At the 2024 Annual Meeting, WLIC will host an election for its board of directors, which will include electing directors for up to five available open seats on WLIC’s board.



Learn more about this year’s director nominees at the button below!

Get the Facts Straight on Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza

Now that the mystery illness impacting dairy herds in the Texas Panhandle, New Mexico and Kansas has been revealed as the same strain of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) that has been impacting the U.S. poultry flock, pork producers are asking a lot of questions. Is HPAI transmittable to pigs? Should livestock producers with cattle and pigs be concerned about cross-species transmission? Can humans get HPAI?  

Those are all important questions, but understanding HPAI is the best place to start, says National Pork Board chief veterinarian Dusty Oedekoven.  

“HPAI is influenza. HPAI is a narrowly defined term regarding the severity of the mortality rate in poultry,” he explains.  

Within strains of influenza A, the naming convention goes by two proteins on the outer surface of the virus – hemagglutinin (H type) and neuraminidase (N type). Typically, HPAI is of the H5s or H7s types, but there are many other possibilities as there are 18 hemagglutinin types and 11 neuraminidase types, he explains. 

Larson Acres Awarded WDE Dairy Producers of the Year

World Dairy Expo® is delighted to announce the recipients of the 2024 Expo Recognition Awards. Nominated and selected by their peers, these individuals have made remarkable contributions to the dairy industry and their communities. Honorees will be formally honored during the Recognition Awards Banquet at World Dairy Expo on Wednesday, October 2, 2024. Banquet tickets will be available at www.worlddairyexpo.com beginning on July 1.

Dairy Producers of the Year

Mike Larson, Ed & Barb Larson, Sandy Larson & Jim Trustem, Evansville, Wis., Larson Acres

Focusing on three key pillars – quality, pride and family – Larson Acres is truly a superior example of modern dairy farming.

The cows play a pivotal role at Larson Acres, but the people are just as important to the Larson family, opening their barn doors to welcome community members, industry leaders, fellow dairy producers, international guests, school children and more.

Proposition 12 and the Future of the U.S. Pork Industry

Why would a farm convert to become California Proposition 12 compliant? It’s a fair question that Phillip Hord, president of Hord Family Farms in Bucyrus, Ohio, continues to ask himself. They recently finished the construction of a new farm that will be Proposition 12 compliant and are in the process of adding gilts to the farm that have been in backgrounding to better prepare them for a Prop 12 compliant system. 

“Ultimately, when we're building assets that are going to possibly even outlive me, we have to think about the future. When we think about the longevity of the asset, and right now, what is right in front of us, we felt like we had to make that decision,” Hord says. 

The Hords have been using pen gestation for 17 years now. Ohio producers are familiar with what it’s like to raise gilts and sows in an open pen, he explains. But Prop 12 adds even more square footage requirements, resulting in poorer efficiency and a potentially greater carbon footprint.

Equity Cooperative Livestock Sales Association

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