Willie Benedetti, the lifelong Sonoma-Marin rancher and greater than fiction, cigar-puffing country character perhaps best known for his enormous, smoked-then-grilled turkey legs, died Friday at 69.

Benedetti, a partner in Benedetti Farms and in the Willie Bird’s Restaurant consistently praised as one of the region’s greatest old-school bars and dining spots, succumbed to an aggressive abdominal cancer.

“You’re talking a legend,” John Zimmerman said Friday from behind the bar at Willie Bird’s in Santa Rosa. A bartender there for 31 years, Zimmerman said Benedetti was beloved by legions and was renowned for falling asleep from apnea without a Dutch Master cigar falling from his mouth.  Read more

Law enforcement officials arrested 67 animal rights activists who raided a California poultry plant and allegedly stole chickens on Saturday. About 200 activists broke into McCoy’s Poultry Services in Petaluma, according to a statement from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office. “Initial responding deputies entered the property and were confronted by approximately 70 protesters, who were wearing white protective clothing, many of whom were carrying chickens they had stolen from within buildings on the property,” the statement said. “Deputies also learned that the owner and an employee of the company had been assaulted by a protester during the event. Due to the amount of protesters on the property and on the street in front of the business, approximately 40 deputies responded to assist, along with the Sheriff’s helicopter.”  Read more

United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service confirmed three additional cases of virulent Newcastle disease in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, California, last week.

Live bird market

One of the three cases was at a live bird market. Birds from the affected live bird market have been depopulated and the market has been cleaned and disinfected to prevent additional spread of the disease. As a precautionary measure, all 34 markets in the Los Angeles area have also been cleaned and disinfected. Read more

Willie Benedetti, the lifelong Sonoma-Marin rancher and greater than fiction, cigar-puffing country character perhaps best known for his enormous, smoked-then-grilled turkey legs, died Friday at 69.

Benedetti, a partner in Benedetti Farms and in the Willie Bird’s Restaurant consistently praised as one of the region’s greatest old-school bars and dining spots, succumbed to an aggressive abdominal cancer.

“You’re talking a legend,” John Zimmerman said Friday from behind the bar at Willie Bird’s in Santa Rosa. A bartender there for 31 years, Zimmerman said Benedetti was beloved by legions and was renowned for falling asleep from apnea without a Dutch Master cigar falling from his mouth.  Read more

More details on arrangements for services to follow.

President Donald Trump on Monday celebrated a revised North American trade deal with Canada and Mexico as a return of the United States to a “manufacturing powerhouse,” vowing to sign the agreement by late November.

But the president noted that the deal would need to be ratified by Congress, a step that could be complicated by the outcome of the fall congressional elections. When told he seemed confident of congressional approval, he said he was “not at all confident” but felt ratification would be granted if lawmakers took the correct action.  Read more

Today, the American Veterinary Medical Association’s (AVMA) Chief Economist Matthew J. Salois, PhD, presented to the New York Academy of Sciences on the implications of raising animals without antibiotics. The presentation, “Sustainability and Antimicrobial Use in Animal Agriculture,”calls for nuanced and evidence-based antibiotic policies that consider a holistic view of antibiotics’ impacts on animal welfare, the environment and economics.

In recent years, some companies and consumers have embraced raising animals without antibiotics. Today, nearly half of all broiler chickens are raised without antibiotics.  Read more