Romney Blasts Obama over Food Stamp Record

Sep 06, 2012

USDA Report Shows Food Stamps Reached Record High June 2012

U.S. President Barack Obama was under fire yesterday after Republican candidate Mitt Romney blamed him for the size of the national debt and the record number of American citizens who are on food stamps. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, assists low-income people in the U.S. to buy food. It’s a national program that falls under the U.S. Department of Agriculture mandate and it’s administered by each state and their local agencies.

Making reference to the U.S. Department of Agriculture report, Romney said "the other number's forty-seven. Forty-seven million now on food stamps. When he came to office there were 32 million. He's added 15 million people.” The new figure shows a shocking 15 per cent of Americans reliant on food stamps.

Obama on the defense said “people become eligible for food stamps. Second of all, the initial expansion of food-stamp eligibility happened under my Republican predecessor, not under me. No. 3, when you have a disastrous economic crash that results in 8 million people losing their jobs, more people are going to need more support from government,” Obama said in a ABC News interview.

Video: Leman Swine Conference: Vaccination strategies to reduce PRRS virus recombination

Dr. Jay Calvert, Research Director with Zoetis, recently spoke to The Pig Site’s Sarah Mikesell at the 2023 Leman Swine Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, about his conference presentation on porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) virus recombination.

“The number one problem in PRRS these days from a vaccine point of view is the emergence of new strains of PRRS. Since the beginning, we have had new strains and a lot of diversity,” said Dr. Jay Calvert. “We thought we knew it was all about mutation changes in amino acids and the individual strains over time, but they take on new characteristics.”

With the onset of more common whole genome sequencing and recombination analysis, Dr. Calvert says there is another mechanism, and recombination seems to be a key factor.