The AVMA, Canadian VMA, and Federation of Veterinarians of Europe are calling for continuous monitoring of antimicrobial use and resistance at a global level. The AVMA also has created definitions of antimicrobial use for treatment, control, and prevention. A new joint statement from the AVMA, CVMA, and FVE "describes broad steps and strategies veterinarians around the world can take to preserve the effectiveness and availability of antimicrobial drugs while safeguarding animal, public and environmental health," according to a Dec. 6 announcement. [node:read-more:link]

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday that he has asked the Legislature to change Florida law to allow smoking medical marijuana. If lawmakers don’t comply by mid March, he’ll drop the state’s appeal of a court decision that says banning it violates a constitutional amendment. [node:read-more:link]

Citing the devastation and expense of fighting Washington’s wildland blazes, state Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz proposed a “groundbreaking strategic plan” Thursday to prevent and respond to wildfires. Franz’s 10-year plan would add 30 full-time and 40 seasonal wildland firefighters to the agency and add two helicopters to the state’s aerial firefighting resources, with one to be assembled from parts the state already has on hand, a practice DNR has used in the past. The proposal would create a wildland fire-training academy for different agencies to use. [node:read-more:link]

Moving swiftly, a federal judge on Thursday struck down limits on early voting that Republican lawmakers approved last month in a lame-duck session. In a five-page ruling, U.S. District Judge James Peterson concluded the new limits on early voting are invalid because they so closely mirror ones he struck down as unconstitutional in 2016. His decision also threw out parts of the lame-duck laws affecting IDs and other credentials that can be used for voting. [node:read-more:link]

A long understudied facet of the American housing market, evictions have hit no area of the country harder than the South, a region home to most of the top-evicting large and mid-sized U.S. cities, according to a list released by Princeton’s Eviction Lab. Last year Eviction Lab debuted what’s thought to be the nation’s largest eviction database, revealing that U.S. property owners had submitted at least 2.3 million eviction filings in 2016. [node:read-more:link]

Last year, demand for Oatly, a Swedish oat milk popular at third-wave American coffee shops, outpaced supply. National shortages ensued. Oatly superfans were devastated, and apparently willing to spend $25 per 32-ounce carton on Amazon. It’s tempting to write this off as a fluke or embarrassing display of disposable income. [node:read-more:link]

A Marinette County farm is receiving backlash after a video surfaced of an employee using an electrically heated hot iron to burn the horn buds of the heads of calves. The video shows an employee using the hot iron on approximately 12-week-old calves without giving the calves an anesthetic or giving them pain relief afterwards. During the incident, the calves were kicking their legs, bellowing, flinching and attempting to pull their heads away from the hot irons. The employee also used metal restraints on them. [node:read-more:link]

College will be free for virtually all Cleveland school district graduates starting with this year’s senior class, after the much-anticipated launch today of the Say Yes to Education college scholarship and student support program in the city. A team of city, county, philanthropic and Say Yes leaders announced the scholarships at a rally at John Marshall High School to cheering students this morning, pledging that the ever-increasing cost of tuition will no longer block Cleveland school district graduates from attending college. [node:read-more:link]

The dairy market has been a tough market says Bryan Doherty, Vice President of Stewart-Peterson.Doherty relates that monthly increases in milk production and efficiency per cow still climbing have made the market difficult to turn around, largely because of the high supply of milk. However, things appear to be changing.“Prices are low enough where demand is on the grow,” Doherty says.Global dairy prices have continued to pick up steam through the New Year and beef prices are higher, too. [node:read-more:link]

Gov. Ralph Northam announced Thursday the recipients of fiscal year 2019 farmland preservation grants. Six localities have been awarded a total of $633,831 from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ Office of Farmland Preservation. The funds will be used to permanently preserve working farmland through local Purchase of Development Rights (PDR) programs. PDR programs compensate landowners who work with localities to preserve their land permanently by voluntarily securing a perpetual conservation easement. [node:read-more:link]