Humane Society of US again scaring people away from good diets? (AG Weekly) The Humane Society of the U.S. has, for years, been trying to frighten people away from consuming meat, milk and eggs -- but its recent testimony before a congressional committee reached a new low when the HSUS president, Wayne Pacelle, made the unsupported claim that pigs could be harboring the infamous and deadly British ‘mad cow” disease. [News Source]

R-calf beats beef war drum R-Calf - which a Canadian document described as an outfit "driven by a protectionist philosophy" - has begun the legal process to stop the USDA from opening the border to Canadian beef and cattle over 30 months old even before the USDA hands down its final ruling regarding mad cow disease. [News Source]

IBM offers software to track bird flu. IBM said Thursday that it is giving health authorities and others around the world expanded access to free software it partly developed in San Jose to help track bird flu and other infectious diseases. [News Source]

Warning over drug-resistant diseases in EU. Many infectious diseases have been eradicated in Europe but new infections and drug resistant microbes pose a new threat, a new EU report presented on Thursday in Stockholm showed. [News Source]

USDA will fight ruling on cattle test (The Record) The United States Department of Agriculture said last week that it does not support widespread testing of cattle for mad cow disease and will fight a recent court ruling that would force it to allow such tests, according to The Associated Press. [News Source]