News Update
July 28, 2011

Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Inc. Expands Production Facility

Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Inc. (BIVI) has a strong foundation of innovative biological and pharmaceutical research and development, manufacturing and technical service. And, the company takes pride in keeping those service operations close at hand in facilities that are owned and operated in the United States.

In 2009, BIVI significantly increased the size of its animal health division with the addition of several cattle product lines and substantial manufacturing assets in Fort Dodge, Iowa. This was done through the acquisition of selected assets that were formerly part of Fort Dodge Animal Health. And, this year BIVI is taking the final step to integrate all of those new products into its production chain.

“BIVI is expanding its state-of-the-art biological GMP manufacturing facility in St. Joseph to accommodate the significant global increase in demand for animal health products,” says Colin Meyers, executive director of U.S. cattle business and process excellence, BIVI. “We are excited because, with this expansion, BIVI is increasing the size of the plant by more than 50%.”

Upon completion of the expansion to the facility, the company will be producing several more cattle vaccine product lines at the St. Joseph, Mo., facility. This will move products including Presponse®, TrichGuard®, TriVib®, Triangle®, Pyramid®, Prism™ and EnterVene™ by the end of 2011. In fact, the antigen production capacity will be increasing by 80%, with 50% going to the manufacture of cattle biological products.

Additional expansion will increase capacity in several other areas:

• 20% percent in growth-media preparation;
• 100% in antigen blending; and
• 20% in final-product filling.

“Our main goal with this expansion is to continue to provide a consistent supply of high-quality products to our customers,” Meyers says. “With our new, extensive portfolio of products for the beef and dairy businesses, we are excited about our abilities to better serve those markets.”
For more information, please visit www.bi-vetmedica.com.  

— Release by BIVI.

USDA Designates Counties in Oklahoma as Primary Natural Disaster Areas

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has designated 67 counties in Oklahoma as primary natural disaster areas due to losses caused by the combined effects of drought, wildfires, excessive heat, excessive rain, flooding, tornadoes, lightning, high winds, hail, blizzards and freezes that occurred during the period of Jan. 1, 2011, and continues. 

Those counties are: Alfalfa, Atoka, Beaver, Beckham, Blaine, Bryan, Caddo, Canadian, Carter, Choctaw, Cimarron, Cleveland, Coal, Comanche, Cotton, Creek, Custer, Dewey, Ellis, Garfield, Garvin, Grady, Grant, Greer, Harmon, Harper, Haskell, Hughes, Jefferson, Johnston, Kay, Kingfisher, Kiowa, Latimer, Le Flore, Lincoln, Logan, Love, Major, Marshall, McClain, McCurtain, McIntosh, Murray, Muskogee, Noble, Okfuskee, Oklahoma, Okmulgee, Osage, Pawnee, Payne, Pittsburg, Pontotoc, Pottawatomie, Pushmataha, Roger Mills, Seminole, Sequoyah, Stephens, Texas, Tillman, Wagoner, Washita, Woods and Woodward.

Farmers and ranchers in Adair, Cherokee, Mayes, Rogers, Tulsa and Washington counties in Oklahoma also qualify for natural disaster assistance because their counties are contiguous.

Farmers and ranchers in the following counties in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Texas also qualify for natural disaster assistance because their counties are contiguous.

• Crawford, Little River, Polk, Scott, Sebastian and Sevier in Arkansas.
• Baca in Colorado.
• Barber, Chautauqua, Clark, Comanche, Cowley, Harper, Meade, Morton, Seward and Sumner in Kansas
• Union in New Mexico.
• Bowie, Childress , Clay, Collingsworth, Cooke, Dallam, Fannin, Grayson, Hansford, Hardeman, Hemphill, Lamar, Lipscomb, Montague, Ochiltree, Red River, Sherman, Wheeler Wichita and Wilbarger in Texas.

In a separate announcement, USDA designated Adair and Cherokee counties in Oklahoma as primary natural disaster areas due to losses caused by the combined effects of blizzards, excessive rain, flooding, high winds and tornadoes that occurred during the period of Jan. 1, 2011, and continues. Farmers and ranchers in Delaware, Mayes, Muskogee, Sequoyah and Wagoner counties in Oklahoma also qualify for natural disaster assistance because their counties are contiguous.

All counties listed above were designated natural disaster areas July 27, 2011, making all qualified farm operators in the designated areas eligible for low interest emergency (EM) loans from USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA), provided eligibility requirements are met. Farmers in eligible counties have eight months from the date of the declaration to apply for loans to help cover part of their actual losses. FSA will consider each loan application on its own merits, taking into account the extent of losses, security available and repayment ability. FSA has a variety of programs, in addition to the EM loan program, to help eligible farmers recover from adversity.

USDA also has made other programs available to assist farmers and ranchers, including the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program (SURE), which was approved as part of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008; the Emergency Conservation Program; Federal Crop Insurance; and the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program. Interested farmers may contact their local USDA Service Centers for further information on eligibility requirements and application procedures for these and other programs. Additional information is also available online at http://disaster.fsa.usda.gov.

