07 Feb 2010
U.S.D.A. Plans to Drop Program to Trace Livestock

I don't know what to say: NAIS has been nixed! I never expected this, never. I'll read it as all good news, but Walter over at NoNais has a good write up and a caveat:

I hope that Vilsack is serious about taking input from ordinary people and not just government, industry and vets. Disease prevention programs will live and die by the hand of the many, not the few. It is education that fights disease as has been historically proven time and again. Heavy handed mandates and regulations will simply produce scoff-laws, rebellion and unenforceable systems. He does not have the money or man power to drive every back road of America.

Faced with stiff resistance from ranchers and farmers, the Obama administration has decided to scrap a national program intended to help authorities quickly identify and track livestock in the event of an animal disease outbreak

(link) [New York Times]

22:31 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

31 Jan 2010
Indiana budget cuts tap meat inspectors

Basically, the State of Indiana is going to eviscerate the state program for inspecting meat. There are roughly a hundred state inspected abattoirs in Indiana. There is only 1 USDA inspected slaughterhouse that's open to appointments (as in not owned by Cargill or ConAgra) in the state. If meat is not slaughtered in an inspected facility, it cannot be sold.

Other states that have closed or reduced their inspection programs have seen a reduction of better than two-thirds in the number of slaughter facilities operating in the state. That means that we can expect to see about 33 inspected facilities operating here after these cuts.

There is no way those slaughterhouses with reduced schedules for inspection can handle the number of animals currently processed for sale by family farms in Indiana. If you buy meat or poultry from a farmer, or at farmers markets, you will be impacted by this. Probably to the extent of having to settle for factory meat from the supermarket. It will simply be impossible for family farmers to get their animals inspected at slaughter, and illegal for them to sell their meat if it's not.

If you care about family farms at all, please contact the governor and your legislators and get this situation rectified.

While taking strategic measures to slash the state budget, Gov. Mitch Daniels turned his attention to the Indiana State Board of Animal Health (BOAH) Meat and Poultry Inspection Program (MPIP) to cut its already fragile budget by 50 percent.

(link) [Farm World]

(link) [Pasture to Plate]

via Masson's Blog

Update: They're backing off.

19:38 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

25 Jan 2010
US to lift 21-year ban on haggis

Just in time for this years Burn's Supper.

Smuggled and bootlegged, it has been the cause of transatlantic tensions for more than two decades. But after 21 years in exile, the haggis is to be allowed back into the United States.

(link) [The Guardian]

via Overlawyered

19:02 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

13 Jan 2010
Organ Damage In Rats From Monsanto GMO Corn

I've often disparaged those who claim that GMO's represent a direct health risk to humans. I've never before seen a credible study that suggested such a thing. I've always believed that the greatest threats such engineered lifeforms present are the danger of market monopolization of food via patents, and the implicit possibility of their spreading to other organisms by cross pollination (also known as the superweed prognosis).

This study, which seems pretty stout as such things go, makes me think I might have been wrong about GMO's direct impact on human health.

A study published in December 2009 in the International Journal of Biological Sciences found that three varieties of Monsanto genetically-modified corn caused damage to the liver, kidneys, and other organs of rats. One of the corn varieties was designed to tolerate broad-spectrum herbicides, (so-called 'Roundup-ready' corn), while the other two contain bacteria-derived proteins that have insecticide properties. The study made use of Monsanto's own raw data.

(link) [Slashdot]

20:13 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

02 Jan 2010
Sheep in the News - Big House Edition

Wool therapy?

Ex-convicts sign up to a new scheme in Edinburgh which teaches skills such as weaving, knitting and crochet.

(link) [BBC News]

09:19 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

27 Dec 2009
Exploring the Stone Age pantry

Perhaps agriculture itself is much older than presumed...

The consumption of wild cereals among prehistoric hunters and gatherers appears to be far more ancient than previously thought, according to a University of Calgary archaeologist who has found the oldest example of extensive reliance on cereal and root staples in the diet of early Homo sapiens more than 100,000 years ago.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

12:28 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

02 Dec 2009
Rural America more prosperous than expected

Insanity. These fellows need to take a road trip outside Urbana-Champaign once in a while. Or perhaps just learn how to set criteria for their studies correctly. It's tough to have a high dropout rate when you don't have any kids. It's tough to have income inequality when better than half your citizens are on Social Security.

For many people "rural" is synonymous with low incomes, limited economic opportunity, and poor schools. However, a recent study at the University of Illinois found that much of rural America is actually prosperous, particularly in the Midwest and Plains.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

20:38 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

29 Nov 2009
Sheep in the News - Green Edition

Australia aims for 'green' sheep by cutting back on burps

I can attest to the fact that sheep breath is horrific - but given the way sheep work, with several stomaches, I seriously doubt they'll be able to breed the gas out, so to speak.

