Agri-Pulse Daybreak for May 10, 2016
WASHINGTON, May 10,
2016 - There’s no shortage of veterinarians in the U.S. to take care of the
dogs, cats, hedgehogs and other animals we call pets, but it can be hard in
some places to find an animal doctor to check out a problem with a dairy cow.
That’s why USDA on Monday announced $2.4
million in funding to help attract animal doctors to places in need as well as
train new vets.
“These funds support activities for veterinarians and veterinary technicians,
helping them gain the specialized skills to address shortages in parts of the
country,” said National Institute of Food and Agriculture Director Sonny
Ramaswamy. “Funds are also available for establishing or expanding veterinary
practices in underserved rural areas.”
Ron DeHaven, former chief veterinarian at USDA and current executive vice
president for the American Veterinary Medical Association, said the USDA funds
are needed.
“There are plenty of companion animal practitioners, but there are areas of the
country with a lot of livestock that don’t have any veterinarians and it really
does get to be an economic issue,” he told Agri-Pulse. “We’re not talking
about large production operations. For example, areas in Montana where there
may be cow-calf operations, but there’s not enough concentration of livestock
to support a veterinarian.”
This funding was authorized in the 2014 Farm Bill.
It’s official: Bison takes over as national mammal. President Obama on
Monday signed into law legislation designating the bison of the national
mammal. According to the National Bison Association, the designation recognizes
not only the historical importance of the animal but also that it is an
“emerging part” of the U.S. farm economy. The bison joins the bald eagle, the
oak tree, and the rose as national symbols of the United States.
U.S. whiskey is big in Japan. The land of the rising sun is really, really
thirsty for U.S. whiskey and U.S. exporters are happy to keep grain-based
liquor flowing across the Pacific. That’s according to a new report from
USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service that says 2015 was a record year for U.S.
whiskey exports to Japan.
Japan imported about 3.1 million gallons of whiskey last year, a 21 percent
increase from about 2.6 million gallons in 2014, FAS data shows.
The report said there are several factors behind the swift rise in imports,
including increased tourism and a popular television show about the birth of
domestic whiskey production in Japan.
Rural group sees bad news in merger. The Federal Communications Commission
approved the mega-merger of Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable and
Bright House Networks yesterday. It’s a development that the Rural Broadband
Association said would hurt rural broadband providers and customers.
“As the nation’s third largest multichannel video programming distributor, New
Charter will wield substantial power, obtaining favorable content pricing and
contract terms that its smaller competitors cannot,” the group’s CEO Shirley
Bloomfield said in a release. “This dynamic has ramifications across the
industry both for those small entities that compete directly with New Charter
and those that do not—and more importantly, for the consumers in rural areas
served by these small businesses.”
Groups want Bundy’s cattle gone. Nine
environmental groups urged Neil Kornze, the director of the Bureau of
Land Management, in a
letter yesterday to expedite the removal of Cliven Bundy’s cattle in
and around Gold Butte, Nev.
The estimated 1,000 head of cattle have been trespassing on the former
Bunkerville allotment since Bundy refused to sign his grazing permit in 1993.
The U.S. District Court of Nevada permanently enjoined Bundy’s use of the
allotment in 1998 and ordered him three times (in 98’, 99’ and 2013) to remove
this livestock. The final order mandated that the federal government seize and
impound the cattle, but when BLM tried to do just that in 2014, it “was forced
to retreat under peril of armed resistance from Mr. Bundy’s sympathizers.”
Bundy was sent to jail for his involvement in the standoff shortly after his
sons Ammon and Ryan Bundy, who led a 41-day armed takeover of the Malheur
National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon earlier this year, were put in jail
on federal conspiracy charges.
In addition to these orders, the government has “a specific mandate” under the
Endangered Species Act to protect the threatened Mojave desert
tortoise from trespassing cattle in Gold Butte, the groups said.
They’ve asked that Bundy’s cattle be rounded up and removed no later than this
summer.
Hearing to begin on proposed Belt cancellation. An EPA Administrative Law
Judge will begin hearing testimony today on an issue with far-reaching
implications for farmers and pesticide registrants. The question is whether
Bayer CropScience should have complied with the terms of its conditional
registration earlier this year and voluntarily cancelled registrations of flubendiamide
products. Marketed under the trade name Belt, flubendiamide is used on more
than 200 crops to control a wide variety of lepidopteran pests. EPA, after
determining its use could harm aquatic invertebrates, asked Bayer to pull its
registrations, but Bayer chose to challenge the decision.
Originally scheduled for four days, the hearing before Administrative Law Judge
Susan Biro is likely to be shorter because the judge ruled last week that Bayer
could not challenge the terms of EPA’s decision on sale and use of existing
stocks. This will limit the amount of testimony Bayer hoped to provide. So,
Bayer’s witnesses will not be able to discuss whether the use of existing
stocks of Belt has “unreasonable adverse effects on the environment.” Before her
latest ruling, Biro had issued a preliminary decision in the case that framed
the legal question simply: whether Bayer complied with the terms of the
conditional registration. The entire matter is probably headed for EPA’s
Environmental Appeals Board, which is likely to make a final decision this
summer.
Whitney Forman-Cook, Phil Brasher and Steve Davies contributed to this report.
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