Farmers and ranchers are breathing a sigh of relief after the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers announced Sept. 12 that they are repealing the Obama-era Waters of the U.S. rule that expanded the EPA and Corps' regulatory powers beyond the limits approved by Congress and the Supreme Court.

A team of researchers at Colorado State University have been studying the potential for introduction of the Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) to cattle in the U.S.

Time is running out for lawmakers wanting to see the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) ratified in 2019. Several barriers stand in the way of the USMCA successfully being ratified, a big one being Democrat concerns about the labor conditions and environmental and enforcement provisions of the USMCA.

Producers face challenges in recruiting and retaining stockpeople. There are two job openings for each applicant, and much of the agricultural workforce is composed of immigrants. Immigration reform is making it difficult to generate a sustainable agricultural workforce, even as the U.S. demand for foreign labor has increased fivefold in the past 13 years.

Sens. Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) and Jon Tester (D-Montana), along with 17 other co-sponsors from both parties, introduced the “Transporting Livestock Across America Safely Act,” a bipartisan approach to giving livestock haulers some relief from the hours-of-service rules and the electronic logging devices (ELD) mandate that poses a problem for transporting livestock effectively and humanely.

The USDA recently released an implementation timeline for beefing up its disease traceability program by transitioning to a 100 percent radio-frequency identification (RFID) system by 2023.

The Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF) organization, along with four cattle-feeding ranchers from Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Wyoming, launched a class action lawsuit last week against four major U.S. packing companies: Tyson Foods Inc., Cargill Inc., National Beef Packing Company LLC and the U.S. branch of Brazil-based packer JBS S.A. Together, the four companies control over 80 percent of the market for U.S. fed cattle. 

Burger King recently announced the launch of its “Impossible Whopper,” a plant-based alternative to the traditional Whopper advertised as “All Whopper. No beef.”