And I can't imagine the line of thinking that turns animals into pollutants - everything on our good green earth that breaths takes in oxygen and puts out carbon dioxide, a "greenhouse gas". What should we do: ban breathing?

Australian scientists are hoping to breed sheep that burp less as part of efforts to tackle climate change.

(link) [BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition]

08:50 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

24 Nov 2009
Sheep in the News - Geriatric Edition

What an appropriate name: that was an ancient ovine!

Lucky, the world's oldest sheep, has died at the age of 23 - twice the normal life expectancy - after a record heat wave in Australia.

(link) [BBC News]

08:41 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

13 Nov 2009
Midwest migrants

It is getting very weird here in west central Indiana. A lot of the illegals have left, heading home for want of work. The "immigrants" that are staying are refugees from the city, most of whom moved out here in better times and are now hanging on by their fingernails to small holds and farmsteads.

It gets more depopulated the further west you go - Walmarts in county seats have killed many a small town down town, and the consolidation of farms just accelerates the process.

It's really very sad. But history moves in cycles, and the population will return. It's not a question of if, but when.

I've become increasingly convinced over the years that our modern American way of life - the rampart consumerism and materialism, the globalization and constant movement, is inherently unsustainable. The shit will eventually hit the fan, and it will probably take the form of some great cataclysm or catastrophe. Biowar, peak oil, global warming, nuclear war - who knows? I doubt that I'll live to see it, but my grandchildren almost certainly will. And they'll have a small hold of their own, if they're up to it.

Two towns, two very different faces of the US heartland

(link) [BBC News]

20:21 /Agriculture | 2 comments | permanent link

10 Nov 2009
Is Monsanto the answer or the problem?

The problem.

Monsanto -- along with its biggest corporate rivals, charitable foundations, public researchers and others -- is forming a loose coalition of interests instigating a second Green Revolution.

(link) [Reuters]

20:32 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

04 Nov 2009
Farmers' markets harvest new business

Nice to see the Hoosier State is doing something right. We're scheduled to participate in the market at Broad Ripple in Indianapolis next year - Lorraine was going to set up and do spinning demos while we flog fleece, lamb and eggs. We'll see how it goes.

Something fresh is growing in Indiana. The number of farmers' markets in the state has increased at double the rate of other US states; between 1994 and 2004 the number of farmers' markets in Indiana increased by an impressive 222 percent. Researchers at Purdue have published an insightful study that identifies the reasons behind this unprecedented growth. The most important factors to customers included: the number of products available, cooking demonstrations and the number of vendors.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

19:52 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

01 Nov 2009
Big Ag takes on the Humane Society

Here's a classic: do you support enshrining Big Ag in the state constitution, or allowing the HSUS to continue their push towards a completely vegan society? From my perspective as a smallholder trying to make a go on the farm, it sounds sorta like the old saw "Beatings will continue until morale improves..."

This is a Morton's Fork, a false dilemma. If they really want to accomplish the stated goals to "maintain food safety, encourage locally grown and raised food, and protect Ohio farms and families" may I suggest that the good people of Ohio add a clause to their constitution similar to Article 13, Section 7 of the Minnesota Constitution:

Any person may sell or peddle the products of the farm or garden occupied and cultivated by him without obtaining a license therefor.

That would do more to promote local agriculture than all of the state boards and inspections ever devised.

At a glance, Issue 2 seems to be no issue at all.

(link) [Cleveland.com]

via NoNAIS

10:50 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

06 Oct 2009
E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection

They say all we have to do is to track every head of livestock from birthing barn to slaughterhouse and we'd eliminate all food poisoning cases. If we know where the sick critters are, the reasoning goes, we can keep them out of the system. But how in the world would NAIS cure this? Most food borne illnesses are not diseases in livestock, but are introduced through factory farming methods and piss ass poor slaughterhouse procedures. Not to mention a supply chain that boggles the mind...

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

Until and unless we are ready to come to grips with the fact that it's the system of food processing that's the culprit, and not the livestock producer, we will be utterly powerless against these outbreaks. And more people will be paralyzed, or worse.

Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor, thought she had a stomach virus. The aches and cramping were tolerable that first day, and she finished her classes.

(link) [New York Times]

13:42 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

23 Sep 2009
Downwind of the big dairy farm

A tale of an (originally Amish) CAFO. And the neighbors downwind.

To those who were fortunate enough to be upwind of Samuel Lantz’s dairy farm — in the corporate offices of an industrial livestock company, perhaps, or in certain corners of the Indiana State House — the events of autumn 2003 would not have raised many eyebrows. Samuel Lantz did what farmers all over Indiana do every year: He put up a barn, populated it with a herd of dairy cattle, and began milking.

(link) [Nuvo]

20:57 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

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