TheDairySite Newsletter - 14 January 2011

TheDairySite Weekly Newsletter

Friday 14th January 2011

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Welcome to this week's newsletter

Editorial: Ensuring Food Safety

In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has decided to delay its plan to test milk samples for animal drug residues, giving the agency more time to gather comments and input from all industry stakeholders.

The agency is trying to determine if there is a correlation between illegal drug residues found in tissue samples of meat from culled dairy cows and the milk supply from these farms.

Door-to-door purity tests are now being carried out on milk and milk products in Uttar Pradesh, India, after complaints of adulteration of milk from consumers.

Following an order from the Department of Food, a team of analysts from the public analyst laboratory, will travel to colonies and check for the presence of starch, urea, soda and carbonate in milk and milk products.

Producers in Australia are being warned of increased animal disease risks, due to the extreme flooding. A number of diseases including three-day sickness, akabane, blackleg, leptospirosis and botulism can all be fatal to cattle.

The Australian government has issued a package of measures to assist farmers who have lost crops and stock during the recent floods.

Charlotte Johnston

TheCattleSite Book Focus

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This Week's Feature Articles

We have 5 new features this week:

Concentrated Copper Sulphate Reduces Digital Dermatitis
Footbathing in a five per cent compared to a two per cent copper sulphate solution is more effective at reducing digital dermatitis when incidence levels are very high, although at moderate levels a two per cent solution is just as effective, concludes research led by Marijntje Speijers from Hillsborough’s Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute.

Trends & Outlook For Global Dairy
International dairy commodity prices drifted higher through Q4 2010, building on already high levels, reports Rabobank Group.

Does Feed Space Allowance Impact Performance?
Research has shown that a feed space allowance of 20 cm per cow is ‘adequate’ for optimal milk production as long as sufficient feed is always pushed up in front of the feed barrier.

Designing The Ideal Transition Cow Barn
Researchers from the Food Animal Production Medicine group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have used their clinical experiences troubleshooting fresh cow health problems on farms, research conducted by other groups, and their own research findings to formulate a plan for designing transition cow barns which results in optimal health and performance.

Beef Production From The Dairy Herd
At a recent dairy calf to beef conference in Ireland, Padraig French from Teagasc, Animal and Grassland Research and Innovation Centre, looked at current trends in beef production from the dairy herd.