Agriculture News
Cows break free, defecate on neighboring organic farm's crops, spur $210,000 lawsuit
The Oregonian | Posted on July 29, 2016An Aurora organic farm is suing a co-founder of New Seasons and his son, saying they failed to stop their dairy cows from escaping and defecating on the farm's crops. The $210,000 lawsuit states that the cows belonging to Chuck Eggert and his son, Charlie Eggert, forced neighboring Simington Gardens to throw out its contaminated winter squash and leafy greens and shut down the field for 120 days because of the exposure to manure. The cows got out of a gated enclosure about midnight on April 16, 2014. "Eventually, after several hours, defendants rounded up the cows and returned them to defendants' dairy," the suit states. Simington Gardens was founded by Michael Simington nine years ago, according to the certified organic farm's website. The operation sells produce to grocery stores including New Seasons Markets in addition to Portland-area farmers markets and restaurants.
Major global partnership to speed antibiotic development launched
The Washington Post | Posted on July 29, 2016U.S. and British officials announced an ambitious collaboration designed to accelerate the discovery and development of new antibiotics in the fight against one of the modern era’s greatest health threats: antibiotic resistance. CARB-X, for Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator, will create one of the world’s largest public-private partnerships focused on preclinical discovery and development of new antimicrobial products. The undertaking includes two agencies within the U.S. Health and Human Services Department that focus on biomedical research and Britain’s Wellcome Trust, a London-based global biomedical research charity. It also includes academic, industry and other nongovernmental organizations. The partnership is committed to providing $44 million in funding in the first year and up to $350 million in new funds over five years to increase the number of antibiotics in the drug-development pipeline. The ultimate goal, officials said, is to move promising antibiotic candidates through the critical early stages so they can attract enough private or public investment for advanced development and win approval by U.S. and British regulatory agencies.
Oregon farmer challenging order to confine hogs
Capital Press | Posted on July 29, 2016A pig breeder is challenging the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s order to build a confinement facility for his hogs, arguing it would hurt their health. Luther Clevenger and his wife, Julie, raise Gloucestershire Old Spots pigs and other livestock on their 15-acre property near Aumsville, Ore., which has experienced water drainage problems during heavy winter rains. ODA inspected the operation repeatedly this year after receiving several complaints that Clevenger’s 200 pigs were “creating a huge mess and affecting the property values of all the adjacent property owners” and that water was flowing onto neighbors’ lots. The agency ultimately concluded that Clevenger’s farm was violating water quality standards and ordered a multi-pronged “plan of correction,” requiring him to construct a “swine confinement facility” to prevent pollutant discharges to the “surface water of Oregon,” according to ODA. Currently, the pigs are raised on pasture but have access to portable shelters.
Handling of chicks blamed in multi-state salmonella outbreak
Star Tribune | Posted on July 29, 2016Handling baby chicks or other young poultry can be dangerous to your health and has caused an upswing in illness from salmonella this year. The Minnesota Department of Health has confirmed 19 cases of salmonella infections associated with live poultry contact between early April and early July, including three that required hospitalization. As a result, officials are warning people to wash their hands and take other precautions if they touch or hold newly hatched chicks, ducklings or young turkeys.
Migratory Birds Not a High Path Avian Flu Reservoir, Research Finds
The Poultry Site | Posted on July 28, 2016The H5 avian influenza A virus that devastated North American poultry farms in 2014-15 was initially spread by migratory waterfowl, but evidence suggests such highly pathogenic flu viruses do not persist in wild birds. While wild ducks and other aquatic birds are known to be natural hosts for low pathogenic flu viruses associated with milder symptoms, the results of this study indicate that is not the case with the highly pathogenic flu viruses that are associated with more severe illness. In this study, researchers analysed samples taken from 22,892 wild ducks and other aquatic birds collected before, during and after a 2014-15 H5 flu outbreak in poultry.
