Veterinarians in North America and Europe are under pressure to reduce antimicrobial administration on swine farms. Determining which uses are judicious and measuring outcomes are difficult, according to speakers at a March 3-6 meeting of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians in San Diego. They described challenges related to collecting data that could be used to set policy and link changes in antimicrobial use with outcomes in prevalence of drug resistance, as well as those related to policymaking swayed more by opinion than research.Dr. [node:read-more:link]

Dogs cannot get ‘autism’, the British Veterinary Association has warned, after the ‘anti-vaccine’ movement spread to pets. 'Anti-vaxxers' believe that immunisations have harmful side effects and may be the cause of autism in children - beliefs widely debunked by the medical community.This theory is increasingly being applied to pets, particularly in the US, and there are fears it is spreading to the UK and could cause already low vaccination rates to fall. [node:read-more:link]

How much is that doggie in the window? That question may become just an old song title instead of a hopeful customer inquiry, if a trend continues against selling certain animals in pet stores.Maryland recently became the second state to ban retail pet stores from selling puppies and kittens, a move supporters of the legislation say will help discourage “puppy mills” that breed dogs in inhumane conditions and euthanize the animals when they are no longer able to breed. [node:read-more:link]

The Kasich administration and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency are poised to take a stronger regulatory approach to cleaning up the state’s waters, including the open waters of Lake Erie. Three weeks after declaring the western portion of Lake Erie impaired, the Ohio EPA, on April 16, released a study showing “no clear trend” of a nutrient loading decrease in most of the state’s watersheds, citing agriculture and other nonpoint sources as the main contributor. [node:read-more:link]

Outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming is an 8,900-acre former ranch where cattle and horses once roamed. Now it's just open land with nothing but grass. When the owner passed away he didn't have a succession plan. With no obvious heirs, a family member sold it. It eventually became subdivided and a realty company now advertises it for redevelopment primarily as retirement or vacation properties. [node:read-more:link]

The House Agriculture Committee’s version of the farm bill would strip billions in nutrition benefits from American families, rural residents are more likely than metropolitan ones to be participating in the program. Conventional Beltway wisdom is that farm bills pass Congress with relative ease from a rare bipartisan coalition of rural legislators delivering farm programs for their constituencies while urban legislators gain nutrition assistance and food aid in the cities. [node:read-more:link]

The University of California will argued before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to overturn the February 2017 ruling of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and reinstate the interference regarding the patent rights for CRISPR-Cas9.A research team led by UC Berkeley professor Jennifer Doudna and former University of Vienna professor Emmanuelle Charpentier was the first to invent methods for using CRISPR-Cas9 outside its natural environment. [node:read-more:link]

isteriosis outbreaks associated with soft cheeses have been trending up in the United States since 2006, with high percentages of pregnant women and Hispanic people among those sickened. The risk for infection increases up to 160-fold when such cheeses are made from unpasteurized, raw milk. [node:read-more:link]

In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, dairying in New England was in crisis. Small farms were faced with a lack of demand for agricultural labor, according to Vermont Representative Peter Conlon, 53. Conlon, who was born and raised in Vermont, worked as a dairy labor specialist for ten years with Agri-Placement, a company that offers employee placement and support services for dairy farms. “Americans have, by and large, walked away from doing this kind of job,” Conlon said. [node:read-more:link]

The Senate Appropriations Committee has added an emergency rescue package to help struggling dairy farmers get through a very difficult year so far in 2018. Wholesale milk prices remain below the cost of production for many northeast dairy operations. "Help is on the way," said Sen. [node:read-more:link]