Agricultural ministers meeting in Brussels last week agreed that criminal activity stretching across the European continent is the underlying problem behind the horsemeat scandal. In response, they’ve called for still more DNA testing of the continent’s meat and meat products.

In Montana, one of the state’s bills, Senate Bill 19, allows developers to escape state review of the effects of large-scale groundwater use in new subdivisions—which occurs when they use large, easily monitored centralized wells—by sanctioning the clustering of an unlimited number of exempt wells.

EPA in 2012 dropped a requirement that would have given EPA access to information about CAFO locations, acres available for manure application, and numbers of head of cattle on operations, but the agency would have made the information available to the public through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

According to the company, Keystone XL would have minimal impact on the environment. This conclusion, according to the company, is supported by both the U.S. Department of State’s Final Environmental Impact Statement and the Nebraska Re-route Evaluation Report.

“This law would no longer criminalize a Montana sportsman from jumping from one corner of public land to another corner of public land. We’re talking about hopscotch folks,” Hill testified last week. “Leaping from one public corner to the other and never touching the soil of a private property’s land.

Creighton University Professor Emeritus Art Douglas told attendees at the 2013 Cattle Industry Convention that there is a chance some regions of the U.S. will see a return to more normal precipitation patterns during the upcoming spring and summer growing season.

In USDA’s 10-year forecast, formerly known as the USDA Baseline, USDA predicted strong growth in crop and livestock production, providing weather patterns return to normal. The 105-page annual report provides a future look at all major agricultural products.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-WY, along with cosponsors Sens. Mike Crapo, R-ID, Mike Enzi, R-WY, Orrin Hatch, R-UT, Dean Heller, R-NV, Mike Lee, R-UT, and Jim Risch, R-ID, introduced the bill which seeks to improve the livestock grazing permitting processes on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.

Kerry promised a “fair and transparent” review of the Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline would transport oil from western Canada to refineries in Texas, and made headlines throughout 2012, in part because of the lack of action and indecisiveness from the current State Department.

More than 5,000 cattlemen and women registered to attend the 2013 Cattle Industry Convention and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) Trade Show, in Tampa, FL. The convention is the largest annual gathering of the beef industry and ran Feb. 6-9.