Rising retail prices for meat, milk and other staples have become routine leads in many media reports in recent months. While it's true that food costs have gone up slightly, lost in every story we've...
Real dairy history took place when the President signed the new farm bill into law this past February. That momentous shift included the elimination of three underperforming dairy programs. Gone are dairy...
Dairy once again proved it can be a divisive issue. Reportedly, the farm bill's dairy provisions were still being hammered out just hours before the final bill was filed with the House Rules Committee....
Popular opinion is hard to dispel, especially following decades of questionable research and misguided advice repeated all too often by medical professionals and nutritionists alike. Despite the uphill...
It was 20 years ago that BST officially entered the marketplace. Originally approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in late 1993, its entry was delayed another 90 days when a moratorium was...
Antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals are among the most regulated products by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). And rightly so, as they do an incredible job of holding bacteria at bay while immune...
Agriculture has made great strides in reducing nutrient movement from our farm fields even though the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) relentlessly aims for tighter standards. From our vantage point,...
Many university budgets across the country have come under duress in recent years. While nearly all academic programs have felt the pain, programs viewed as traditional science - particularly ones with...
Curds and whey. Those two words are more than a short line in a nursery rhyme. Curds and whey are the two main products of cheesemaking, as 100 pounds of milk yields 10 pounds of cheese and 90 pounds of...
After nearly two years of debate and one failed vote for passage in June, the House of Representatives passed a farm-only farm bill in mid-July. Not only does this version not address food assistance which...
Hoard's Dairyman Editorial: Farm bill's future appears bleak The path to a new farm bill hit a major roadblock last month following a failed 195 to 234 vote for passage. In the final count, 62 mostly conservative...
As dairy farms continue to consolidate, intuition would suggest that those who still milk cows would garner more collective marketing power. Unfortunately, even swifter-paced mergers in both processing...
Delegates to the biannual National Conference on Interstate Milk Shipments (NCIMS) once again defeated a proposal to reduce the Grade A somatic cell count (SCC) limit from the current 750,000 cells per...
As Europe prepares to transition towards a free market dairy economy void of production caps by 2015, we still have our doubts. While the taxpayer-funded quotas may be idled, European leaders are electing...
Food, water and energy are among the major resources required to satisfy mankind's basic human needs. Ensuring there is enough of these to go around was the focus of a well-publicized United Nation's Food...
Dairy has been long governed by a series of rules known as "standards of identity." While these federal requirements have protected our products from imitations, the rules have also stymied innovation...
Children start out as avid milk drinkers. Then consumption plunges as youth approach their teen years and flock to other beverages. While many reasons could be at play, we can't help but think packaging...
Inbreeding, and more importantly its consequences, has long been a concern of breeders as it reduces production, lowers fertility, causes more stillbirths and leads to fewer days in the herd. While genomics...
While science has greatly enhanced our ability to improve human health and longevity, Mother Nature has also provided us with many mechanisms to ward off disease. Our zeal to utilize products that kill...