Dutch Chef Eric Troost prepares an upscale dish using U.S. beef during a cooking demonstration for about 130 Belgian chefs Sept. 24. The demo was part of the first U.S. beef tasting event held in Belgium, which was hosted by the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) office in The Hague, Netherlands, and the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF). The tasting was part of ongoing efforts to help expand U.S. beef exports to the European Union (EU). (Photo courtesy FAS The Hague)

The European Union (EU) is a relatively new market for U.S. beef exports. It wasn’t until August 2009 when the United States began exporting high-quality beef (marbled with a high fat content) to the EU under a negotiated tariff rate quota for non-hormone treated beef. Read more »

A Bangladeshi factory worker monitors the production of biscuits made from U.S. donated wheat. The donation was delivered to the World Food Programme, a Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) McGovern-Dole program participant that works to provide food assistance in more than 73 countries. The biscuits will be distributed to about 2,000 schools in the poorest areas of Bangladesh. (Photo courtesy U.S. Embassy New Dehli)

Approximately 350,000 school children in Bangladesh now have access to a daily snack after the U.S. government recently donated more than 10,000 metric tons of wheat to the country through the Foreign Agricultural Service’s (FAS) McGovern-Dole Food for Education Program. Read more »

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research profile.

From desktops to tablets, and from floppy disks to flash drives, technology is constantly changing. Each new idea is developed in an effort to solve old problems.  That’s why the White House issued a plan last year to help stimulate our nation’s economic development and create jobs by accelerating Federal science and technology (S&T) innovations.

To support that plan, USDA agencies with science research missions that develop innovations in agriculture and that support businesses that adopt innovations for commercialization will work together to foster technology transfer to support U.S. business growth. Read more »

Workers hold a net full of tilapia at a fish farm in Pakistan. The fish are part of the American Soybean Association’s (ASA) World Initiative for Soy in Human Health (WISHH) program called “FEEDing Pakistan.” The Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) helped fund the program, which aims to enhance the country’s growing aquaculture sector through trial fish feeding using high–protein, floating fish feed produced from U.S. soybean meal. (Courtesy World Initiative for Soy in Human Health)

An innovative Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS)-funded program in Pakistan is not only improving local diets, but is creating jobs, training workers and helping create a thriving aquaculture industry with U.S. soy. Read more »

Over the last three years, USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has worked with the peanut and dairy industries to create a government-hosted electronic trade document repository. The eTrade Document Exchange (eTDE) System, funded by USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service through the Market Access Program, makes electronic trade documents, including official certificates, available securely through the Internet to facilitate the domestic and international movement of U.S. agricultural products.

This system provides users with the ability to access commodity-related trade documents as PDF files that can be used to verify hard copy documents or to eliminate the use of hard copy documents entirely. It allows authorized product owners, buyers, carriers, brokers, and government port agents access to critical information around the clock and around the world.

USDA collaborates with trade associations to provide this information as an export service to the supply chain. The certificates available in the repository are provided by a variety of document providers. Some certificates are provided by USDA, some by programs under department certification, and some from commercial sources that operate independently. USDA validates the identity of each document provider and has security controls in place to ensure that certificate data obtained from providers remains unaltered once it is posted to the site. Read more »

“Food isn’t traditionally thought of as a diplomatic tool, but sharing a meal can help people transcend boundaries and build bridges in a way that nothing else can.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton

Some of the nation’s top chefs have signed on to help promote American food and culinary traditions around the world through the new American Chef Corps. The corps is part of the Diplomatic Culinary Partnership Initiative, launched earlier this month by the Department of State and the James Beard Foundation. USDA is delighted to support this initiative, which is an excellent complement to our ongoing work highlighting the quality, variety, safety and sustainability of U.S. food products to our customers around the world. Read more »