Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 12/19/17

Animal-welfare groups are particularly upset about USDA's decision last week to completely scrap a rule to set new animal-welfare standards for organic livestock production. And they're planning to push back, alongside the organic industry and other farm groups that backed the standards. 

"We will continue to explain the importance of this comprehensive set of animal welfare regulations to the Trump administration and members of Congress," said Marty Irby, a senior adviser at Humane Society Legislative Fund, the political arm of the Human Society of the United States. Irby said his group would urge consumers and producers to weigh in during the USDA's comment period. 

Comments, again: Indeed, members of the public will have 30 days to express opinions, but it doesn't appear that the feedback matters all that much in this particular case. As organic and welfare groups said last week, the previous comment period was overwhelmingly in support of the standards USDA had come up with. The department decided to scrap them anyway. 

A premium on perceived welfare standards? As Civil Eats put it Monday, there remains plenty of confusion and assumption in the marketplace: "The animals behind your certified organic meat, eggs, and dairy may have been treated more humanely than their conventional counterparts. But the odds are just as high-especially if you're buying them from a large producer at a relatively low price-that they haven't been."

OTA to keep it up in court: The Organic Trade Association pledged to keep fighting USDA. "We're already suing USDA over its derailment of the implementation of the rule, and this latest action does not change that lawsuit," Maggie McNeil, a spokeswoman for OTA, wrote in an email on Monday to MA. McNeil says that the group will file a motion for summary judgment and then the USDA is expected to file a motion to dismiss the complaint. The deadline for both of those actions is Jan. 15, she said.