Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy

Between the kid and the goat, who looks more excited? Yep, the goat. Just imagine what he's thinking. That's the kind of thing we're looking for. Study the picture, write something funny, then email it to starfyi @gmail.com. Put "5/17 caption contest"...

WASHINGTON - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack made the following statement about notification received on Feb. 20 from the Scientific Commission for the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) recommending that the United States' risk classification...

Beef production in the United States is expected to decrease 4.8 percent in 2013, the second largest year-over-year decrease in 35 years, trailing only the 6.4 percent drop in 2004. The reason is a combination of mostly steady carcass weights and a...

Bull sales are in full swing, and it's time to study the bull catalogs to select your desired bulls. You start narrowing down the bulls with your selection parameters. This could include birth weight, yearling weight, EPD's plus more. Once at the sale,...

Billings, MT - According to a Brazilian notification submitted this week to the World Organization for Animal Health, commonly known as the OIE, Brazil identified a cow that died in December 2010 that was a suspect for a neurological disease such as...

TOKYO - Japan, Asia's largest beef buyer, has suspended imports from Brazil after a cow in Parana state tested positive for mad-cow disease. "We suspended imports from Brazil as soon as an outbreak of BSE was confirmed," the Ministry of Agriculture,...

The ban on beef from Brazil's Parana state is spreading. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and South Korea join China, South Africa and Japan in not buying beef from the region after Brazil revealed the discovery of a cow with proteins that cause bovine spongiform...

Meat from foreign sources accounts for roughly 8-20 percent of total U.S. meat supplies, but only the portions that are imported directly as meat are obvious. While it is relatively easy to track the amount of meat imported by the U.S. (2.1 billion pounds...

BILLINGS, Mont. - After nearly four years of agency inaction, the previously intense, eight-year legal battle waged against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) by U.S. cattle producers and U.S. consumers over the agency's persistent efforts to...

Two farms have been quarantined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as the agency continues to investigate last month's discovery of mad cow disease at a California dairy farm. Authorities also have launched an investigation at a calf ranch where the...

Bart Simpson. I never thought of him as a literary giant, but I've been having his quote run through my mind a lot lately, “Don't have a cow, man.” In case you've been wrapped in bubble wrap lately, you probably heard that there was a cow that tested...

"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" cried Chicken Little. Such is the case, it seems, when it comes to the reporting of news, especially that which concerns food. First it was the infamous "pink slime" and now it's the disease with a scary name...