With the elections over, the new Congress and Senate will have their first session in early 2013.  They will be faced with many issues, some old, some new.  It is time for the new Congress and Senate to put aside politics and become legislators.  There are still two major Bills in committee of interest to Vietnam veterans, House Bill HR-3612 and Senate Bill S.1629.  These Bills are to restore VA benefits for Agent Orange exposure during the Vietnam war.

The present Congress and Senate still have time to act upon these Bills before January 2013.  These Bills must come out of committee and go to the floor of both houses.  I ask the American people to urge our legislators to act on these Bills.  The Vietnam veterans who are sick from Agent Orange Dioxin exposure need these Bills passed into law by our present legislators before the new legislators take office.  With a new legislative assembly, we advocates for Vietnam veterans will have to start over again.  This means longer delay for veterans VA approval.  Thousands of Vietnam veterans won't be approved by the VA because they did not have boots on ground, even though they were awarded the Vietnam Service Medal. Many Sailors, Airmen and Fleet Marines who served during that war are sick from exposure to the deadly herbicide.  With the passage of the afore mentioned Bills, these members of the Armed Forces will receive equality for VA benefits.

CHICAGO, IL (11/08/2012)(readMedia)-- More than 250 non-profit, public and private leaders will gather at the Union League Club of Chicago to launch Illinois Joining Forces (IJF), a new statewide public-private partnership that will improve support for service members, veterans and their families.

Illinois Joining Forces will increase the collaboration and communication among non-profits and public agencies at the local, state and federal level. Through IJF, participating organizations will work together to address gaps in services, to actively refer veterans and service members in need of assistance, and to offer better navigation of available resources and service to the public.

The new collaborative online platform www.IllinoisJoiningForces.org, will help IJF members to share information collaborate on project and facilitate referrals. With the active participation of IJF members, www.IllinoisJoiningForces.org will also provide a user-friendly way for service members, veterans, and their families to find programs resources and events across the state.

As the world population continues to grow, and there is increasing demand for crop production acres to raise food and fuel, efficiency in the cattle industry is becoming ever more important. Feed efficiency, or the amount of body weight gain from a pound of feed, is key to feedlot performance and profitability. Global food security is dependent on increased production from fewer inputs.

Efficient use of feed is even more important as the cost of feed and other inputs continues to increase. Feed costs have historically been 50-70 percent of the cost of production in beef enterprises, and as corn prices exceed $7 per bushel feed costs are nearly 80 percent of the cost in many feedlot operations. A feed efficiency improvement of approximately 10 percent across
the entire feedlot sector would reduce feed costs $1.2 billion.

Feed efficiency is often thought of as a feedlot attribute. But the cow-calf segment consumes about 70 percent of the calories in beef production, and of those more than half are used for maintenance. Unfortunately feed efficiency and feed intake is difficult to measure on large numbers of cattle, so improvements have been slow in coming.

The genetic improvement of feed efficiency in beef cattle is the focus of a large USDA funded integrated research and extension project. It will leverage a variety of methods to achieve the goal of feed efficiency. The five year, USDA-AFRI funded project titled "National Program for Genetic Improvement of Feed Efficiency in Beef Cattle" (www.beefefficiency.org) is to sustainably reduce feed resources required to produce beef. The project will rapidly develop and deploy novel nutritional, genomic and genetic improvement technologies.

Stronger international competitiveness of U.S. agriculture, increased food production through increased animal protein production without additional feed inputs, and reduced greenhouse gas footprint are goals of project participants. The project will gather existing individual feed intake and composition records across the major U.S. beef breeds and back fill deficiencies in these represented breeds through collection of new records.

This project will be featured at the upcoming Driftless Region Beef conference Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, 2013, in Dubuque, Iowa. Three of the speakers are involved in the feed efficiency project including Dan Shike University of Illinois; Matt Spangler, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; and Dan Loy, Iowa State University.

The conference will begin at 1 p.m. on Jan. 31 and run till 11:45 a.m. on Feb. 1. Thursday's afternoon program will focus on feed efficiency at all stages of production, with an evening discussion focused on straight versus crossbreeding. Friday morning's program includes three breakout sessions for feedlot operations and three for cow herds.

Registration for the conference is $80 before Jan. 15 or $100 after Jan. 15. Additional information about the conference is available at www.aep.iastate.edu/beef . Registration will open for the conference on Dec. 1.

The Driftless Region Beef Conference is sponsored by the University of Illinois Extension, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, the University of Minnesota Extension, and University of Wisconsin Extension. The planning team strives to deliver the latest in research-based information regarding the beef cattle industry. For more information or to receive a brochure, contact Denise Schwab at 319-721-9624.

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