NHPs, 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. [node:read-more:link]

The 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. [node:read-more:link]

Washington 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. [node:read-more:link]

In 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. [node:read-more:link]

Tyson Foods executives announced that all Tyson consumer brand products would feature chicken with No Antibiotics Ever (NAE). The company also unveiled a new logo. [node:read-more:link]

few 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. [node:read-more:link]

The 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. [node:read-more:link]

Missouri 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. [node:read-more:link]

"On or about February 10, 2016, in the above named judicial district, the crime of FARM ANIMAL CRUELTY, in violation of HEALTH AND SAFETY CODE SECTION 25990, a misdemeanor, was committed by Robert Allen Hohberg, Hohberg's Poultry Ranches and Hohberg Properties, L.P., who unlawfully confined a covered animal, on a farm, for all or the majority of any day, in a manner that prevents such animal from lying down, standing up, and fully extending her limbs and turning around freely, to wit, egg laying hens, cage #B54." This criminal count and 55 others are now being faced by a California egg farm [node:read-more:link]

Blame Canada. That’s what U.S. farmers say about some of the bubbling gluts weighing on the milk market, and they are eager for President Donald Trump to do something about it.  While growers and exporters of U.S. crops and food products have expressed anxiety over Trump’s restrictive immigration policies and determination to renegotiate trade deals, dairies see him as an opportunity to crack what they see as Canada’s protectionist milk practices and to help ease oversupply in some regions. [node:read-more:link]