Articles by Jim Webster

Reps. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and David Scott, D-Ga., yesterday introduced a bill that would offer dairy farmers revenue protection without what they call the “supply management” feature of the dairy section in last year’s Senate and House Agriculture Committee farm bills.

Senior members of the Senate Finance Committee signaled today that they want the administration to negotiate a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement that expands market access for U.S. agricultural exports and protects patents and other intellectual property for such products as medicine

Splitting Smithfield Foods into three independent companies by “divesting underperforming and highly volatile hog production and select European assets” and taking other steps would boost its share price to $40 within three years, Continental Grain said

The Environmental Working Group is touting government research [http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/NewsEvents/CVMUpdates/ucm335102.htm] that, it asserts, “has documented startlingly high percentages of supermarket meat containing antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”

The Department of Justice confirmed today that its Antitrust Division will not stand in the way of JBS USA’s acquisition of cow and bull slaughter plants at Omaha, Neb., and Nampa, Idaho, from bankrupt Canadian firm XL Foods

The International Dairy Foods Association says that Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has options to avoid or delay the effect of a 1949 law that could drastically raise milk prices

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., warned the Senate Friday that milk “market chaos will erupt” if Congress fails to stop a permanent 1949 law from taking effect in January, setting off a chain of events that could double the prices of milk and dairy products.

The Food and Drug Administration took a big step today toward commercial approval of salmon genetically engineered to grow faster than its regular counterpart. FDA’s publication of a 158-page environmental assessment and a 5-page “finding of no significant impact” drew the expected howls from peren

Rural Americans need new alliances with urban and suburban interests if they are ever to regain the political clout they enjoyed in the past, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce forum in Washington today.

A U.S. District Court judge today threw out a suit by attorneys representing the Waterkeeper Alliance [http://www.waterkeeper.org] against a Maryland family and Perdue Farms