On November 30^th, the U.S. Senate approved the Food Safety Modernization Act by a vote of 73 to 25. The following information was prepared by Dani Friedland and appeared on the MeatingPlace.com web site.  I think it is important information for livestock producers and others involved in the food industry and that’s why I’ve reposted here.

The legislation gives the Food and Drug Administration more authority, including the power to compel the mandatory recall of a contaminated food product and suspend a facility’s registration if a reasonable probability exists that the food it produces could cause serious health consequences or death.

It also increases the number of FDA inspections at food facilities and enhances surveillance systems for food-borne illness outbreaks. The bill also calls for the creation of a pilot project to test methods for quickly tracking and tracing food during food-borne illness outbreaks.

The bill also increases funding for the FDA, requires importers to verify the safety of imported food and calls for a national strategy to protect the food supply from terrorism.

Producers who sell directly to consumers and have less than $500,000 in annual sales will be exempted from some of the new regulations. These producers would still be subject to local and state food safety regulation, and the FDA would be able to withdraw the exemption if the farm or facility was associated with an outbreak of food-borne illness.

“For too long, we’ve allowed trips to the grocery store to be a gamble for American families,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and one of the bill’s sponsors, said in a statement. “The bipartisan bill passed by the Senate today will give our citizens some long-overdue peace of mind in the supermarket aisles, establishing tough new protections against contaminated food.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said in debate earlier this month that the last substantial change to FDA food law was made in 1938.

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) introduced the legislation on March 3, 2009. The House of Representatives passed similar legislation in July 2009. (See “House passes food safety bill” on Meatingplace, July 31, 2009.)

Now the Senate and House must reconcile their versions of the food safety reforms by the end of the session. Some Democrats in the House would consider passing the Senate version to speed up the process, according to The New York Times.

The meat industry has been watching this legislation with great interest. Even though most of its regulation comes from USDA, some meat industry lobbyists believe the passage of these sweeping changes to FDA regulation could spawn calls for similar reforms at USDA.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack praised the Senate action, saying, “As a co-chair of President Obama’s Food Safety Working Group, I commend the Senate on today’s passage of the food safety bill. There is no more fundamental function of government than protecting consumers from harm, which is why food safety is one of USDA’s top priorities.  The bill addresses longstanding challenges in the food safety and defense system by promoting a prevention-oriented approach and providing the Federal Government with appropriate tools to prevent foodborne illness.”

Fish Friendly Farming provides for voluntary, self-directed compliance with the rigorous standards of state and federal water quality laws (Clean Water Act), the federal Endangered Species Act, the state pesticide laws as well as local regulations.

It was developed by Laurel Marcus in 1999 and sponsored for its first five years by the Sotoyome Resource Conservation District. Much of it was patterned after the UCCE Rangeland Water Quality Planning shortcourses. It focused initially on grapegrowers, and will now expand to grazed rangelands in the North Bay counties. A colleague of mine, Dr. Larry Ford, is a scientific advisor for development and implementation of the new program.  For more information, go to http://www.fishfriendlyfarming.org/index.html.

Market reports, like those provided by USDA, the Livestock Marketing Service (LMS), or the more local weekly Shasta cattle auction are very useful for selling or buying cattle. Most folks understand that prices are given for different weights for steers and heifers. These prices are usually quoted on dollars per hundred pounds of weight basis. The abbreviation for hundred pounds of weight is cwt. There are some terms used, especially in describing cull cows that not everyone understands. Such terms include Breakers, Boners, Leans, Lights, Canner, and Cutter. Sometimes cull cows are pregnant and they have special terms too. To help you get more out of these market reports, some of the terms are explained below. 

The USDA’s Market News Service reports on four classes of cull cows, which are divided primarily on fatness. The highest conditioned cull cows are reported as "Breakers.” These are quite fleshy and generally have excellent dressing percentages. Body condition score 7 and above is required to be "Breakers.”  Note: If you don’t know about Body Condition Scoring (BCS) in cattle check out the following web site for good definitions and pictures of the various BCS’s: http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/ansci/beef/as1026w.htm.

The next class is a more moderate conditioned group of cows called "Boners" or "Boning Utility.” These cows usually fall in the body condition score grades of 5-7. Many well-nourished commercial beef cows would be graded "Boners.”

The last two grades are the "Leans" and "Lights.” These cows are very thin (body condition scores 1-4). In general, these are expected to be lower in dressing percentage than fleshier cows and more easily bruised in transport than cows in better body condition. "Lights" are thin cows that are very small and would have very low hot carcass weights.

Leans and Lights are nearly always lower in price per pound than are the Boners and the Breakers. "Lights" often bring the lowest price per pound because the amount of saleable product is small, even though the overhead costs of slaughtering and processing are about the same as larger, fleshier cows. Also, thin cows are more susceptible to bruising while in transit to market and to the harvest plant. Therefore, more trim loss is likely to occur with thin cull cows than with those in better body condition. 

From a producer standpoint, when selling cull cows, it is generally more profitable to feed the Leans and Lights up to get to Boners. It is generally not economical for a producer to feed a cull cow up to the Breakers class as the price differential between them and Boners is usually small. 

