INDUSTRY NEWS

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue swore in Vicki Christiansen as the 19th chief of the USDA Forest Service this morning in Washington, D.C. Christiansen has been serving as interim chief since March of this year. Following his announcement yesterday, Perdue issued the following statement:

Just hours before the midnight deadline, U.S. and Canadian officials reached an agreement on a new trade deal between themselves and Mexico, revamping the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) after more than a year of touch-and-go negotiations.

USDA is planning to revive a rulemaking process aimed at balancing power between meatpacking companies and contract growers, more widely known as the GIPSA rules. The department will revisit GIPSA regulations in its spring 2019 regulatory agenda, which sets out a list of priorities for the year, a spokesman confirmed Thursday.

Earlier this year, Ireland became the first major European beef exporting country to be approved by China and already has six plants approved for beef exports to the mainland. On Sept. 11, the first container of Irish beef to arrive by sea cleared customs in Beijing.

President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in held a signing ceremony Sept. 24, officially sealing a new U.S.-South Korea trade deal.

Hurricane Florence, heralded by weather experts as the worst storm to hit the Carolinas in 30 years, approached the East Coast as a Category 4 storm and downgraded to a Category 1 storm when it made landfall at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, on Friday morning, with winds at 90 to 75 miles per hour.