E15 Begins Selling & Foot and MouthVaccine

E15 Begins Selling & Foot and MouthVaccine plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

Kansas became the first state Tuesday to sell 15-percent ethanol-blended gasoline under the Environmental Protection Agency waiver. The nation’s first E15 gallons were pumped at the Zarco 66 Oasis station in Lawrence, Kansas on Tuesday and Scott Zaremba - Owner of Zarco 66 stations - is pleased to be the first to offer consumers a real choice at the pump in the form of E15.

ZAREMBA: Being in the energy business for the last 40 years we’ve seen the ebb and flow of what we use for transportation energy and we just wholeheartedly believe alternatives are what we need to be moving towards to lessen our dependency on foreign oil and also be able to have cleaner burning product.

Scientists at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center have produced a molecular vaccine against one strain of Foot and Mouth Disease. The vaccine does not use a live FMD virus for vaccine manufacture and it can be used to differentiate an infected from inoculated animal using common diagnostic tests. Center Director Dr. Larry Barrett says it’s the biggest news in FMD research in the last 50 years. He says it is the first licensed FMD vaccine that can be manufactured on the U.S. mainland.

Now with today’s Food Forethought, here’s Lacy Gray.

Lean doesn’t come to mind for a lot of people when they think about serving pork, but they should. Pork can be a very lean source of protein. Misconceptions about pork have been pushed long and hard by certain food activists to the point that people have forgotten how good pork can actually be for them. Pork doesn’t only mean bacon. There are several lean cuts of pork, such as pork tenderloin, which is a lean healthy alternative to skinless chicken breasts. And contrary to popular misconception, Americans do not over consume protein. Research published late last year in the Nutrition Research Journal showed that Americans are consuming protein well within the recommended dietary guidelines of 5.5 ounces of total protein foods daily, with an average intake for adults of 3.2 ounces of total fresh pork. As a dietary choice lean cuts of pork are high in protein, low in fat and have more thiamin, niacin, B6 and B12 than many other types of meat; vitamins that play an important role in a variety of body functions, including energy production and metabolism. Bottom line, what we as individuals choose to eat is a personal choice, but there’s no reason to feel guilty about being a pork fan.

Thanks Lacy. That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.