— Release by USDA.

Alltech and iHigh.com Create an Online Multimedia Outlet Dedicated to Agriculture

Alltech has partnered with global online network iHigh for the creation of a Web portal and streaming video channel specifically devoted to agriculture. The Alltech Ag Network www.ihigh.com/alltech/ will provide a platform for agriculture’s stories to be told, specifically through the live online broadcast of agriculture events.

A demonstration of the Alltech Ag Network by iHigh’s CEO Jim Host and Alltech’s President Pearse Lyons was aired live at 10 a.m. EST Thursday, July 28, and will be available for later on demand viewing at www.AlltechAgNetwork.com. Network features include live streaming, mobile broadcasting, unlimited photo uploads, a calendar system for event promotion, and email blast functions. Since June 2010, there have been nearly 12 million video views and more than 46 million photo views on iHigh sites.

“Over the last several decades, we’ve seen our ever-growing population migrate to cities, away from the origins of their food,” said Lyons, president and founder of Alltech. “At Alltech, we are committed to narrowing the gap between family and farm, and we believe the Alltech Ag Network on iHigh will further this mission as it highlights the world of agriculture.”  

Content on the Alltech Ag Network is user-generated, allowing consumers to craft what they want to see and how they’d like to see it. Using iHigh’s unique content platform, organizations such as the National High School Rodeo, US Pony Club, USA Swimming, the Bass Federation, BMX tracks, youth basketball organizations, and school clubs are able to share their events in real time with a global audience who can access the streaming video on any computer or mobile device.

“As Internet use continues to grow, many affinity groups, especially ag related youth groups such as rodeo, equine associations, FFA and others, are seeking methods to provide better exposure to their organizations and drive interest and membership,” said iHigh CEO Jim Host. “Through our partnership with Alltech, coupled with our feature rich web platform, these affinity groups will now have a cost-effective means of sharing their content and letting the world know more about them.”

— Release by Alltech.

Group Grateful for House Introduction of Livestock Marketing Fairness Act

Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF USA) praised Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) for their sponsorship and co-sponsorship, respectively, of H.R. 2631: the bipartisan Livestock Marketing Fairness Act (Act) introduced in Congress on Monday, July 25. The Act, among other things, would prohibit meatpackers from removing live cattle from the competitive marketplace without first negotiating a firm base price for the cattle — a practice the organization says is increasingly used by meatpackers to gain an anticompetitive advantage over cattle farmers and ranchers through what are called un-priced formula contracts.

According to R-CALF USA, meatpackers tie up large numbers of cattle in the marketplace with un-priced formula contracts that cause a severe reduction in the volume of cattle that comprise the negotiated market or cash market, which is the price-discovery market for the entire cattle industry.

“The primary benefit to cattle farmers and ranchers who enter these contracts is that they can avoid the meatpackers’ practice of restricting timely access to the market when their cattle are ready for slaughter, which is becoming a huge problem in the industry now that only four meatpackers control the slaughter of more than 80% of the nation’s slaughter-ready cattle,” said R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard. 

“Because only a handful of meatpackers act as gatekeepers to the entire cattle market, they can — and do — coerce cattle farmers and ranchers to enter these contracts in return for timely market access, even though cattle farmers and ranchers know the aggregate effect of their un-priced formula contracts is to lower the price of cattle for everyone,” he added.  

Bullard said these un-priced formula contracts benefit meatpackers by allowing them to have large numbers of cattle committed to them without ever having to negotiate a price. As a result, he said, “these formula contracts function like direct packer ownership of cattle — meatpackers control the cattle while they are being fed but with an additional advantage — they don’t have to pay for the cattle until after they are slaughtered.

“These un-priced formula contacts have thinned our cash market to the point where it is incapable of true price discovery, they have severely reduced price transparency in the marketplace, and they give the meatpackers leverage to manipulate the price-discovery market — an outcome that occurs when meatpackers call-in their formula contracts in order to avoid negotiating or bidding in the cash market,” Bullard says.

R-CALF USA has sought a prohibition against un-priced formula contracts for more than a decade and claims such contracts have enabled meatpackers to prosper by unfairly capturing a significant percentage of the competitive value of cattle sold by U.S. farmers and ranchers. “Using USDA data, we developed a chart
www.r-calfusa.com/Competition/110727BeefvsCattlePriceSpreads.jpg with trend lines that show since 1980, the spread between what meatpackers receive for beef and beef byproducts and the value of what U.S. farmers and ranchers receive for their cattle has increased about 60%,” Bullard said. 

Bullard added, “It should surprise no one that over half a million U.S. cattle farmers and ranchers have exited the cattle industry since 1980 while meatpackers were engaged in such anticompetitive buying practices as exemplified by un-priced formula contracts that enable meatpackers to both prosper and keep up with inflation on the backs of hard working U.S. farmers and ranchers.   

— Adapted from release by R-CALF USA.

— Compiled by Linda Robbins, assistant editor, Angus Productions Inc.