommendation.U.S. [node:read-more:link]

For years, scientists and activists have sounded the alarm that humans' appetite for seafood is outpacing what fishermen can sustainably catch. But new research suggests there is space on the open ocean for farming essentially all the seafood humans can eat. [node:read-more:link]