The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) recently conducted a short-term study to compare the effects of a low-fat plant-based diet versus a low-carbohydrate animal-based diet on calorie intake, hormone levels, body weight, and more.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the publication of a Federal Register Notice requesting public input on a climate-smart agriculture and forestry strategy.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Drug Administration, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently stated there is no evidence of COVID-19 transmission through food or food packaging.

US Farmers and Ranchers in Action (USFRA), an alliance connecting farmers and ranchers to food and agriculture stakeholders to create a sustainable food system, issued a new report that analyzes the state of soil health technology and identifies opportunities to find new sources of capital to increase the adoption of climate-smart agriculture on farms and ranches across the US.

Congress Brings Back Earmarks
On February 26th, Rosa DeLauro, Chair of the House Appropriations Committee announced the return of Congressional earmarks starting in fiscal year 2022.

Organic Valley, an organic food brand and the largest farmer’s-owned independent cooperative of organic farmers based in Wisconsin, recently launched a pilot program using satellite photography to measure pasture health on its dairy farms.

Recently, Kerr et al. published “Influence of feeding thermally peroxidized lipids on growth performance, lipid digestibility and oxidative status in nursery pigs” in the Journal of Animal science to critically evaluate the impact of inclusions of differentially sourced lipids and thermally processed soybean oil in nursery pig diets.

A recent review by Chukrallah et al., published in the Journal of Animal Science, argued that small-noncoding RNAs (sncRNAs) from germ cells may represent prominent molecular mechanisms that control early embryo development and germ cell fitness

On March 20, 2021, Colorado Governor Jared Polis encouraged state residents to support “MeatOut Day” and not eat meat for the day. Polis said the reasons to skip meat included the health benefits of plant-based foods, concerns of animal cruelty, and the environmental impact of meat production.

A study recently published in the Journal of Animal Science aimed to identify bovine respiratory disease (BRD) outcome groups using BRD indicators collected during the feeding phase and at slaughter through latent class analysis and to determine the importance of BRD indicators to predict disease outcomes.

A study recently published in the Journal of Animal Science further tested the hypothesis that the amount of P released by phytase is greater in diets that are deficient in P.

A study recently published in the Journal of Animal Science aimed to evaluate apparent total tract nutrient digestibility and purine derivative excretion in dairy heifers limit-fed diets containing wet brewer’s grains treated with salt.

A paper recently published in the Journal of Animal Science evaluated the biological and economic efficiency of the AHNC beef production system using a system dynamics model based on 6 years of demonstration herd data.

A recent study, published in the Journal of Animal Science, aimed to determine whether supplementation of functional amino acids would improve growth performance and immune status of Salmonella-challenged weaned pigs and whether the effect of functional amino acids is dependent on dietary protein content.

A recent study published in the Journal of Animal Science investigated the association of bacterial composition and functional capacity of the gut microbiome with porcine feed efficiency using 16S rRNA gene and metagenomic sequencing methods.

A study recently published in the Journal of Animal Science characterized birth weight phenotypes for inclusion in genetic evaluations using a deep neural network. The objective of the current study was to evaluate the use of deep neural networks to categorize contemporary groups based on data quality and to determine the impact of removing data predicted as fabricated on the ranking of animals for calving ease expected progeny differences.

Dr. Harold Hafs, 89, passed away on March 4, 2021. Born on his family’s farm in Wisconsin, where farm implements were still drawn by draft horses, Harold Hafs went on to become a nationally prominent advocate for animal science research, education, and product development.

The 2021 American Society of Animal Science Midwest Virtual Meeting session, Nonruminant Nutrition Symposium I (March 9, 2021), comprised of eight presenters from diverse educational backgrounds. The overarching theme of this seminar was the development of intervention strategies to reduce antibiotic use in postweaning swine.

Genetics, Genomics and Bioinformatics Symposium: Genome to Phenome--Application to Animal Production
Yesterday's Genetics, Genomics and Bioinformatics Symposium (March 10, 2021), comprised of three presenters discussing livestock production.

The 2021 American Society of Animal Science Midwest Virtual Meeting session, Nonruminant Nutrition Symposium III (March 10, 2021), comprised of three presenters discussing topics on the utilization of fiber in swine nutrition. The focus of these talks was on the different types of dietary fiber, the roles and functions of fiber in swine nutrition and the chemical and physical characteristics of fiber.