Items Tagged with 'aphis'

The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is working to throw up a “protection zone” around Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to insulate the U.S. pork sector in the event that African Swine Fever jumps from the Dominican Republic to either of the U.S. territories.

USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is proposing draft guidance for a new regulatory review process aimed at determining when genetically engineered plants need the department's approval for commercialization.

African swine fever may not have to make it to the mainland of the U.S. to slam the U.S. pork industry.

The fresh produce sector is joining dairy processors and the supermarket industry in welcoming the Biden administration’s decision to boost SNAP benefits by 27%. The increase comes from revisions to the Thrifty Food Plan, a calculation that USDA uses to determine benefits. The increase is due in part to the fact that the revision is supposed to bring benefit levels in line with federal dietary guidelines.

The Senate Agriculture Committee is set to hold a vote this morning on the nominations of Robert Bonnie to be USDA’s Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm Production and Conservation and Xochitl Torres Small for Under Secretary of Agriculture for Rural Development.

California has its first known appearance in a commercial crop of the black fig fly, a pest that only feeds on that particular fruit. Figs are not a major crop in California, though more are grown in the state than anywhere else in the United States.

African Swine Fever was confirmed in the Dominican Republic last Tuesday, marking its first detection in the Western Hemisphere and the closest it has been to the United States in approximately 40 years.

Several western states are dealing with the second-largest grasshopper outbreak that the U.S. has seen in 35 years.