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]

In June, a Quebec man named Farid Benzenati arrived at his house in Montreal’s east end to see a dog outside, wrestling with a large object. The dog was new to the Pointe-Aux-Trembles neighborhood, and Benzenati at first dismissed the tussle in the neighbor’s backyard as playful. But then he saw human hair. Police found Benzenati’s neighbor, 55-year-old Christiane Vadnais, mauled to death. Responders pronounced Vadnais dead at the scene. Officers shot and killed the animal, which they described as a pit bull. [node:read-more:link]

More than 600,000 military veterans are likely to be without health coverage next year unless more states expand income eligibility for the Medicaid program, researchers at the Urban Institute reported. Of 327,000 uninsured vets in non-expansion states, only 39 percent currently qualify for Medicaid or subsidized marketplace coverage. [node:read-more:link]

USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has preliminarily determined that it will extend deregulation to two lines of genetically engineered (GE) potatoes developed by J.R. Simplot Company for late blight resistance, low acrylamide potential, reduced black spot bruising, and lowered reducing sugars.  APHIS previously reviewed and deregulated these GE traits in other GE potatoes. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. pork industry wants Congress to fully fund a foot and mouth disease vaccine bank in the next farm bill. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack told the Senate Ag Committee last week it would take more than the $150 million livestock groups want for the bank. National Pork Producers Council President John Weber agrees with that assessment and says while they projected $150 million over five years, the U.S. livestock industry is not prepared for any possible FMD outbreak. He says the two foreign laboratories the U.S. could source vaccine from are getting high demand from other countries. [node:read-more:link]

David Thomas is looking over his life's work at the Spooner Agricultural Research Station in northern Wisconsin. After 26 years with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the professor of sheep genetics and management is retiring and the research station's dairy sheep program is going along with him.  The university's College of Agricultural and Life Sciences decided to end the program after being dealt a nearly $3 million cut as part of reductions in state funding to UW System.The Spooner Ag Station has been home to the only land-grant university in the nation researching dairy sheep. [node:read-more:link]

The latest food safety scandal in China might be its most damaging. [node:read-more:link]