Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Members of Congress chastise the US Department of Agriculture in a Jan. 17 letter for threatening to withdraw a widely popular final rule passed in the 11th hour of the Obama Administration that would heighten animal welfare standards for organic producers. USDA announced in December that it intended to withdraw the Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices final rule, which outlined sweeping changes in how organic animals are housed, transported and slaughtered, because the department claimed the rule exceeds the statutory authority of the National Organic Program.
Thanks to the locavore movement, we're used to food with origin stories: that venison tartare once ran free in a forest in Katonah. But what about the farmers? They started out somewhere, too.
In this undated file photo provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Plum Island is seen from the air in the waters off the northern shore of New YorkA's Long Island. The future of the mysterious island where infectious animal diseases have been studied since the 1950s is about to gain renewed focus.
With Democrats struggling to stop President Trump in Washington, a cadre of attorneys general have stepped up to claim leadership of the anti- Trump resistance, using the courts to try to derail the administration's agenda. Massachusetts, New York and California are leading the way, with Maryland, Washington and Hawaii also playing major roles in launching legal battles to stop executive actions on issues such as immigration, the environment and Obamacare.
It is imperative to develop a wing in the Federal Investigation Agency similar to the BAU of the FBI, which can recruit well-educated and well-trained specialists to track down and apprehend unusual criminals This brutal murder of Zainab shook the entire country to its core. It garnered both national and international outrage.
Federal government regulators proposed changes Friday in the way most hogs slaughtered for meat in the United States are processed in a series of new rules that officials say improve industry practices but critics say could imperil food safety. The new rules would allow hog slaughter plants to voluntarily join a new proposed inspection system that would put plant employees in charge of removing animals unfit for slaughter before they're processed.
Racing against a midnight deadline, the U.S. Congress will try on Friday to send President Donald Trump legislation to keep the government operating and avoid federal agency shutdowns that would otherwise begin on Saturday. The House of Representatives voted 230-197 on Thursday night for a bill to extend expiring funding through Feb. 16. But with tempers frayed and Republicans and Democrats deeply divided over immigration legislation that has found its way into the government funding fight, the bill appeared to be on the verge of collapse in the Senate.
A government accountability group says the state of Illinois is fudging employment data in order to allow more healthy Illinoisans to receive taxpayer-funded food stamps without having to work. The U.S. Department of Agriculture approved an Illinois Department of Human Services waiver request in October for the entire 2018 calendar year.
On January 16, 1865, General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, granting coastal plantation properties from Savannah, Georgia to the St. John's River in Florida to ex-slaves.
Unsettling negotiations have forced the government take a new route in an effort to improve the facilities at the Guam Memorial Hospital. The Guam Economic Development Agency is asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to waive the requirement for interim financing for the Guam Memorial Hospital Labor & Delivery.
The Obama White House politicized the Trafficking in Persons Report of the State Department, undermining the credibility of the report, and months later on January 12, 2017 shut the door on Cuban refugees and migrants in third countries, victims of trafficking, for the Administration's political agenda. This was part of an overall pattern, that began years earlier, of paying lip service to human rights but in practice marginalizing them to advance other interests.
Weather events have been making springs more difficult for producers because of variable weather patterns. The growing season also appears to be getting longer and more rainfall events have been occuring.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry's plan to bolster coal-fired and nuclear power plants was rejected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Jan. 8. Energy Secretary Rick Perry's plan to bolster coal-fired and nuclear power plants was rejected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Jan. 8. Perry, more famously known for his appearance on "Dancing With the Stars" and for saying, "Oops," during a GOP presidential candidate debate in 2011 when he couldn't name the third federal agency he would shut down, made an absurd pitch to revive coal usage despite the cost his plan would have imposed on utility ratepayers and the potential devastation to the environment.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue recently appointed a slate of farmers and ranchers to the Arizona and California state Farm Service Agency committees. Those committee members are responsible for carrying out FSA farm programs.
An Arizona man celebrated for the humanity that was showcased in his photographs of people across the Colorado Plateau and the world has died. John Running died Sunday of complications from a brain tumor at his Flagstaff home, said his daughter, Raechel Running.
USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture in November awarded $2.8 million in grants to support rural health. Of the nine awards funded by NIFA's Rural Health and Safety Education Competitive Grant Program, six were designed specifically to prevent and reduce opioid abuse.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. misled U.S. shoppers by selling organic eggs laid by hens raised in enclosed structures under package labels that said the birds had access to the outdoors, a federal lawsuit alleged on Monday. The suit highlights uncertainty among consumers about production practices in the $500 million organic egg industry, farmers said, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture last month shelved plans to spell out for the first time what it means for birds to have access to the outdoors.
Farmers have grown increasingly anxious with President Donald Trump, who wooed them with promises of deregulation and then threatened to upend programs on which many depend. In the year since rural America voted him into office, the president has proposed deep cuts to crop insurance subsidies, reductions in the number of immigrants entering the United States and withdrawal from the North American Free Trade Agreement - all of which have rattled farmers.
SECRETARY PERDUE PRESENTS AGRICULTURE AND RURAL PROSPERITY TASK FORCE REPORT TO PRESIDENT TRUMP Jan. 9, 2018 Source: USDA news release U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue will ceremonially present today the findings of the Interagency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity to President Donald J. Trump at the 2018 American Farm Bureau Annual Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. On April 25, 2017, President Trump signed an Executive Order establishing the task force "to ensure the informed exercise of regulatory authority that impacts agriculture and rural communities."
AG SEC'Y PERDUE HIGHLIGHTS PRIORITIES, ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN NEW ADMINISTRATION AND USDA Jan. 9, 2018 Source: American Farm Bureau news release The Agriculture Department is being reoriented with a new focus on farmers, its customers, and has already built a record of success, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said today. He made his comments at the American Farm Bureau Federation's 2018 Annual Convention & IDEAg Trade Show in Nashville.