Washington food barley sample at U.S. Grains Council meeting; fighting Johne's disease wtih stainless steel

Washington Ag Today July 22, 2010 Samples of a food barley product made in Taiwan from a barley sample shipped from Washington were presented at the barley session of the U.S. Grain’s Council annual meeting in Boston this week.

Washington barley grower Tom Zwainz, who is also a member of the Washington Grain Commission, was at the meeting

Zwainz: “Our trade representative from Taiwan was there and he did have a sample of the barley that Washington Grain Commission helped to ship to Taiwan to make into food barley. They flaked it, toasted it and basically made it into a breakfast cereal. We got to look at that product. So far it seems to be accepted fairly well in Taiwan.”

The sample shipped to Taiwan was of a specialty food barley high in beta-glucans.

Two good tips for preventing Johne’s disease on dairy farms are use stainless steel water troughs and add chlorine to the water. That the advice from Agricultural Research Service scientists in Kentucky. They acknowledge that stainless steel troughs are expensive but say not as expensive as Johne’s disease.

Researchers found high concentrations of bacteria on all troughs within three days of inoculating the water with bacteria and they survived more than 149 days. But the survival rate was lowest on stainless steel. And when chlorine bleach was added at three tablespoons per 100 gallons of trough water weekly less than one percent of the bacteria remained on stainless steel, while 20 percent remained on concrete troughs.