TheDairySite Newsletter - 5 August 2011

TheDairySite Weekly Newsletter

Friday 5th August 2011

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Welcome to this week's newsletter

Editorial: Price Control Inquiry Not Warranted

The New Zealand Commerce Commission has concluded that there us no valid basis for a milk price control inquiry.

The commission's announcement followed a three-month review spurred by complaints about the price of milk from Consumer NZ and independent dairy processors, who buy milk from Fonterra.

Fonterra's chief financial officer, Jonathan Mason, said Fonterra had always believed there was no justification for a price control inquiry or further regulation at any level of the milk market.

“Farmers were highly confident that the Commerce Commission would find out what we knew; the New Zealand consumer is not being ripped off when they buy milk,” said Willy Leferink, Federated Farmers Dairy chairperson.

Bluetongue research in the UK will help scientists develop improved and more effective bluetongue vaccines.

Professor Polly Roy of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine explained: "We've developed the tools and provided the instruction manual for developing new, more effective bluetongue vaccines.

"This will not only be useful for combating bluetongue but will provide insights into fundamental virus assembly that will be useful for producing vaccines for other viruses."

A new approach could allow scientists to design vaccines with useful properties. Developing a vaccine that is tagged with a marker, for example, would make it easier to tell the difference between animals that have been vaccinated and those that have suffered the disease.

Charlotte Johnston

This Week's Feature Articles

We have 4 new features this week:

What Phytogenic Additives Can Do For Calves?
Ahmed Aufy, Tobias Steiner and Mike Watkins, from Biomin, look at the relatively new feed additives, phytogenic additives and their potential use in calf diets.

The Economics Of Different Milk Production Systems
This article summarises the results produced by a profit maximising whole-farm economic model that was employed to identify financially optimal milk production systems for a typical Northern Ireland farm under varying market conditions. The systems assessed range from lower yielding New Zealand type systems based on grazed grass to very high yielding North American type systems based on concentrates and conserved forage.

EU Milk Package Proposals
On 9 December 2010, the European Commission published a 'Proposal for amending Council Regulation (EC) No 1234/2007 as regards contractual relations in the milk and milk products sector'. This is known as the 'Milk Package'. The Environmental, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (EFRA) look at the propsals, and provide their feedback and recommendations.

Processed Crop Residues To Improve Ruminant Performance
This study by Ramana Reddy and G Reddy, from the College of Veterinary Science, India, looks at enhancing ruminant diets through processing crop residues.

Company News

New Larger Merck Bravoxin 10 Farm Pack
GLOBAL - Merck Animal Health are releasing the broad-spectrum clostridial disease vaccine for sheep and cattle, Bravoxin 10, in a new six times 100ml farm vaccination pack.

Global Dairy Cattle Industry News