The virus situation is getting worse.

No, not that virus…

Bird flu is back: Cases of HPAI (highly pathogenic avian influenza) have been reported across at least eight European states just in the past month, and it looks like a challenging winter ahead for poultry farmers.

But the big news rattling the continent came earlier this week when five outbreaks encompassing 650,000 chickens and turkeys were reported by Poland—the European Union’s largest poultry producer.

Mitigation mania: As the virus spreads from country to country (thanks a lot, wild birds), nations are scrambling to contain the problem.

French and Dutch governments are requiring all flocks to be indoors, and Great Britain has declared a prevention zone—requiring extra biosecurity measures.

And while avian flu advances like a blitzkrieg across Europe, the disease has also popped up in the Far East.

Land of the Rising Sun cases: Earlier this week, Japan reported its first outbreak of the season as authorities marched up to a farm in the northeastern city of Yokote to exterminate 143,000 layers at the site of the confirmed infections.

Bring on the chicken teriyaki: Yet amidst the crisis, authorities did note that, in the current situation, there isn’t a possibility of people being infected by eating chicken products. So eat up.

Where this goes: “Stop the spread”, “quarantine”, and “isolation” may once again become common-place vocabulary among fowl farmers. And with 21 bird-to-human cases of an avian flu variant reported in China (including at least six deaths), you can bet world health officials are watching the situation like hawks.

Quick Hits

→ Bayer’s leadership swap. Liam Condon, the head of the Crop Science division, has resigned and will be backfilled by Rodrigo Santos, the current Chief Operating Officer.

→ A cotton boll of fun. The WASDE report forecasted total harvest at 18.2M 480-pound bales, up 25% from 2020.

→ The need for speed. After a ‘no line speed’ rule was struck down in March, the USDA will allow nine pork plants to apply to increase processing-line speeds on a trial basis.

→ Foreign farmworker influx. The Labor Department approved 317,619 seasonal guest workers during the past fiscal year, 15% more than 2020 and the highest number of jobs ever approved for H-2A worker visas.

→ French beekeepers call for ban. The worst honey harvest on record has French beekeepers calling for a ban on prosulfocarb, the second most widely used herbicide in the European nation.

→ Cutting the cheese. Dairy giant Glanbia will sell its 40% share in Ireland’s largest dairy processor to focus on its nutritional ingredients business.

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Name a city in the U.S. where you do horse-trading about the cattle market?

Answer: The Capitol.

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Deb Fischer (R-Neb), Jon Tester (D-Mont), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore) have chewed the cud long enough and announced a compromise on measures to give cattle producers more negotiating leverage with meatpackers through the new Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act.

The sausage-making... The new bill requires that:

• The creation of a contract library to reveal marketing contract premiums and discounts being set by packers
• Packers to report the average carcass weights and number of head scheduled for delivery each day for the next 14-day period
• Plant-by-plant participation in the cash market within each major cattle feeding region

And the hitchhiking: The bill’s ticket to Pres. Biden’s desk is catching a ride with the Livestock Mandatory Reporting’s reauthorization, which expires Dec. 3, 2021.

Almost all the major cattle industry players are behind the creation of a cattle contract library (who doesn’t want to hear the tea?) and expanded packer-reported data so producers can project estimated slaughter numbers and packers’ needs for cattle.

All bets are off: But support slides with the regional mandatory minimum thresholds of negotiated cash and negotiated grid trades. They will be based on each region’s 18-month average trade to enable price discovery in cattle marketing regions. And not everyone is pleased.

One hot take: “If this bill becomes law, there will be cattle producers who want alternative marketing arrangements, but will instead be forced to sell on the cash market, and the industry will turn back time to the days of commodity cattle,” said Julie Anna Potts, North American Meat Institute

A lot of talk turns to the supply and demand of major crops when the WASDE report is released each month. But don’t forget the USDA is also tracking the harvest of ag’s sweet tooth crop: sugar beets.

Now, guess: Is the U.S. sugar beet harvest expected to hit record highs or record lows this crop year?

FDA rule changes continue to roll out, and farms of all sizes are scrambling to implement end-to-end traceability for the food supply chain.

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Record highs