Monday's agriculture website of interest: ANIMAL DISEASE TRACEABILITY

Food safety is something very important to the agriculture community. It is also something I take very seriously in working with dairy and beef farms. It is important we know how to monitor, control and eradicate disease in order to have a safe product for consumers. Recently, USDA announced that it was formulating a more flexible, national animal identification program. The animal, plant and health inspection service portion of USDA has posted an Animal Disease Traceability website. While there is not much information there now to start, I anticipate more will be added as it is discussed and decided upon. Currently, there is a frequently asked questions fact page detailing some of the things learned from trying to implement the national animal identification system and what USDA plans to do differently.

Monday's agriculture website of interest: MEAT SCIENCE AND MUSCLE FOODS

Today's agricultural website of interest is the Meat is Neat blog, maintained by meat scientist, Dr. Chris Raines. Chris is the Extension Meats Specialist and is an Assistant Professor at Penn State University in the Department of Dairy & Animal Science. He researches factors that affect meat quality, and helps meat processors, large and small, national and local, with the quality and safety of the food they produce.

The Meat is Neat blog follows his experiences and thoughts about meat as food – where it comes from, how it’s produced, how people consume it, and the health implications of it. Some entries may be highly technical, and others may be total stream-of-consciousness. Some entries might address hot-button topics facing meat today, while other entries might address long-term ideas or speculative ideas about meat in the future.