New Bird Flu Warning & Implementing the Farm Bill

New Bird Flu Warning & Implementing the Farm Bill plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

Chinese scientists sounded the alarm yesterday after a new bird flu virus, H10N8, killed an elderly woman in December and infected another individual last month. The fifth novel influenza strain to emerge in 17 years, the virus has a worrying genetic profile and should be closely monitored. The woman who dies was from Nanchang, in southeastern Jiangxi province. A second case has been reported in Nanchang. Officials say the pandemic potential of this novel virus should not be underestimated.

Now that both the Senate and House have passed the farm bill it is up to the USDA to implement it. President Obama will sign the bill into law Friday. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says they began preparing for implementation about a month ago.

VILSACK: We did begin a process of identifying those items that we felt in each title of the farm bill would be priority to get done and then we have a convening group that is basically going to take a look at all of the priority items and then re-prioritize them, not across titles but across the entire bill so that we'll have a list, a structured list, a priority list.

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

Listen, did you hear that? It was a collective sigh of relief from those within the ag community now that the farm bill has crossed the finish line. With the President set to sign the five year Food, Farm and Jobs bill this Friday things can finally start to move forward. And move forward is definitely what this nation needs to do. The 2012, whoops 2013, nope that's not quite right, 2014 Farm Bill was long in the making - too long, and though everyone is glad that it is finally done, a big pat on the back for legislators is not really in order; not when you consider what we went through to get to this point and that partisan disagreements stalled the bill for more than two years. Of course, congratulations are still working their way around D.C., even from the President who praised lawmakers for coming together in a "strong bipartisan vote" to pass the legislation. But that doesn't stop the criticizers, who say that this final bill doesn't do enough to trim spending. Was it Lincoln who said, " You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time." A farm bill is certainly proof of that.

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