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CapitalPress.com
March 24, 2017
Court upholds $1.5 million judgment in Oregon dairy lawsuit
Feed manufacturer
ordered to pay
$750,000 in
damages, $760,000
in attorney fees
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
The Oregon Court of Ap-
peals has upheld a $1.5 mil-
lion judgment against Land
O’Lakes Purina Feed for
selling defective feed to an
Oregon dairy.
Neal and Nancy Kaste,
who own a dairy farm
near Tillamook, Ore., won
$750,000 in a lawsuit that
Courtesy of Anne Foster
Dairy farmers Neal Kaste, Nancy Kaste, center, and daughter, Kris-
ten, right, with attorney Anne Foster, left. The family won $750,000
in a lawsuit that accused the manufacturer of supplying feed
containing hazardous levels of proteins, phosphorous and copper.
accused the manufacturer
of supplying feed contain-
ing hazardous levels of
proteins, phosphorous and
copper.
The plaintiffs claimed
U.S. hop supply catches up to demand
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
MOXEE, Wash. — For the
second year in a row, U.S. hop
stocks were up in March over
a year ago, a further indicator
that supply has caught up with
demand.
U.S. hop growers, dealers
and brewers had 140 million
pounds on hand March 1 com-
pared to 128 million a year
earlier for an increase of 9
percent, according to a March
17 report by USDA National
Agricultural Statistics Ser-
vice.
Stocks held by growers and
dealers totaled 105 million
pounds while brewers held 35
million pounds. A year ago,
growers and dealers held 88
million pounds and brewers
held 40 million pounds.
In March 2016, stocks
were up 10 percent over
March 2015, when they were
down 2 percent from March
2014. In September 2016,
pre-harvest stocks were up 2
percent from the year before
and the September before
they were down 8 percent.
All of that shows the hump
has been crossed from under-
supply to oversupply, sources
say.
“In some varieties there
will be pretty substantial car-
ryover,” said Ann George,
executive director of Hop
Growers of America and the
Washington Hop Commission
in Moxee, near Yakima.
A few specialty varieties
still may be undersupplied,
she said.
“The main thing is we’re
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Hop vines and cones grow
in the fall outside the John I.
Haas building in Yakima, Wash.
Extract from the cones is used
in making beer.
going into a period of re-bal-
ancing (amounts of varieties)
between growers and mer-
chants. Some brewers are
still putting out new contracts
while others are coming back
in and renegotiating, pushing
deliveries out in the future or
canceling,” George said.
For years the expansion of
small, craft breweries fueled
the demand for more aroma
hop varieties. But not only
has acreage caught up with
demand but big brewers are
losing market share world-
wide because of increased
competition from other bever-
ages, she said.
The production of the top
10 breweries in the world
dropped 11.4 million hectoli-
ters from 2014 to 2015, which
is a lot of beer, she said. One
hectoliter equals 100 liters.
Extract from hop cones is
used in making beer.
Sixty-four percent of U.S.
production is exported.
In 2016, a record 50,857
acres of hops were harvest-
ed — mostly in Washington,
Oregon and Idaho. The pro-
duction value was estimated
at a record $498 million and
volume was the second largest
ever, at 87.1 million pounds.
The average price per
pound reached $5.72, up from
$4.38 the year before, driven
by more high-value aroma va-
rieties.
“Prices will remain strong
for the 2017 crop. The average
price could be similar to 2016,
perhaps even slightly higher,”
said Pete Mahony, director of
supply chain management and
purchasing for John I. Haas, a
major processor and grower
in Yakima.
The 2017 crop is essential-
ly entirely contracted under
multi-year agreements for ex-
pansion, Mahony said.
Therefore, pricing is still
reflective of the peak of the
market but will start to drop in
2018 and probably more dra-
matically in 2019, he said.
The March 1 stock in-
creases are largely the result
of production increases of
11 percent annually over the
past two crops and the 2016
increase would have been
even greater if not for below
average yields in many big
varieties, he said. Acreage
increased 17 percent last year
and will slow but might still
reach 4,000 new acres this
year, he said.