Buy-out program successfully protects imperiled California species
Yuba Net | Posted on July 28, 2016Through cooperative agreements with farmers in California’s Central Valley, a historic one hundred percent of rare Tricolored Blackbird colonies on agricultural fields were protected during the 2016 harvest season. Working with the USDA California Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and their Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) Tricolored Blackbird Project, Audubon California helped seven farmers delay the silage harvest, saving roughly 57,000 birds on 378 acres.
Second mega-dairy proposed for Oregon
Statesman Journal | Posted on July 28, 2016A second mega-dairy is planned for Eastern Oregon, close to Threemile Canyon Farms, one of the largest confined animal feeding operations in the nation. The proposed Willow Creek Dairy would house 30,000 animals. It would be the second-largest Oregon dairy, after Threemile Canyon, with 70,000 animals, said Wym Matthews, who oversees confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) for the state Department of Agriculture. The department is taking public comment on the dairy’s proposed water pollution permit, which lays out how it must manage the 187 million gallons of manure it will produce each year.
BLM moves away from landmark Northwest Forest Plan
High Country News | Posted on July 28, 2016runching across a brushy, logged-over slope near Corvallis, Oregon, Reed Wilson points his trekking pole at an ancient Douglas fir in a neighboring patch of forest. The tree is more than an armspan in diameter, its toes decorated with saprophytic orchids and millipedes. One of 117 behemoths among these otherwise young stands, this tree and 38 others also wear necklaces of pink tape. Tree-climbing citizen surveyors left them to mark the presence of red tree vole nests. The vole is also favored prey for the threatened northern spotted owl, and its population here in the low-slung northern Coast Range is a candidate for endangered species protection.
The federal government set aside this area as part of a 10-million-acre network of reserves in western Oregon, Washington and Northern California, largely to protect species like spotted owls and voles whose old-growth habitat was being destroyed by logging. In 2009, though, the Bureau of Land Management proposed a commercial project to thin younger trees here, ostensibly to restore more diverse forest structure. And though the Benton Forest Coalition, to which Wilson belongs, and two other environmental groups forced the agency to leave intact forest around most of the vole trees, several stand alone amid logging slash, their tiny tenants marooned and more vulnerable to predation. “This was native forest,” regenerating from a 1931 wildfire, Wilson says. “It hadn’t been logged before.”
Now, the BLM is proposing a pair of new management plans for its 2.5 million acres in western Oregon. Several environmental groups fear the plans could make it even easier to allow destructive logging inside old-growth reserves.
Rancher’s family initiates wrongful death lawsuit
Capital Press | Posted on July 28, 2016The family of a rancher authorities say was shot and killed by two Adams County Sheriff’s deputies has filed a legal notice of their intent to sue the county. The family of Jack Yantis filed a tort claim earlier this year as a precursor to a wrongful death lawsuit seeking $500,000. Authorities say the deputies shot and killed the 62-year-old Yantis after one of his bulls was hit by a car and charged emergency crews on a highway just north of the tiny town of Council in west-central Idaho. Authorities said the deputies planned to shoot the injured bull when the rancher arrived with a rifle. Investigators say all of them fired their weapons.
Three states in a row for Right to Farm?
Agriculture.com | Posted on July 28, 2016Oklahomans will decide as part of the November general election whether to add a right-to-farm amendment to their state constitution. It’s the third time since 2012 the idea has been tested at the state level. North Dakota approved a right-to-farm amendment in a 2-to-1 landslide in 2012, and Missouri approved its amendment by a razor-thin margin in 2014. Mainline farm groups, ranging from the state Farm Bureau and Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association to retailers and farm suppliers, support the amendment as a line of defense against “deep-pocketed animal rights groups” and other outsiders who would restrict farm and ranch operations. In an appeal to urban voters (66% of the population), umbrella group Oklahoma’s Right to Farm says the amendment, Question 777, will hold down food prices by letting farmers and ranchers decide which production methods work best for them. pponents include animal welfare groups, the Sierra Club, and the Humane Society of the United States, which has pushed state referendums against sow crates, veal-calf stalls, and battery cages for laying hens. Massachusetts will decide a citizen initiative on farm animal confinement on November 8.