To make it more confusing you’ll also see the prices reported for cull cows based on their USDA carcass grade or their expected carcass grade. The most common grades, in order of the least amount of marbling to the greatest amount of marbling are: Canner, Cutter, Utility, and Commercial. Younger aged cows (30 months or less) may also reach the Standard, Select or Choice grade. 

Full mouth and broken mouth are relative terms for cull cows that describe the age of the animal.  Check out the following web page on aging cattle from their teeth to see some photos: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OFO/TSC/bse_information.htm. Another age term, which you might encounter, is smooth mouth. Sometimes, you’ll see reports that only use abbreviations like FM = full mouth; SM = smooth mouth; and BM=broken mouth.

Other terms are used when Calvy or pregnant cows are marketed and the most common seen is Close-up. Close-up means the cows are 21 days or less prepartum (before calving). You might also see Far-off which means 60 to 21 days prepartum. Interestingly, these terms come from the dairy industry and are used for grouping cows on the dairy. These prepartum terms are often used to describe heifers too.

References Used and for Further Reading:
Marketing Cull Cows How and When?
http://beef.unl.edu/beefreports/symp-1995-19-XIV.shtml

United States Standard for Grades of Slaughter Cattle
http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3062519

Know USDA Cull Cow Grades Before Marketing Culls
http://beefmagazine.com/cowcalfweekly/1030-know-usda-cull-cow-grades-market/

The following two stories demonstrate how sheep producers can become part of the green revolution and take advantage of opportunities for wool sales or a local cottage industry. With regards to the first article on wool insulation the following properties make it a great product:

Material Advantages

• Wool is natural, renewable and sustainable
• Sheep Wool Insulation is perfectly safe to touch and requires no specialized safety clothing or equipment, making it easy to install
• It causes no irritation to the eyes, skin or lungs and wool fibers present no hazard to your health
• Wool fibers are breathable, meaning they can absorb and release moisture without reducing thermal performance unlike fiber glass based products
• Wool does not support combustion and will extinguish itself in the event of fire
• Sheep Wool Insulation does not settle due to the high elasticity of the wool fibers ensuring no loss of performance over time

Saving Energy

• Wool is designed by nature to save energy
• Sheep Wool Insulation also requires only a fraction of the energy to produce compared to that of manmade counterparts
• This means that Sheep Wool Insulation will pay back its energy costs more than 5 times sooner (only 15 kW of energy are used to produce 1 m³)

Performance Benefits

• Wool has a higher fire resistance than cellulose and cellular plastic insulation
• It does not burn, but instead singes away from fire and extinguishes itself (Wool has a very high inflammation point of 560°C due to its high Nitrogen content of ~16%) Wool is self-extinguishing because of its high Limiting Oxygen Index (LOI=25.2), which means to completely burn wool an oxygen content of 25.2% is necessary whereas air only has 21%
• Wool fibers are hygroscopic by nature, meaning the can absorb up to 35% of their own weight from the surrounding atmosphere depending on the humidity, helping to preserve the surrounding timbers.
• While absorbing this moisture, wool releases energy in the form of heat, thus raising the temperature of its surrounding areas. Naturally releasing this moisture in the warmer seasons, wool creates a cooling effect on the same surroundings.
• Sheep Wool Insulation rolls are produced to standard width requirements – saving time when fitting
• Multiple layered wool fibers effectively reduce airborne sound transfer

Now that you know about the great qualities of wool for insulation on to the first of the two articles.

Turning Sheep's Wool into High-Quality Insulation

There is a portion of the U.S. wool clip that is too coarse for the textile industry. Bellwether Materials, a San Francisco-based startup company, has figured out that this coarser wool makes for high-quality home insulation.

Priscilla Burgess, Bellwether Materials founder, was at the West Coast Green conference where she encouraged folks to touch the new insulation.

"It's just as effective as fiberglass, but you don't need a respirator and it's cheaper to install," she says.

There are other advantages, too. Wool is allergen-free and naturally pest, fire and mold resistant. Bellwether isn't the first company to use sheep's wool for insulation, but competitors all use plastic additives.

Bellwether's product is ready to go, and customers have been lined up. Now the company just has to start its manufacturing process, which should be ready for commercial production by January. Instead of outsourcing the supply chain to China, Bellwether is hiring professional millers from the milling-reliant town of Adamstown, Pa.

"We're hoping to support one whole town that was going to turn into a ghost town," Burgess explains.

Reprinted in part from fastcompany.com

Bricks Made with Wool are Stronger

Spanish and Scottish researchers have added wool fiber to the clay material used to make bricks and combined these with an alginate, a natural polymer extracted from seaweed. The result is a stronger more environmentally friendly brick, according to the study published recently in the journal Construction and Building Materials.

"The objective was to produce bricks reinforced with wool and to obtain a composite that was more sustainable and non-toxic using abundant local materials and that would mechanically improve the bricks' strength," said Carmen Galán and Carlos Rivera, authors of the study.

The mechanical tests carried out showed the compound to be 37-percent stronger than other bricks made using unfired stabilized earth.

This piece of research is one of the initiatives involved in efforts to promote the development of increasingly sustainable construction materials. These kinds of bricks can be manufactured without firing, which contributes to energy savings.

According to the authors, "This is a more sustainable and healthy alternative to conventional building materials such as baked earth bricks and concrete blocks."

Reprinted in part from esciencenews.com