More E-15 Soon Available & Albertson's Closures

More E-15 Soon Available & Albertson’s Closures plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

More 15-percent ethanol could become available after this past weekend. Renewable Fuels Association President and CEO Bob Dinneen says last Saturday - 15th - marked the expiration date for the EPA’s summer volatility restriction for gasoline.

DINEEN: Which means that the blend stocks for E-15 are going to be more readily available so for a lot of refiners and marketers that have expressed interest in blending E-15 and offering this new product to consumers but they haven’t been able to get the blend stock appropriate for its use, they will now be able to do so and we anticipate that a number of gasoline marketers are going to start offering E-15 because they will finally have the gasoline to blend the E-15 with.

Albertson’s grocery stores have been having a tough time of it. Albertsons' parent company, Supervalu Inc., announced that it would close 26 stores this year and that includes 8 in Oregon and Washington. 19 stores are closing in California. Big box retailers like Wal-Mart and Target have been hurting the traditional grocery store and one expert said the old-fashioned grocery store is a dinosaur. Safeway and Kroger have both seen their stocks fall while Whole Foods is seeing a 12-fold increase in the last four years.

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

Could it be the table has turned for extreme animal rights activist groups such as PETA? Or perhaps common sense has finally returned to the judicial arena. Either way, it was good news this month when two of PETA’s frivolous lawsuits were given the thumbs down by judges in California and Kansas. A California judge ruled against PETA’s lawsuit aimed at shutting down the state’s dairy industry “Happy Cows Come From California” marketing campaign because in PETA’s words, “such marketing claims violate state rules by misrepresenting the health and well being of dairy cows”. The judge thought differently though after being presented sufficient evidence from the California Department of Food and Agriculture and the state’s Milk Advisory Board that California dairy cows are indeed comfortable, safe and happy. In Kansas, a U.S. District Court judge determined that PETA does not have the right to force state fair organizers there to publicly display PETA’s graphic anti-meat video. PETA can have a booth, but people wanting to see the video will have to request a viewing. Maybe, it’s finally sinking in that animal welfare decisions should be based on scientific fact, not radical ideological emotionalism.

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