Farm meeting to be held in Ohio Wednesday evening

Jun 15, 2016

Meeting will surround a potential poultry facility

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

The Ohio Department of Agriculture will host a meeting tonight to discuss the possibilty of a poultry facility being built.

Pine Valley Ranch, LLC, wants to build a six-barn, concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) for poultry. The facility would be able to hold about 2.2 million chickens and operated by RB Family Farms LLC and Fleck Poultry LLC.

The meeting, scheduled to being at 6:30 p.m. at the Van Wert County Extension Office’s administration building, will also be attended by Advocates for a Clean Lake Erie (ACLE).

The group believes the western Lake Erie watershed already deals with too much manure created by 11.2 million chickens, 292,000 hogs and 97,000 cows housed at other CAFOs, according to the Toledo Blade.

Chickens

ACLE has said property values have been reduced and "people think twice about investing in a place with the same reputation as the flaming Cuyahoga River and now Flint, Michigan."

In a May release about the project, the department of agriculture said the CAFO would produce about 18,333 tons of manure annually, and that each barn would have belts under the cages to transport solid manure to two manure storage barns daily.

Video: Sweetener Effects on Gut Health - Dr. Kwangwook Kim

In this episode of The Swine Nutrition Blackbelt Podcast, Dr. Kwangwook Kim, Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, discusses the use of non-nutritive sweeteners in nursery pig diets. He explains how sucralose and neotame influence feed intake, gut health, metabolism, and the frequency of diarrhea compared to antibiotics. The conversation highlights mechanisms beyond palatability, including hormone signaling and nutrient transport. Listen now on all major platforms!

“Receptors responsible for sweet taste are present not only in the mouth but also along the intestinal tract.”

Meet the guest: Dr. Kwangwook Kim / kwangwook-kim is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, specializing in swine nutrition and feed additives under disease challenge models. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Animal Sciences from the University of California, Davis, where he focused on intestinal health and metabolic responses in pigs. His research evaluates alternatives to antibiotics, targeting gut health and performance in nursery pigs.