Under the MRBI, NRCS provides financial assistance to farmers in areas covered by MRBI projects who undertake conservation practices specified by a project’s sponsors.  Most of the NRCS funding is provided through NRCS conservation programs.

For the new MRBI projects, NRCS is providing financial assistance to farmers of up to $11.74 million in FY2012 funding under the Cooperative Conservation Partnership Initiative (CCPI) and $25 million in funding from the Wetlands Reserve Enhancement Program (WREP).  The CCPI, in turn, draws its funding from the three major working lands conservation programs – Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Conservation Stewardship Program, and Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program.

Additional information on the MRBI is available on the NRCS webpage for the Initiative.

[Read more]

McDowell County is now the home of the first community-administered, non-profit meat processing plant in the United States that is also USDA inspected. This new facility should also help small-scale meat growers expand their operations and get their products out to more consumers.

The Foothills Pilot Plant is open for fully-inspected poultry and rabbit processing as of this week. Located at 135 Ag Services Drive off of N.C. 226 South, the plant is a collaboration of state and local governments, small-scale meat producers and grant-making agencies. It is operated under joint authority of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Aministration to provide “regional growers with the opportunity to market their meat products to a broader consumer base.”  [Read more]

No one is going to accuse the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of rushing to judgment.

In 1999, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) petitioned the FDA to stop the common practice of feeding perfectly healthy livestock antibiotics, not to cure disease, but merely to make them pack on weight more efficiently. Of particular concern to the organization were antibiotics used to treat disease in humans. That petition came 22 years after the FDA itself said that such “sub-therapeutic” use of penicillin- and tetracycline-containing products in animals should be halted because it had “not been shown safe.” Studies in the mid-1970s had proven that bacteria easily evolved resistance to the antibiotics, becoming resistant “superbugs.”

Last week, the FDA denied the petition, along with a similar one filed in 2005 by Environmental Defense. Given that the FDA allowed the first petition to gather dust for 12 years, and that each year some 70,000 Americans die from resistant infections, its reason for denial is feeble at best. Pointing out that in it was working “cooperatively” with agribusinesses and pharmaceutical companies to phase out sub-therapeutic use of drugs, the FDA said that banning the practice outright “could take many years and would impose significant resource demands on the agency.”  [Read More]

Some of the hot button issues on the agenda, including using artificial preservatives and genetically modified ingredients, would seem Orwellian to many longtime organic farmers and consumers. The forecasted dustup will be debated by a USDA panel, deeply divided between corporate agribusiness representatives and organic advocates.

Under the Bush and Obama administrations, the USDA Secretaries have been criticized for appointing a significant number of corporate representatives, whose primary interest appears to be loosening the federal organic standards, allegedly in pursuit of enhanced profits.

“We think this meeting may well decide the fate of organic food and agriculture in this country,” said Mark A. Kastel, Codirector of The Cornucopia Institute, which represents family-scale organic farmers and their consumer allies across the U.S.  [Read More]

Your guide to getting the most flavor and tenderness from grassfed meats.

A new wrinkle has emerged, however. As part of the agreement to pass the debt ceiling bill this past August, Congress appointed a committee of 12, six members from each house and equally representing both parties, to trim $1.3 trillion dollars from the budget. This super committee has until November to come to an agreement. Their process is to rely on input from various Congressional committees to determine the spending cuts.

Agriculture Committee leaders in both houses have delivered a package of cuts that will mostly replace the provisions of the Farm Bill, thus effectively ending open discussion and negotiation about its provisions in the 2012 legislative session. According to published accounts, the proposed cuts include $6.5 billion to conservation programs, $5 billion to nutrition programs, and $15 billion to commodity subsidy programs.  The conservation cuts would be on top of the $2 billion already made by Congress in the appropriations process.

If you want to make your voice heard, you need to call your members of Congress TODAY. The only way to take back our government from the corporate interests who are controlling the debate is to speak up. One voice may not make much of a difference, but when hundreds of thousands of voices join together, change happens.

For the latest news on the negotiations, visit http://farmpolicy.com/. To learn more about the issues and how you can take action, visit http://sustainableagriculture.net/our-work/fbcampaign/farm-bill-news/

(Thanks to our friends at Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance)

Capital Press

The USDA has not imposed any penalties on retailers who have failed to comply with country-of-origin labeling requirements, according to an agency audit. The agency’s Agricultural Marketing Service, which oversees the COOL program, has also developed backlogs in notifying retailers that they’re out of compliance with the law, the audit said. In roughly 30 percent of non-compliance cases identified by USDA last year, the agency notified retailers of the problem more than two months after the review, the audit said.

Auditors from the USDA’s Office of Inspector General found that “AMS officials did not identify and investigate repeat violators of the COOL requirements or assess monetary penalties where appropriate.” In several cases, the USDA should have further investigated whether the violations were willful but did not do so during follow-up reviews, the audit said. 

The audit also said the agency needs to improve its procedures for conducting reviews and better communicate with retailers, among other findings. In a response letter, an official from AMS said the audit had begun less than a year after COOL had become effective in March 2009 — a time when the agency was still focusing on outreach to the food industry. The agency is now taking steps to beef up its enforcement of the statute and expects to fully comply with the audit’s recommendations, the letter said.

The Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America — a major proponent of COOL — is troubled by the audit’s findings. “It confirms our concern that USDA has not taken its responsibility seriously,” said Bill Bullard, R-CALF’s CEO. After 2 1/2 years, the lack of enforcement actions by USDA sends a signal to the industry that the agency isn’t intent on strict implementation, he said.

Bullard said he’s also afraid the USDA’s enforcement of the program will undermine consumer confidence in country-of-origin labeling. “It really reduces the value of the COOL label itself,” he said. R-CALF opposes the industry practice of labeling beef as a product of multiple countries — such as U.S., Canada and Mexico — on a single label, since this confuses consumers, he said.

When the program first went into effect, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack sent a letter to industry representatives asking for more transparency in labeling. Vilsack recommended labels that labels be more specific, for example: “Born and Raised in Country X and Slaughtered in Country Y,” the letter said. So far, however, the agency has not stood up to retailers and meat packers who opposed COOL, Bullard said. “It exemplifies there really have been no changes in USDA despite the rhetoric espoused by this administration in 2009.”

The USDA has not been signaling that COOL is unimportant, but the program likely is a lower priority than food safety, said Jeremy Russell, communications director for the National Meat Association, which represents packers. “It’s more of a nice-to-know program for consumers,” he said. “It doesn’t add any value for producers, including those in R-CALF.”

For packers, the primary effect of the COOL program has been to increase operational complications by requiring them to segregate livestock from different countries, Russell said. It’s possible that retailers make labeling mistakes based on information supplied by packers, but such errors would be unintentional, he said. “I think, by and large, there’s been large-scale compliance,” said Russell. “Nobody is motivated not to comply.”