Livestock & Meat Commission

Background: WHO recognized COVID-19 a pandemic on March 12, 2020 and National Health Commission officially declared it as a Class-B infectious disease. The technological advancements enabled the teaching staffs to keep their students involved during this period of COVID-19 pandemic. Online classes become the efficient medium to learn by staying at home. Aim: To find out the challenges faced by mothers during online learning in order to devise a systematic plan for smooth and effective learning in case of another crises like COVID-19. Method: It was a cross sectional study carried out at CMH LMC&IOD , in which a user-defined questionnaire was introduced to the participants which were mothers of school going children from all over the city. The questionnaire got 161 responses in total, but two were incomplete so 159 were considered while doing the analysis. The results were analyzed using SPSS25. Results: In this study,46.9% mothers were of age 40 and above and 47.5% were between 31 -40 years of age. Rest were 30 and below 57.5 % children used laptops to study online, while 34.4 % used a mobile. 7% had their own tablets and only 1.1 used desktops. Only 14.4% mothers supervised their children during all this time. 58.7% however managed supervising studies with other tasks and 26.9% said their children could study online unsupervised. Only 20% mothers thought their children are taking interest in online schooling. 54.5% found their children struggling37.5% mothers thought that their children were learning much less through this online mode of education and 43.8% thought that online learning is somewhat less. Conclusion: Among the various the challenges faced by working mothers and housewives during online education of their children the most important challenge was to keep their children focused on study. We discovered that the online study had little effect on grades because most mothers had to take on the role of teacher as well as supervising. Keywords: Covid-19, online education, working mothers

Most of the world’s arable area is sown to either grains or oilseeds, and it is the big movements in the profitability of these crops that determine the pressure on global cropping-area supply. This perspective incorporates publicly available data, primarily from the FAO, to demonstrate some of the shifting pressures on global agriculture. Additionally, it argues that the advent of biofuel policies created additional demand for the area to produce cereal and oil crops from 2002. However, with a slowing demand growth for ethanol biofuels, crops for human and animal consumption will once again become the main driver for crop acreage. In particular, protein crops will be favoured as higher incomes are strongly linked to a greater animal-product consumption. In addition, a shift to a more intensive animal production is further increasing the demand for protein crops. Therefore, we could ultimately see a contraction in cereal crops and much faster growth in oilseeds, albeit from a lower base, as the demand for feed becomes the main driver for global agriculture. Yet, this is occurring during a time in which protein content of the major oil crops has been declining (albeit while yields continue to increase).

Uranyl ion complexes with 1,3-adamantanediacetate display different topologies arising from variations in coordination mode and the presence of additional ligands.

Selection programmes based on prion protein (PrP) genotypes are being implemented for increasing resistance to scrapie. Commercial meat sheep populations participating in sire-referencing schemes were simulated to investigate the effect of selection on PrP genotypes on ARR and VRQ allele frequencies, inbreeding and genetic gain in a performance trait under selection. PrP selection strategies modelled included selection against the VRQ allele and in favour of the ARR allele. Assuming realistic initial PrP frequencies, selection against the VRQ allele had a minimal impact on performance and inbreeding. However, when selection was also in favour of the ARR allele and the frequency of this allele was relatively low, there was a loss of up to three to four years of genetic gain over the 15 years of selection. Most loss in gain occurred during the first five years. In general, the rate of inbreeding was reduced when applying PrP selection. Since animals were first selected on their PrP genotype before being selected on the performance trait, the intensity of selection on performance was weaker under PrP selection (compared with no PrP selection). Eradication of the VRQ allele or fixation of the ARR allele within 15 years of selection was possible only with PrP selection targeting all breeding animals.

Nine hundred and sixty weaned pigs were exposed for five weeks to controlled concentrations of atmospheric ammonia and dust in a single, multifactorial experiment. The treatments were a mean dust concentration of either 1·2, 2·7, 5·1 or 9·9 mg/m3 (inhalable fraction) and a mean ammonia concentration of either 0·6, 10·0, 18·8 or 37·0 ppm, concentrations representative of commercial conditions. The experiment was carried out over two years and the pigs were used in eight batches, each consisting of five lots of 24 pigs. Each treatment combination was replicated once, and an additional control lot (nominally 0 mg/m3 dust and 0 ppm ammonia) was included in each batch. The dust concentration was the same in the other four lots in each batch in which the four concentrations of ammonia were used; thus, the split-plot design was more sensitive to the effects of ammonia than dust. The groups of pigs were kept separately in five rooms in a purpose-built facility, and the pollutants were injected continuously into the air supply. Ammonia was supplied from a pressurised cylinder, and the endogenous dust in each room was supplemented by an artificial dust manufactured from feed, barley straw and faeces, mixed by weight in the proportions 5:1:4; its ingredients were oven-dried, milled and mixed, and then resuspended in the air supply. The health of the pigs was assessed in terms of general pathology, respiratory tract pathology, and the microbiology of the nasal cavity, trachea and lung. In each batch, postmortem examinations were carried out on 40 pigs after five weeks’ exposure to the pollutants and on 30 pigs two weeks later to test for carryover and recovery – a total of 560 pigs. These examinations revealed minimal gross pathology and widespread minor pathological changes of little significance. The pigs’ turbinate and lung scores were low and unaffected by exposure to pollutants. All the putative bacterial pathogens, with the exception of toxigenic Pasteurella multocida type D, were isolated from the respiratory tract of the pigs of both ages, but there were no differences between the effects of the different concentrations of pollutants.

In response to concerns over the role of meat products in the Scottish diet, a study of the nutritional analysis of a range of meat products for sale in Scotland was carried out. The nutritional analysis of products was compared with that in the composition of foods (Royal Society of Chemistry and Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food). This indicated a probable reduction in the fat content of some products, such as sausage‐rolls and burgers. It is concluded that more information could be conveyed to consumers on the nutritional value of meat products to enable informed choices to be made based on the value of products in a balanced diet.

In the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture, so‐called ‘blue box’ support measures were exempted from reduction commitments, provided they were delivered under ‘production‐limiting’ programs. Although classified as ‘blue box’, the EU system of direct payments (DP) to beef farmers imposes ‘claim‐limiting’ restrictions rather than ‘production‐limiting’ restrictions, allowing farmers to keep additional animals over and above the number upon which they are eligible to claim DP. The present paper provides empirical evidence that EU direct payments capitalise into the market prices of male calves and young steers in Ireland. It is also likely that DP capitalises into the prices of beef cows and heifers. Given this capitalisation process, some farmers can obtain ‘capitalised’ DP on animals produced over and above the ‘claim‐limiting’ restrictions, by selling these animals through auction markets. Thus, ‘capitalised’ DP probably encourages production over and above the limiting measures.