Officials in a central Indiana county are dropping their fight against a proposed 10,000-hog farm after threats of legal action since a state agency has approved the project. The Delaware County commissioner had put a hold on building permits for the farm in the northern part of the county. The Indiana Department of Environmental Management recently approved plans for the confined animal feeding operation. That's despite concerns from residents over possible well water pollution and the farm field application of manure produced in the site's four barns. [node:read-more:link]

Cattle and horses account for 90% of all animal-related deaths in the United States, and that number hasn’t changed since the last time researchers collected this data in 2007. Jared Forrester, M.D., the lead investigator for the study covering fatalities from venomous and nonvenomous animals from 2008-2015 says that learning more about deaths due to animals in farm environments would help target practices that would prevent these deaths. [node:read-more:link]

Bioengineers have figured out a way to make noscapine, a non-narcotic cough suppressant that occurs naturally in opium poppies, in brewer's yeast. [node:read-more:link]

U.S. states that have approved medical cannabis laws saw a dramatic reduction in opioid use, according to a new study. [node:read-more:link]

The prospective plantings report released March 29 sent ripples across the commodity trading floors and turned screens green. The U.S. Department of Agriculture report, based on farmer surveys, projected U.S. soybean planted acres of 89 million and 88 million corn acres. The USDA initially projected 90 million planted acres of both corn and soybeans in its Feb. 23 agricultural outlook forum. [node:read-more:link]

To recruit more fishers to help with marine conservation, cast a wider net. New findings question previous assumptions in the field that the payments themselves are the most effective motivator of participation. "Similar to the way consumers make purchasing decisions, voluntary conservation programs are value propositions," said Josh Donlan, founder and director of Advanced Conservation Strategies and co-author on the study. [node:read-more:link]

A federal judge says he won’t send jurors for a see-and-sniff tour of a North Carolina hog-growing operation at the center of a lawsuit claiming industrial-scale pork production causes ugly conditions. Judge W. Earl Britt ruled Monday that jurors would not get a true feel for conditions with one quick visit to a Bladen County farm growing animals for Virginia’s Smithfield Foods. Britt’s decision came as jurors were being selected for a trial that could shake the profits and change production methods of pork producers after a generation of raising hogs in confined conditions. [node:read-more:link]

Delivering meals to vulnerable sick people might be a simple way to cut back on emergency room visits and hospitalizations, reining in some of the costliest kinds of medical care, according to a new Health Affairs study. Low-income seniors or disabled younger people who received home-delivered meals — particularly meals designed by a dietitian for that person's specific medical needs — had fewer emergency visits and lower medical spending than a similar group of people who did not receive meal deliveries. [node:read-more:link]

the United States Department of Agriculture announced that it would no longer regulate crops that have been genetically edited. Gene editing, which includes Crispr techniques, enables researchers and now farmers, to genetically nip and tuck the DNA of living things and sell them to consumers. This could mean editing to make plants bigger, more weather-resistant, or juicier.The USDA’s decision only applies to crops that have had some genes taken out, or which have had genes that are endemic to the species added to them. [node:read-more:link]

he Organization for Competitive Markets has filed a legal challenge against USDA for withdrawing a set livestock marketing rules designed to level the playing field for producers while negotiating supply contracts with larger agribusinesses. On Friday, attorneys for OCM filed a 170-page brief asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis, Missouri, to vacate USDA's actions against the rules last October. The OCM filed an appeal in February.The rules originally were drafted by the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, or GIPSA. [node:read-more:link]