Video draws animal cruelty charges [Associated Press]
Prosecutors have filed animal cruelty charges against the owner and seven employees at a Southern California livestock auction house after undercover video shot by an animal rights group showed workers kicking, hitting and tossing the animals as they were readied for sale. The grainy video, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press and shot by the Los Angeles-based group Mercy for Animals, shows workers at Ontario Livestock Sales in Ontario, Calif., kicking and stomping on pigs to get them to move through a narrow chute, hitting emus with a baton and slinging baby goats by the neck and hind legs. In one shot, two workers drag a sick sheep that can't walk by its ears and heave it into the back of a van. Prosecutors have filed a total of 21 misdemeanor counts against the owner, Horacio Santorsola, and seven employees after conducting further investigation with the help of the Inland Valley Humane Society, said Reza Daghbandan, a prosecutor with the San Bernardino County district attorney's office.
Citrus pest 'emergency' plan subject of San Juan meeting [Orange County Register]
The state intends to start applying insecticides to fruit trees in parts of San Juan Capistrano to try to rid them of the Asian citrus psyllid, an insect that agriculture officials call a threat to California's backyard and commercial citrus. The California Department of Food and Agriculture will present a public meeting about its plans from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the San Juan Capistrano Community Center, 25925 Camino del Avion. Officials do not plan a formal presentation but will answer questions. Treatments may begin about a week after the meeting, department spokesman Steve Lyle said. Similar actions are planned for Irvine, Mission Viejo, Ladera Ranch, Lake Forest and San Clemente, he said.
http://www.ocregister.com/news/california-356531-san-insect.html
Sentencing pushed back to September for Salyer in 'Rotten Tomato' case [Monterey County Herald]
Scott Salyer will have a couple of more months before facing a federal judge and a probable multi-year prison sentence, but the rules on a his 20-month-old home confinement won't be relaxed. Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Karlton rebuffed a request by Salyer to relax the 24-hour-a-day restrictions on his movement from his Pebble Beach home. Salyer, 56, a Pebble Beach resident and onetime leader in the California produce industry, pleaded guilty in March to racketeering and price-fixing charges in a plea deal.
More genes than humans: The tomato decoded [New York Times]
The tomato, whose genome has just now been decoded, turns out to be one well-endowed vegetable, possessing 31,760 genes. This rich legacy, possibly a reflection of the disaster that killed off the dinosaurs, is some 7,000 more than that of a person, and presents a complex puzzle to scientists who hope to understand its secrets. A consortium of plant geneticists from 14 countries has spent nine years decoding the tomato genome in the hope of breeding better ones. The scientists sequenced the genomes of both Heinz 1706, a variety used to make ketchup, and the tomato’s closest wild relative, Solanum pimpinellifolium, which lives in the highlands of Peru, where the tomato’s ancestors originated. Their results were published online Wednesday in the journal Nature. The tomato, though a fruit to botanists, has been decreed a vegetable by the United States Supreme Court. The verdict is not so unreasonable given that the tomato has a close cousin that is a vegetable, namely the potato. The genomes of the two plants have 92 percent of their DNA in common, the tomato researchers report. The main difference is that the potato is thought to have a handful of genes that direct the plant’s energy away from producing fruit and into the generation of tubers. But even with the genomes of the two plants deciphered, those genes have not yet been identified, said Daniel Zamir, a plant geneticist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and one of the report’s two principal authors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/science/the-tomato-ripe-juicy-and-bursting-with-genes.html?_r=1
Hundreds of salmonella cases tied to chicks [Associated Press]
Those cute mail-order chicks that wind up in children's Easter baskets and backyard farms have been linked to more than 300 cases of salmonella in the U.S. - mostly in youngsters - since 2004. An estimated 50 million live poultry are sold through the mail each year in the United States in a business that has been booming because of the growing popularity of backyard chicken farming as a hobby among people who like the idea of raising their own food. But health officials are warning of a bacterial threat on the birds' feet, feathers, beaks and eggs.
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