Wild Horses Moved & Costco Cancels Veal Contract

Wild Horses Moved & Costco Cancels Veal Contract plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. The Bureau of Land Management is in the process of moving nearly 200 wild horses from the area in Idaho near Twin Fall that was burned by wildfires. BLM authorities determined there was not enough forage to sustain the herd according to BLM's Heather Tiel-Nelson. NELSON: 52% of the 95-thousand acre herd management area out here at Saylor Creek burned but of that, where the horses prefer – what we call their home range, 100% of that burned. At this point we're still out here, we're still gathering horses, they're going to be hauled to the Boise wild horse corral. She says it will be a few weeks before they determine what to do with the horses but at this point the primary objective is to get the horses into food and water and to asses if there are respiratory issues. Kirkland, WA based Costco has immediately pulled the plug on a contract to purchase veal from an Ohio based farm after a video was made public showing poor conditions at the facility. The video was narrated by former game show host Bob Barker shows calves tethered by chains in small wooden pens and covered in what Barker describes as their own waste and includes pictures from a separate facility where newborn male cows are snatched from their dairy cow mothers and whisked off to pens to become veal. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray. Most consumers would agree there has to be more to eating healthy than just increasing a products fiber or whole grain ratio. It also has to taste good. If a food product doesn't taste good, it won't matter how healthy it proves to be, people won't buy it. Up steps, or scampers as the case happens to be, some very pampered mice. Wheat researchers have been using mice to try and pin point the best tasting wheat varieties. In lab tests designed to identify what one researcher calls the "yummy and yucky" genes in wheat the mice preferred wheat kernels over their lab food pellets, and soft wheat over hard wheat. If you're wondering like I did why they didn't just use a people panel to determine which wheat was tastier, the answer is fairly simple, the mice are more affordable in the beginning stages of testing. If the mice appear to have a noticeable flavor and texture preference for one wheat over another, a trained sensory panel of the two legged variety can then be employed to see if they detect a noticeable difference. For some very lucky mice the next step in this process involves testing over two hundred varieties of wheat. I wonder if a mouse belch is as audible as spiders wearing tennis shoes? Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.