This week, the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) approved, or more accurately declared, a “low risk determination” for heat tolerant gene-edited cattle. The company involved used the CRISPR gene-editing technique to produce cattle with the short-hair trait, known as a “slick coat.” Some scientists say cattle with an extremely short coat may be better able to tolerate hot weather (think Angus instead of Brangus in the southern Plains). The gene editing is known as PRLR-SLICK cattle, and commercial PRLR-SLICK cattle bred using conventional breeding techniques would not have to register with FDA for producing meat animals. The FDA stated, “the food from the cattle is the same as food from conventio...
What You Need to Know Today: There has already been a strong run of flash soybean sales announcements in recent weeks, but more than 1.4 MMT reported this morning is an exceptionally large single-day total with major implications for the market. If the sales to China and unknown destinations w...
On Friday, at 6:57 AM, President Donald Trump announced, via a social media post, a 90-day window during which up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef could be imported outside of tariff-rate quotas—a move aimed at bringing down costs for American consumers. This is the secon...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.