The Food and Drug Administration unveiled new rules today that will restrict the use of antibiotics in cattle, pigs, chickens and turkeys. Federal regulators said such drugs as cephalosporins, sold under the brand names of Cefzil and Keflex, have "contributed to the growing threat of bacterial infections in people that are resistant to treatment."

The antibiotics are commonly used to treat strep throat, skin infections, urinary tract infections and bronchitis in livestock. The drugs are often added to animal feed.

The FDA tried to restrict cephalosporin in 2008 but withdrew its rule due to opposition from farmers and ranchers. Feds said today's rule was "less strict," allowing for unrestricted use of cephapirin, an older class of cephalosporins that is not though to contribute to antimicrobial resistance. The new rule also allows for use of the drugs in ducks and rabbits.

Idaho House Speaker Lawerence Denney will introduce a bill this week to protect and strengthen confined animal feeding operations, better known as CAFOs. Denney's measure would fortify Idaho's Right-to-Farm Act to include any "defined agricultural activities." Simply put, instead of a simple definition of agriculture, the law would also encompass any "recognized or permitted" entity that includes farm services. Denney's bill would require any group that challenged and lost an effort to eliminate an agricultural facility to pay all legal fees.

The Right-to-Farm Act was created to protect family farms from nuisance suits. But for nearly a quarter of a century, family farms have dwindled in Idaho while CAFOs continued to grow. Between 1991 and 2007, the number of Idaho dairies dropped from 1,952 to 648. But the average herd size increased from 91 cows in 1991 to 783 in 2007. As the mega-dairies grew, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality has found increasingly elevated levels of nitrate in areas heavily populated with CAFOs.

Citydesk regulars may remember a few months back when Citydesk was ensnared in a permitting nightmare of his own making.

He who was ensnared, former News Editor Nathaniel Hoffman, sent BW an update on his permitting nightmare today and since so many readers had something to say about his front-yard-turned-farm, we thought we'd share. Hoffman posted this today on paleomedia.org, his personal news blog/e-diary:

So it is with great pleasure that I report to you that the City of Boise has deemed the garden and trellis “appropriate.” That is the term they use. I have a Certificate of Appropriateness pending for my little urban farm.
It’s pending because I need to get my license agreement with ACHD done first. And because they’ve asked us to put some permanent greenery along the street-facing edge of the yard. So I need to find a low-water, low-profile creeping plant that will grow down a nearly vertical slope to the street but not take over the garden, if anyone has any recommendations … something that is not grass.

But the other interesting thing that came out of this process is that the city’s Historic Preservation Department plans to convene a working group at the end of the summer to discuss gardens in Historic Districts. Sarah Shafer, the lead staffer at Historic Preservation told me that the commissioners prefer raised beds but said that the were looking for some more recommendation on how to handle gardens in historic districts.

At most decent newspapers, any reporter who gets a DUI will show up on the front page the next day. Well this is not quite as bad, but I came home last week to a "NOTICE OF VIOLATION" from the City of Boise. Zoning Enforcement Officer Michael Garner noted that I had constructed a "strange metal fence" without obtaining a fence permit.

He's right; I should have obtained the $13.50 fence permit before constructing my fence post and hog panel trellis around my urban front yard garden. I do feel like the city has a right to regulate fences in city limits, though I didn't anticipate that my fence needed regulation when I was building it.

So I went into City Hall this afternoon to pay up, but then the clerk noted that I was in a historic district and thus would need a Certificate of Appropriateness in lieu of the fence permit. That's $26, by the way, and a 7-page application. Also, standard wooden fences have been pre-deemed appropriate here, but hog paneling is generally considered inappropriate, according to Matt Halitsky, who staffs the city's Historic Preservation Commission and who patiently answered my questions, though he partially obscured his profile behind a partition as we spoke.

So, being the open, honest citizen that I am, I asked about the front yard urban garden referenced above which the suspect fence/trellis complements in a 1950s Ranch meets actual ranch style that I spent the winter designing in my head.

In fact, front yard gardens in historic preservation districts are frowned upon, but I'd have to fill out the app to be sure, Halitsky responded.

• That's not a bad fence, right? That's not even a fence, it's a trellis.

So now my minor fence permit violation has turned into a full scale question of appropriateness, calling into question the viability of the garden that is to be my life's work this summer.

The clerk assured me that a neighbor complained about it ... zoning enforcement does not just drive around looking for violations like this, she assured me. Well, first of all, I wish that neighbor would just come talk to me.

I think I'll fill out the paperwork and see this through as an experiment in being an adult. Just don't tread on my baby arugula, Mr. Boise Commie Man, OK.

An effort to encourage the feds to decriminalize industrial hemp died a quick death today in the House Agricultural Affairs Committee when five Republicans, all sitting in a row, voted to not even print the bill.

The print hearing, which is required before a bill gets a full public hearing, started off with an apparent well of support behind the resolution. Not only was committee chairman Tom Trail sponsoring it, but Reps. Eric Anderson, a Republican from Priest Lake and Brian Cronin, a Democrat from Boise were there to back the bill as well.

All three presented the ban on hemp as an economic issue. Trail said Canadian farmers get $200,000 an acre for the seeds. Anderson said that even car fabrics now use the stuff.

"Probably not a day goes by when we are not around a hemp product," he said.

And Cronin brought a box of hemp milk (an Idaho dairy lobbyist countered in the hallway afterward that it's not in fact milk since it did not come from a mammary gland) which is available up the street at the Boise Co-op, to demonstrate the hypocrisy that you can by the by-products, but you can't grow the raw materials.

But Rep. Dennis Lake questioned the sponsors on why hemp was banned in the first place, raising concerns that hemp and marijuana plants appear very similar and may present problems for law enforcement.

• Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
• Early season hemp plants north of Dauphin in Canada where hemp cultivation is legal and encouraged.

While they do appear similar, Trail asserted that they are grown in different fashions—hemp is a row crop— and that marijuana growers would be making a big mistake hiding their plants in fields of hemp because they would cross pollinate and dilute the effects of the marijuana.

Trail also assured the committee that industrial hemp contains very little to no THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.

"To get a high you'd have to build a cigar the size of a telephone pole," he said, quoting a Canadian expert.

Cronin pointed out that the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper and that the wagon trains out west were covered in hempen cloth. But that was not enough to convince the committee, which voted 5-5 to send the resolution back to Trail.

Anderson and Cronin said after the hearing that they would continue to work with law enforcement and other interests to push a full discussion on the merits of hemp farming to Idaho.

"This was important to have this hearing today," Anderson said. "It's an important dialogue that needs to be heard."

Canyon County farmer Janie Burns, with support from the chairmen of both the House and Senate agriculture committees, introduced a resolution this morning to "encourage healthy, locally grown food production, distribution and consumption in the state of Idaho."

Burns went through a lengthy Idaho food history, recalling her parents' changing attitudes toward food as Americans went to the moon and strove to be modern. She recalled the time when they stopped raising their own chickens and started getting eggs at the supermarket instead.

Burns testified to the dramatic decline in food production and processing in Idaho: in 1953 there were 19 flour mills in Idaho and today there is only one.

"Slowly, almost imperceptible, our food started coming from somewhere else," she said.

House Agricultural Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Trail spoke about the economic impact of the long-standing Moscow Farmers Market, which he said brings in $100,000 a week to producers and even more in terms of community cohesion. Rep. Mack Shirley noted that Idaho Falls started a Farmers Market this year as well and moved to introduce the bill.

The resolution will be available online later today and will be scheduled for a hearing.