Agri-Pulse staff

Conservation and environmental groups, including the Environmental Working Group, hailed Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., when his amendment linking participation in the federal crop insurance program to conservation compliance, passed on the Senate floor last week by 52-47.

The G8 Science Ministers met in London on Wednesday as part of the UK’s G8 Presidency, where they focused on antibiotic resistance as a global danger.

The United States, together with the other eight countries that make up the TPP the Trans-Pacific Partnership invited Mexico to join the negotiations of this initiative on Monday. Canada joined the “club” a day later. Japan is still a possibility.

U.S. and European Union officials are reportedly near a decision on whether to pursue a free trade agreement. An assessment of a possible FTA from trade officials on both sides of the Atlantic is expected later this month.

The European Commission’s agriculture and rural development directorate, the EU equivalent of a country’s agriculture ministry, has fired off an unusual rebuttal to a new U.S. industry-led group that hopes to put a brake on EU claims to exclusive use of many popular food names.

The National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) suggests the emissions estimating methodologies (EEM) proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the development of lagoons and basins for swine and dairy feeding operations is not worth the paper it’s printed on.

With President Obama’s executive order to halt the deportation of young, illegal immigrants announced late last week, U.S. agriculture is wrestling its possible impact on the labor force.

Cotton provisions as determined by Congress in a new farm bill could trigger retaliation by Brazil over a trade dispute.

The House Committee on Appropriations voted to include measures banning USDA horse slaughter inspection, including fresh potatoes in the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutrition program, and suspending farm program benefits to farmers earning more than $250,000 annually in the Fiscal Year 2013

Renewable energy advocates saw the Senate turn away several amendments to the 2012 farm bill under consideration this week that targeted biofuel development.