Strong beef sales have contributed to a 27% value hike in Irish food and drink exports over the last three years to €9bn in 2012, while trade with the UK has risen by 5% over the last year alone to €3.8bn or 42% of all exports.
Northern Irish beef farmers lost an estimated £3.1m last month and supply shortages are expected later in the year, after adverse weather conditions pushed fallen cattle numbers up by 113%.
The Benin government has imposed cattle movement controls after reporting an outbreak of anthrax amongst cows in the north-west corner of the west African country, near the Togo border.
The beef trade in Namibia decreased by 28.8% in the first six months of 2012, the Meat Board of Namibia has revealed in its six-monthly review, with exports “significantly lower” than the same period in 2011.
Poland is embarking on a major new campaign to promote beef to the domestic market in an attempt to boost the quality end of the market and reverse the spiralling decline in consumption.
UK cattle slaughterings dropped by 6% in the second half of 2011, mainly due to a reduction in young bull kill, Quality Meat Scotland (QMS) has announced.
French beef and veal production is expected to go down by 5% in 2012, following two years of increase, the Institut de l’Elevage (livestock institute) has revealed.
The UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) reports that meat from an over 30 month heifer imported from Switzerland has entered the food supply without being tested for BSE.
Ben & Jerry’s campaign to ensure produce from clones is detectable in the food chain shows that bundling biotech in with conventional produce remains unacceptable – but lessons from GM do not seem to have been learned.
Ben & Jerry’s has fessed up to creating an online presence for a fictitious company selling cloned milk as a publicity stunt, as campaigners believe that the offspring of cloned animals have already entered the food chain.
A case of mistaken identity has led to another breach of the UK's
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) regulations, the country's
food regulator said yesterday.
A team of US and Japanese researchers have declared that milk and
meat from cloned cattle are likely to be safe for human
consumption, although stressed that research in this area was still
very much in its infancy, Tom Armitage reports.
The beef industry's ability to accurately breed cattle for specific
traits such as increased meat or milk yield has been significantly
improved with the release of the first draft of the bovine genome
sequence.
Food safety concerns rise in the UK as the Food Standards Agency
launches an investigation into the apparent failure by the meat
hygiene arm of the food watchdog to test some casualty cattle aged
between 24 and 30 months for BSE before...
Improving the quality and texture of beef for consumer tastebuds
could lift sales for a US beef industry knocked lately by the BSE
scare. In a recent link up, US agri-giant Cargill and life science
firm MetaMorphix have completed...
British Retail Consortium dismisses protests made by the campaign
group Greenpeace over "GM milk". The campaign group has
staged a number of protests over the use of GM feed for dairy cows,
but the retail consortium said...
Lawmakers in the US have proposed a mandatory livestock
identification system to combat outbreaks of food borne disease
such as mad cow or foot and mouth disease. The system would work by
keeping track of herd movements and being...
In a bid to win back slashed beef sales, the FDA's head honcho will
travel to Japan today to discuss recent events linked to the first
case of mad cow disease in the US.
Dumeco has been ordered to retrace 78 tonnes of beef this week
following the failure to test a cow for bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (BSE). Some 700kg is thought to have been consumed.
The UK's National Beef Association (NBA) has demanded that the Livestock and Meat Commission for Northern Ireland (MLC) act to reverse low cattle prices affecting farmers in the province.
Quality Meat Scotland (QMS) is one of many industry bodies to have
urged the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to exercise caution over the
cessation of the Over 30 Months Scheme (OTMS).
Scientists at the food research body MTT Agrifood Research in
Finland, in collaboration with University of Liège in Belgium, have
located the gene that regulates total yield, protein and fat
content of milk.
Australian scientists claim that more tender beef is just around
the corner, a move that will make the processing of beef products
easier as well as providing a boon to the consumer market.
Scientists have created Australia's first cloned and genetically
modified (GM) calves, putting the major dairy exporter on the path
to becoming a commercial producer of GM milk.
Japan's Health Ministry said on Tuesday that it planned to inspect
all cattle due to be processed into food, tightening up its checks
for mad cow disease which currently only cover cows aged 30 months
or more.
On September 12, Japan's farm ministry began checking feed plants
and asked local authorities for a nationwide inspection in an
attempt to ease public concern over Asia's first suspected case of
"mad cow" disease.
Italy's first suspected case of BSE has been found in an animal
destined for the McDonald's restaurant chain, The Independent
newspaper reports. Traces...