Craft beer growth rates are
beginning to show signs of
slowing, he said.
the defective feed sick-
ened or killed many of their
cows, causing the dairy to
spend money on veterinary
treatments and sustain fi-
nancial losses for which
Land O’Lakes was liable.
After a jury found in fa-
vor of the dairy, Tillamook
County Circuit Court Judge
Jonathan Hill ordered the
feed manufacturer to pay
$750,000 in compensation
for damages and $760,000
in attorney fees.
Land O’Lakes chal-
lenged the decision before
the Oregon Court of Ap-
peals, which has now reject-
ed the manufacturer’s argu-
ments that the judge should
have issued a “directed ver-
dict” in its favor.
The judge could have
issued a directed verdict if
the evidence was legally
insufficient for the dairy
to win the lawsuit, but the
Oregon Court of Appeals
has ruled this action wasn’t
required.
The dairy presented ad-
equate evidence of suffer-
ing direct damages from
the breach of contract, for
which the judge awarded it
about $89,000, the ruling
said.
“From that evidence,
the jury permissibly could
find that plaintiffs had been
damaged in an amount equal
to the purchase price of the
feed: Plaintiffs paid for feed
with a value of the contract
price, but received feed with
no value, given its toxicity,”
the appellate court said.
Aside from the $89,000
in compensation for breach
of contract, the judge also
awarded the dairy $661,000
for tort claims, which alleged
a wrongful act causing a loss.
Land O’Lakes argued that
its contract with the dairy pre-
cluded such tort damages, but
the Oregon Court of Appeals
ruled the contract language
was ambiguous and didn’t en-
title the manufacturer to a di-
rected verdict.
The appellate court also
rejected the company’s ar-
gument against paying the
dairy’s attorney fees, ruling
that it had properly amended
its lawsuit to seek such a rem-
edy.
New $700K system a boon to
wheat breeders, researchers
New technology
‘a huge leap’
for abilities
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
PULLMAN, Wash. — Re-
searchers welcomed a new
$700,000 system they say
will help identify biological
markers and speed up the
wheat-breeding process by
years.
USDA Agricultural Re-
search Service and Wash-
ington State University re-
searchers will use the new
mass spectrometry system,
purchased from specialty
measurement company Waters
Corp. of Milford, Mass.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony
for the new machine conclud-
ed a celebration March 21 of
plant metabolomics on the
WSU campus.
According to WSU, metab-
olomics refers to the scientific
study of chemical fingerprints,
called metabolites, that cellu-
lar processes leave behind in
organisms and nature. Metabo-
lites are clues to the health, de-
velopment and symbiotic ac-
tivities of plants and microbes.
The wheat metabolome is
the web of chemical signals
that drive the health and devel-
opment of wheat and associat-
ed organisms.
“When you have envi-
ronmental influences on the
genome, there might be very
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
Washington State University biochemistry research scientist
Bob Bonsall prepares to cut the ribbon for a new $700,000 mass
spectrometry system during a celebration in the WSU and USDA
Agricultural Research Service laboratory March 21 in Pullman.
subtle changes there, but you
might see great changes on the
metabolome,” said Ken Ros-
nack, principal business de-
velopment manager at Waters
Corp.
The technology is funda-
mental, the better to provide a
base for applied research, said
David Weller, leader of the
USDA ARS wheat health, ge-
netics and quality research unit
in Pullman.
“Every time you can bring
new instrumentation and tech-
nology forward, it makes a
huge leap in your research
abilities,” Weller said.
The new technology will
help breeders develop dis-
ease-resistant new wheat vari-
eties earlier in the process.
“By understanding the
metabolome of the plant, and
especially the roots, we can
identify the bio markers that
say, ‘Is this plant healthy? Is
it going to be robust? What
problems is it going to have?’”
Weller said.
Researchers will be able
to tell if they should continue
a line of wheat — whether it
contains the good character-
istics they’re looking for or
negatives they want to avoid,
Weller said.
“It makes the whole pro-
cess of screening plant mate-
rial so much more of a rapid
process,” he said.
WSU biochemist Bob Bon-
sall said he’d been working for
years to get the technology to
the university.
“This puts us in the next di-
mension,” he said of the new
technology.
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