Drone Proposal & Canadian BSE

Canada confirmed its first case of mad cow disease since 2011 last Friday, but said the discovery should not hit a beef export sector worth $1.6 billion a year. The news, however, helped boost U.S. cattle prices. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) said no part of the animal, a beef cow from Alberta, had reached the human food or animal feed systems. Canada's Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz says they're not worried about this incident.

RITZ: We have controlled risk status which means we can have up to twelve outbreaks in any calendar year. We've stayed well below that. This is the first we've encountered since 2011, I think was the last one. When you test to the degree that Canada does you're going to find these types of things. That's why we do it to assure our trading partners that we have a good, robust traceability system.

Drones finally got a proposal for flying the skies. The Federal Aviation Administration released Sunday its long-awaited proposal for governing small commercial drones. The FAA proposal would allow drones weighing up to 55 pounds to fly within sight of their remote pilots during daylight hours. The aircraft must stay below 500 feet in the air and fly less than 100 mph. The FAA asked for 60 days of public comment on its proposal for commercial drones, but industry experts expect the analysis of comments could take 18 months or longer before the rules are completed.

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