Analysts: Swift’s Assets May Be Sold Separately (WCCO Minneapolis/St. Paul) Swift & Co., one of the nation's largest meatpacking processors, may find it more lucrative to sell its assets separately instead of as a whole or testing the market with a stock offering, industry analysts said Tuesday. More Minnesota News More Business News [News Source]

Haggis, Updated: Less Offal, Tastes Great (New York Times) Did Robert Burns really like Haggis? Does anyone? Yes. Scotland?s national dish once inspired poetry and now it may even inspire compliments from guests. [News Source]

Horse meat makes comeback as healthy and trendy dish in France (Daily Telegraph) Despite its tender flavour, there has always something unsettling about a plate of steaming horse meat. Now, however, Paris chefs and butchers are reviving the meat's fortunes by offering it as a trendy and healthy alternative to beef, pork and lamb. [News Source]

Johanns: Talks With Japan Needed To Increase Beef Trade (CattleNetwork.com) WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)- U.S. and Japanese government officials need to sit down for talks on how the countries can best move toward increasing beef trade, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said Tuesday. [News Source]

A poet’s birthday gives a humble Scottish dish its blaze of glory (Tucson Citizen) EDINBURGH, Scotland - Take heart, liver and lung of sheep, roll in oatmeal, add pepper and stuff into beef intestine. Boil for four hours until "warm-reekin' rich." Enjoy. A skeptical world is catching on to the charms of the humble haggis, according to producers of the essential delicacy for Thursday's Burns Night celebrations, this year marking the 248th anniversary of the poet Robert Burns' ... [News Source]

Single protein plays a major role in prion diseases (News-Medical-Net) A single protein plays a major role in deadly prion diseases by smashing up clusters of these infectious proteins, creating the "seeds" that allow fatal brain illnesses to quickly spread, new Brown University research shows. [News Source]

How Iraq and climate change threw the right into disarray. The right is in disarray because it has found itself on the wrong side of the two dominating issues in contemporary western politics: global warming and the Iraq war. [News Source]

Premise registration continues on plan (Iowa Farmer) Editor’s note: On Nov.. 22, the Bush administration pledged not to make a planned National Animal Identification System mandatory. However, that has not derailed movement toward a voluntary tracking system. [News Source]

U.S. aide bluntly describes her beef (JoongAng Daily) The United States turned up the pressure on Korea to negotiate a settlement of a controversy over the import of U.S. beef here on Monday in Washington. [News Source]

Horse stepping back on the plate? (AFP via Yahoo! News) It was a sign of the times when the horse butcher featured in the French blockbuster film "Amelie" closed for good. [News Source]