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Choose about any negative word you want – awful, dismal, disastrous, whatever – they can be used to describe the state of pork exports in March. Only Canada and the markets labeled “other” were higher this March year than last, +7.4% and 16.2%, respectively. All others were lower. Some a lot lower!...More

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) have introduced the Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act, which would require the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to label genetically engineered (GE) whole foods and processed foods, including fish and seafood....More

Congress returns next week to a busy schedule. The Senate Agriculture Committee is still working toward a possible mark-up of the farm bill late this week. The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to mark-up the immigration reform bill....More

This is the 80th monthly column written for National Hog Farmer’s Weekly Preview. This monthly exercise has forced us to look at production data in new ways and to dig deeper into our database. We have learned a great deal in this process. As a result, we have written a new Swine Management Services (SMS) benchmarking program that incorporates some of the knowledge we have gained over the last four years. This new program will retain everything that is in the current farm benchmarking program, plus new parity benchmarking reports and charts....More

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Congressman Kurt Schrader (D-OR) have introduced the “Egg Products Inspection Act Amendments of 2013.” This legislation, known as the “egg bill,” would codify the 2011 agreement between the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the United Egg Producers (UEP)....More

The U.S. District Court in San Francisco has ordered the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to establish a new timetable to implement regulations for the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)....More

Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, became the eighth senator to announce he would not be running for re-election in 2014....More

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, along with Bill Gates, and U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park, today kicked off a two-day international open data conference, saying that data “is among the most important commodities in agriculture” and sharing it openly increases its value....More

The changes in how cuts of meat are labeled in grocery stores, due out this summer, will clear up confusion and bolster confidence among consumers. So says Iowa State University’s Joseph Cordray, professor of animal science and the director of Iowa State University’s Meat Laboratory....More

The latest estimates of U.S. beef, pork and poultry production released Thursday afternoon would have you believe that there have been notable reductions in output for all three species. But as Steve Meyer and Len Steiner point out in today’s Daily Livestock Report, the catch is that there was one less marketing day in March 2013 compared to March 2012....More

The spotlight will shine on MusicFest at World Pork Expo on Thursday, June 6, as the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) presents world-class entertainment by Transit Authority and Little Texas....More