The eco-warriors are getting increasingly desperate in their histrionic attacks on science. A group of environmental activists will host a faux tribunal in The Hague to pretend to prosecute Monsanto for crimes against humanity. The Missouri-based company sells both genetically engineered seeds and pesticides, which makes them Enemy No. 1 of the socialist Luddites who lead the global environmental movement.

  [node:read-more:link]

The lesson so far is lost on most lawmakers and regulators. In July, President Barack Obama signed a bill requiring foods containing genetically modified organisms to be labeled as such. It's an outwardly innocuous requirement that is supposed to leave consumers better informed but will actually cause many to be misled. The implication of the mandate is that there is some important difference between foods that contain GMOs and foods that don't. But there isn't. [node:read-more:link]

In downtown Des Moines Oct. 12, we honor an agricultural scientist whose work has been compared to that of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Carl Sagan.  And yes, even to that of Iowa-born Norman Borlaug.  I don’t claim that University of Florida horticulture professor Kevin Folta has saved a billion lives. That’s Borlaug’s legacy. But the plaudits for Folta are that he’s done as much as anyone in the past decade to help you understand the biotechnology behind what you eat. What that means is he wants to help you conquer your fears. [node:read-more:link]

A group of mechanical engineering students at Brigham Young University-Idaho are helping the owners of a local cheese plant renovate existing equipment to produce new products.  The five students, working under Alan Dutson, the university’s mechanical engineering academic outcomes and assessment director, are working to upgrade the Nelson-Ricks Creamery for their “capstone” project — which offers a real-world challenge in lieu of writing a thesis. [node:read-more:link]

The public will have another month to weigh in on a controversial new mega-dairy proposed at the former Boardman Tree Farm property.  More than 2,300 comments have already poured in to the Oregon Department of Agriculture and Department of Environmental Quality on the Lost Valley Ranch, an operation that would add 30,000 cows to the area and generate roughly 187 million gallons of liquid manure each year.   ODA and DEQ are responsible for registering the dairy as a confined animal feeding operation, or CAFO. [node:read-more:link]

An environmentalist group has failed to persuade a federal judge that sheep grazing on about 220,000 publicly owned acres in Idaho violates environmental law.  Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Bush has rejected several arguments by the Western Watersheds Project that federal land managers insufficiently studied the impact of grazing on sage grouse habitat.  In 2013, the U.S. [node:read-more:link]

Just as the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur began Tuesday night, a federal judge lifted a temporary restraining order against a California synagogue performing a ritual where chickens are twirled in the air before they’re slaughtered.  Judge Andre Birotte Jr. had granted the order last week at the request of an animal rights group called United Poultry Concerns, and he scheduled a hearing for Thursday. [node:read-more:link]

The avian influenza virus may be quickly inactivated by heat, a USDA researcher has shown.  Erica Spackman, of USDA ARS, recently completed research that provides various time and temperature profiles to effectively inactivate the avian influenza virus in chicken litter. For example, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) was inactivated after just one day at a temperature of 90°F (USDA recommends two days to ensure inactivation, though). [node:read-more:link]

The Bureau of Land Management has horses grazing on a ranch the agency rents, one of 60 private ranches, corrals and feedlots where it stores 46,000 wild horses it has removed from the West's public lands. The cost:49 million a year. The expense eats up 66 percent of the federal budget for managing wild horses. The program cannot afford to continue old management practices that created the problem, or afford to come up with solutions that might fix it. [node:read-more:link]