Growing up on a farm may help ward off allergies later in life, a new study suggests.  The study also found that women who spend their early years on a farm typically have stronger lungs than their suburban or city-dwelling peers.  Other research has suggested that exposure to germs and potential allergens in early childhood could protect people against allergies later. A team led by the University of Melbourne's Shyamali Dharmage put this "hygiene hypothesis" to the test. Dharmage is a professor in the Center for Epidemiology & Biostatistics. [node:read-more:link]

The upper echelons of America’s modern agricultural prowess are betting that massive mergers will allow it to seize powerful new gene editing technologies to fuel much needed growth.  All but one of the “Big Six” seed and agrotechnology companies, including number one ranked Monsanto Co., saw revenue declines in 2015. Farmers are buying less seed and fewer chemicals as U.S. farm income has plummeted 30 percent from a 2013 high. Mounting pest and weed resistance to genetically engineered (GE) seeds has also begun to worry farmers, as crop yields have begun to flatline in the last few years. [node:read-more:link]

Dan Zumbach lost 50 acres of corn when the Cedar River flooded. Yet he considers himself lucky.  Most of his 160 acres would have been lost if not for family, friends and neighbors who gathered Saturday with combines, grain carts and semitrailer trucks to harvest a field near Palo. They worked from noon until 11 p.m. before the rising waters forced them to quit. Iowa's widespread thunderstorms and torrential rains have done more than flood Iowa's  cities and towns. They have also slowed much of the state's corn and soybean harvest. [node:read-more:link]

A private member’s bill entitled the “Modernizing Animal Protections Act” will receive second reading on September 28, 2016. While the off-the-hop goals of avoiding shark harvesting in Canadian waters and shutting down puppy mills seem in line with the title, the bill, put forward by Liberal MP for Beaches-East York Nathaniel Erksine-Smith, goes much further than that.  Bill C-246 leaves enough to translation that it could, potentially, criminalize not just livestock agriculture, but hunting and fishing as well. [node:read-more:link]

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USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today the availability of an updated compliance guideline on documentation required to support animal-raising claims on product labels that processors must submit to the agency for approval of their use on product labels. The updated guideline reflects FSIS’s current position and procedures for reviewing animal-raising claims and includes explanations of animal-raising claims that FSIS may approve as well as the types of supporting documentation that the agency requires. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. Senate passed a bill that revises the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 to include video and online sales of livestock.  The legislation -- H.R. 5883, the Clarification of Treatment of Electronic Sales of Livestock Act of 2016 -- passed the House of Representatives and is now headed to the White House. [node:read-more:link]

JBS S.A. said China suspended poultry meat purchases from two of the company's plants in Brazil, due to sanitary irregularities. [node:read-more:link]

Our current cultural obsession with reducing saturated fats and animal proteins from our diets will be the end of us.  For fifty years we’ve been following the advice of the Department of Agriculture and the American Heart Association. Myriads of so-called “unbiased” studies and nutritional experts have peddled their influences to promote the false premise that heart disease, cholesterol and overall health is improved if we eat less fat. American’s have reduced fats in their diets by 10 percent since 1970 and cut back even more on saturated fats. [node:read-more:link]

Come Jan. 1, 2017, hobbyist and commercial beekeepers alike will no longer be able to purchase antimicrobials over the counter, but instead, will need a veterinary feed directive or prescription for the drugs they administer to their honeybees.  The federal mandate requiring veterinary oversight of medically important antimicrobials in food-producing animals, including honeybees, is part of a Food and Drug Administration strategy to reform the way these drugs are legally used in food animals.  [node:read-more:link]