Protecting Northwest Salmon & Wheat Reps To Meet Japanese Customers

Protecting Northwest Salmon & Wheat Reps To Meet Japanese Customers

Protecting Northwest Salmon & Wheat Reps To Meet Japanese Customers

I’m Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

It was concluded in a report released by the U.S. Geological Survey and Oregon State University in 2011 that predatory birds nesting at Goose Island in Potholes Reservoir, consume as much as 15 percent of migrating endangered upper Columbia River steelhead smolts. In response to this, Congressman Doc Hastings authored language as a part of the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill to direct federal agencies to protect Northwest salmon from predatory birds on the Columbia River.

HASTINGS: The language simply tells the Corp of Engineers okay, we know it’s here - tell us what your plan is, so that this will not be repeated over and over and over again. And we give them a time frame in which to come up with a plan. It’s an attempt to try to mitigate what we know is the obvious - that is that there are predatory birds that are consuming a lot of salmon smolt.

The language passed the House of Representatives as a part of the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill last Wednesday by a vote of 277 to 198.

Northwest wheat industry representatives plan to meet with Japanese customers in Portland this Friday to discuss the genetically modified wheat strain found in a field in Oregon this spring. During the WSU Spillman Agronomy Farm field day in Pullman July 11 Washington Grain Commission chair Tom Zwainz told those attending they’re hopeful that Japan will return to the soft white wheat market by the end of August. Japan has temporarily suspended new purchases of “western white” wheat until evidence can be provided that this was an isolated incident and that GMO wheat is not in commercial material in seed lots in the Northwest. To date expanded inspections of wheat samples by APHIS and WSU have all been free of the unapproved GM wheat strain.

 

I’m Lacy Gray and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Ag Information Network. 

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