News Update

News Update
April 11, 2008

Farm Bill Committee Meets

The 2007 Farm Bill Conference Committee, composed of members of the House of Representatives and Senate, met April 10 for the first time to help push the Farm Bill into existence. According to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), the House made an “opening offer” for the Farm Bill budget; however, the Senate rejected this offer and is expected to counter with its own offer next week.

As the April 18 deadline nears, Conference Committee Chairman Sen. Tom Harkin (D–Iowa) said the Farm Bill has come too far for another extension, NCBA reported. Others remarked they think the legislation could be settled within a matter of days.

The Committee is expected to meet again early next week. Until then, the nation’s farmers and ranchers will continue to wait.

New York Times: Biofuels Contributing to Food Crisis

Corn-ethanol production is contributing to a world food crisis, and the United States and other developed countries have an obligation to “step up to the plate” and help solve this increasing problem, according to an editorial published April 10 in The New York Times.

The editorial cited last year’s food import bill and stated that the increases in corn and wheat prices have created unrest from Haiti to Egypt.

According to the American Meat Institute (AMI), the editorial points to International Monetary Fund estimates that corn ethanol production in the United States accounted for at least half the rise in world corn demand in each of the past three years.

“Continued growth of the middle class in China and India, the push for renewable fuels and anticipated damage to agricultural production caused by global warming mean that food prices are likely to stay high. Millions of people, mainly in developing countries, could need aid to avoid malnutrition. Rich countries’ energy policies helped create the problem. Now those countries should help solve it,” the editorial concludes.

To view this editorial in its entirety, click here: http://www.meatami.com/storylinks/2008/NYTimesEditorialTheWorldFoodCrisis.pdf.

— Information provided by AMI.

Groups Oppose JBS Deal

More than 70 organizations signed a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ), asking it to block acquisition of Smithfield Beef and National Beef by Brazil-based JBS Swift.

According to the High Plains Journal, the letter asked DOJ’s Antitrust Division to “scrutinize the merger, issue a second request, and strongly consider blocking the deal.”

The group of fears the merger would have adverse effects for family-based livestock producers as well as consumers. The letter suggested the proposed merger would “harm price, choice, innovation and competition in the beef industry,” the High Plains Journal reported.

Mineral Programs for Beef Cows Grazing Pasture

After salt and supplementation of magnesium oxide in grass tetany areas, mineral supplementation programs can vary. Soil’s mineral profiles affect mineral profile in the forage and, therefore, the minerals that need supplemented. Also, forage maturity affects mineral composition. The 1996 National Research Council (NRC) for Beef Cattle report suggests there are at least 17 minerals required by beef cattle. There are minerals that interact with one-another and therefore affect their utilization. These need to be factored into a supplementation strategy.

Phosphorus (P) is a required mineral by beef cattle and is one of the most expensive minerals in a mineral supplement. So how much phosphorus supplementation is needed for cows grazing pasture this summer? Phosphorus needs for beef cows is affected by milk production and forage type. High-milk females require more compared to average- to low-milk females. The 1996 NRC indicates that the phosphorus needs average about 22 grams (g) per day for the first 6 months postcalving, with a range from 25 g per day to 18 g per day for a 1,200-pound (lb.) female who’s peak milk production is 18 lb. per day. If she consumes 2.5% of her body weight dry matter (DM) basis during June grazing and 2.3% in August and 2.1% in October and summer range is .17%, .16%, and .15% phosphorus in June, August, and October, how much phosphorus is needed from the mineral supplement?

In June, she’s getting 23 g per day from the forage, so if she eat 2 ounces (oz.) of a 6% phosphorus mineral supplement, it would supply another 3.4 g (2 oz./16 oz. per lb x 454 g/lb. x .06 P in the mineral = 3.4 g) of phosphorus, which meets her phosphorusrequirement. In August let’s assume that the average dam is 5 months postcalving and she needs 19 to 20 g perday P. Calculations based on intake and phosphorus content of the forage indicates she is getting 20 g per day from the forage (1,200-lb. cow x .023 x .0016 x 454 g per lb. = 20 g per day). In October, milk production has declined substantially,warm-season range quality is also declining, and the cow needs 17 to 18 g of phosphorus per day. If she is consuming 2.1% of per body weight and the forage is .15% P, she is getting 17 g per day from the forage.

Minerals are important for beef cows. Overfeeding them is not economical. Phosphorus is an expensive component of a mineral program. In my example, supplementation of phosphorus through the breeding season for cows grazing warm-season pasture in Nebraska seems needed, and after that it is hard to pencil in. Contact your state beef specialist to see if they have mineral profiles of common grasses in pastures in your state and then do the calculations.

— Article by Rick Rasby, University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor of animal science, as posted April 11 at http://beef.unl.edu.

AVMA Opens Online Resource to General Public

Launched earlier this month as a members-only benefit, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) has opened access to its AVMA Collections to the general public, expanding the public’s ability to tap into cutting edge and up-to-date veterinary medical information.

AVMA Collections was created to offer AVMA member veterinarians compilations of articles organized by topic/subject from the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) and other AVMA journals. While the JAVMA is an excellent source of research and information on veterinary medicine, this new resource will provide quick, easy access to a collection of articles on a specific topic, dramatically improving the speed at which articles may be researched. AVMA Collections helps readers — and now everyone — make sense of the deep resources that the JAVMA offers.

Currently, AVMA Collections offers compilations of articles on topics such as obesity in dogs and zoonotic diseases, which are diseases transmittable between animals and humans such as Lyme disease, E coli, and tuberculosis (TB) to name a few. Each article in AVMA Collections is carefully selected by AVMA journal editors to give the most helpful picture of current knowledge in a given subject area.

AVMA Collections is designed to be quick, easy to use and informative. Each Collection is organized around a table of contents, which offers a topic summary and highlights for each article. If the reader desires more information than a summary provides, the entire article is just a hyperlink away.

AVMA Collections accessible online at http://www.avma.org/avmacollections/. For more information, please visit www.avma.org.

— compiled by Crystal Albers, associate editor, Angus Productions Inc.