News Update
September 19, 2011
Animal Health Industry Seminar Set for Oct. 11 at
K-State–Olathe
Kansas State University’s Department of Agricultural Economics will host a luncheon seminar on animal health regulations from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 11, at the K-State Olathe Campus.
The seminar, the second in the Animal Health Corridor Lecture Series, will address U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations for the animal health industry.
Speakers will include Byron Rippke, director of policy, evaluation and licensing for the USDA APHIS Center for Veterinary Biologics, and Carol Rinehart, director of poultry and cattle vaccines research and development for CEVA Biomune.
“Regulatory compliance is critical in our current environment,” said Kara Ross, K-State agricultural economics research assistant professor and program leader. “Animal health industry professionals have continually expressed the need to have more access to expertise and resources regarding regulatory affairs.”
The newly-formed Animal Health Supply Chain Program helps animal health organizations improve credibility through regulatory compliance. As a result, companies are able to increase competitiveness and create more job opportunities, Ross said.
Registration information is available online under Events. Participants are asked to RSVP by Oct. 3. Lunch is included in the registration cost.
For more information, contact Ross at 785-532-3536 or kross@agecon.ksu.edu.
USDA Announces Public Meeting on Traceability for Livestock Moving Interstate and the Bovine Tuberculosis Program
The Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Animal Health will hold a public meeting Friday, Sept. 23, from noon to 5 p.m. (EST) to consider and discuss various aspects of the recently published proposed rule on traceability for livestock moving interstate. The committee will also consider and discuss the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) bovine tuberculosis (TB) program, including possible wildlife surveillance requirements, test-and-remove management plans and the issue of indemnity within the context of the new bovine TB/brucellosis framework that is being developed. Additional information, including the final agenda for the meeting, will be posted on the committee’s website at www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/acah/.
This meeting will be a multisite teleconference. Members of the public who wish to listen to the teleconference should call 1-888-790-3291 and then enter passcode 1411045. Public attendees can participate in “listen only” mode.
Questions and written comments can be sent up to five days in advance of the teleconference. Submitters can send them via email to SACAH.Management@aphis.usda.gov or via U.S. mail to Michael Doerrer, chief operating officer, USDA, APHIS, Veterinary Services, 4700 River Road, Unit 37, Riverdale, MD 20737-1231. APHIS also plans to allow public access through Twitter during this teleconference. Twitter users should tweet to “@USDA_APHIS” and add “#SACAH” to their message. For further instructions on participating via Twitter, please visit the committee’s website.
The Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Animal Health advises Secretary Tom Vilsack on matters of animal health — including means to prevent, monitor, control or eliminate animal diseases of national importance. In doing so, the committee considers public health, conservation of natural resources and the stability of livestock economies.
This notice for the upcoming teleconference is given pursuant to Section 10 of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (5 U.S.C. App. 2).
The notice is published in the Sept. 16 Federal Register.
New Computer Models to Help Concentrated Animal Producers Tone Down the Smell
Some call it the smell of money, but Teng Teeh Lim thinks that smell does not have to be so bad.
The University of Missouri (MU) Extension researcher wants to give large concentrated animal operations an economical way to lessen those troubling smells.
Lim recently received a $50,000 Mizzou Advantage grant to develop a computer model that allows large producers to use the size and other simple information about their swine or dairy farm to give them a better idea of the amount of emissions and what they can do to address odor or emission issues.
“Measurement of emissions in the field can be very costly, very tedious to conduct and requires such hard work, set up and equipment maintenance for forever-changing pollutants and exhaust from such facilities,” Lim said. “A lot of the information we collect in the field isn’t readily available from average producers, so it becomes a give-and-take thing to create a model that uses only a few key variables that most people can understand and use while only losing some precision.”
Putting microbes to work. One solution lies in Lim’s research on biofilters.
Biofilters — materials like wood chips that support microbial colonies — filter out and break down compounds that create those pungent odors.
“You’re providing an environment for microbes to happily live in and multiply by using the exhaust stream — the odors, the dust, different gases — as nutrients to supply to their own population,” said the MU Extension assistant professor.
Biofilters have existed for decades, but Lim wants to make them cheaper and more accessible to producers.
“There are all kinds of fine details — material selection and composition, filter size, positioning, moisture control — that, when you put them together, becomes an art, especially to do inexpensively,” he said.
Lim’s models use on-the-ground measurements of emissions — such as dust, ammonia and hydrogen sulfides — collected during a two-year study of poultry, swine and dairy farms spearheaded by Purdue University. By attaching a correctly sized, small-scale biofilter to the ventilation system on a hog, dairy or poultry farm, up to 45% of the emissions can be reduced from the facility.
Two sides of a coin. Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) can act as a double-edged sword. A new facility can rejuvenate struggling rural economies with much-needed jobs and tax revenue, but often lawsuits result from the potential subsequent odor problems, which can hurt property values and quality of life for its neighbors.
The economic value of CAFOs to Missouri remains high. A 2011 study funded by the MU College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resource’s Commercial Agriculture Program found that the economic benefit in northwest Missouri totaled about $1.1 billion each year for the region.
Yet, in 2010, a jury awarded one northwest Missouri group of landowners $11 million in a lawsuit against one CAFO, when they ruled that the smell and flies from the facility harmed their quality of life. In spring 2011, the Missouri State General Assembly passed a bill that would limit the monetary award for so-called “nuisance lawsuits” to the value of a person’s property, which Gov. Jay Nixon signed into law in May.
Talk of further federal regulation also makes it prudent for CAFOs to be proactive in managing their emissions to improve air quality. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is conducting similar studies to understand overall emissions from farm facilities with a distant eye on future rules.
Lim said university research on emission models parallels EPA’s efforts, but avoids the influence of regulations and politics, and university emission models can be compared with EPA models when the agency considers regulatory changes.
The computer model will be available to use online later this fall. For more information, contact Lim at limt@missouri.edu.
New Study Finds Favorable Return on Investment in USMEF’s Market Development Programs
U.S. beef, pork, corn and soybean producers are receiving a solid return on their checkoff investments in the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) export market development programs, according to a study completed recently by Harry Kaiser, the Gellert Family Professor of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University and director of the Cornell Commodity Promotion Research Program.
In fact, every industry dollar invested in these programs during the past 10 years returned an average of $15 in net revenue for the pork industry and $8 to the beef industry.
“An Economic Analysis of the U.S. Meat Export Federation’s Export Market Development Programs” was commissioned by USMEF to quantify the returns that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) and the beef, pork, corn and soybean checkoff programs receive from their investments in USMEF’s export market development programs. The independent study was funded by the USDA and Kaiser was chosen from several researchers who proposed to do the research.
“It is clear that U.S. beef and pork export market development and promotion programs have had a significant and positive impact on meat export net revenue,” said Kaiser.
The economic model showed that combined producer and USDA marketing expenditures increased U.S. red meat exports by more than 30% per year. According to Kaiser, “this increase in exports due to export market development translated to between $46.3 million (for beef) and $85.7 million (for pork) in average annual extra net revenue to the industry, which is far higher than the average annual $27.5 million cost invested by producers and the USDA.”
The study determined that reducing export promotion and development program funding by 75% between 1995 and 2010 would have reduced U.S. beef exports by 36.1% and U.S. pork exports by 30.1%, a total export loss equal to almost 537 million pounds per year for the eight top foreign markets analyzed in the model. The value of that loss was determined, then compared to total beef and pork export promotion cost to calculate a series of benefit-to-cost ratios (BCR).
The overall BCR for USMEF market development programs had median values of 3.87 for beef and 7.42 for pork. This means that the average return to meat producers on each $1 invested by them and the government in market development activities in international markets was $3.87 for beef and $7.42 for pork.
“Because producers contributed approximately half of the total dollars spent on export marketing, the median BCRs for their half of the spending averaged between 7.74 (for beef) and 14.84 (for pork) times their investment, which are very high returns,” noted Kaiser.
These results suggest that U.S. export promotion has a very important impact on import demand for U.S. beef and pork. In comparing the results of this study to those of 16 studies of similar programs for other commodities, Kaiser notes: “the results of this study suggest that U.S. beef and pork export promotion has had a larger impact on imports of U.S. meat than most other export promotion programs.”
Kaiser also looked at the regional impacts of these programs and found two of the most important markets for U.S. meat exports, Mexico and Japan, had the highest gains in imports due to export market development. Collectively, USMEF programs in these two countries accounted for 373 million pounds per year in increased exports of U.S. beef and pork.
“Dr. Kaiser’s study is beneficial because it provides an independent analysis of the returns that U.S. producers’ investments as well as USDA funds generate through USMEF’s international market development programs,” said Philip Seng, USMEF president and CEO. “When the process is transparent and measurable, our funding sources can make informed decisions on how to invest their funds and feel confident that the benefits to producers and taxpayers are solid.”
The full report is available online.
New Partnership Expands Support for Telling
Agriculture’s Story
A strategic partnership between The AgChat Foundation (ACF) and the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance (USFRA) brings together two organizations passionate about keeping today’s American agriculture successful. Through coordinated efforts, the groups will work together to support farmers and ranchers who are sharing their stories about how food is raised.
The AgChat Foundation is one of the first outside organizations to partner with USFRA, a coalition that represents more than 50 farmer- and rancher-led organizations and industry partners from across the country.
“The core vision of the AgChat Foundation is to empower farmers and ranchers to share their stories,” said Darin Grimm, Kansas farmer and AgChat Foundation president. “We are excited to partner with USFRA to build and expand those conversations.”
The partnership is multifaceted. USFRA recently sponsored the AgChat Foundation’s Agvocacy 2.0 Conference, which sought to teach farmers and ranchers about using social media platforms and other technology to share their stories with food consumers. USFRA has also committed to an additional sponsorship, which will further the ACF’s ability to have an impact on more farmers and ranchers from across the country.
The AgChat Foundation will be a key partner in USFRA’s Food Dialogues event scheduled for Sept. 22. The event, a simultaneous grouping of four live meetings around the country, as well as online participation, will feature a series of panels discussing different topics in key locations. The goal of Food Dialogues is to answer the questions that Americans are asking about their food. The AgChat Foundation will help engage the online agricultural community through a strategic social media campaign in order to build excitement in the weeks leading up to and during the event. To learn more about Food Dialogues, visit www.fooddialogues.com.
The two groups look forward to continuing their partnership after the Food Dialogues event. Coordinated efforts will encourage continued message sharing on the part of farmers and ranchers, and increased understanding and support for today’s agriculture among all Americans.
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