The state also happens to have several struggling racetracks as well as a large cattle industry.
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According to the pressure group Greenpeace, expansion of the cattle industry in the Amazon is the single biggest cause of deforestation in the region.
Once well within the rain forest, the city as well as its surrounding area now looks like Texas and is the capital of the state's cattle industry.
This reflects the fact that few politicians have heard of Johne's, and the industry seems unsure how much to tell them about a disease which carries a stigma even in the cattle industry.
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Rural U.S. lawmakers with ties to the cattle industry and economically-strapped horse breeding registries have been pushing to reopen horse slaughter plants in the states since the last three plants shut down in 2007 (two in Texas, one in Illinois).
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Until the town opened itself up to greener pursuits, the main industry was raising cattle, and most of the local attractions are still located on working farms.
As the reputation of Basque sheep herders grew, an infrastructure of boarding houses quickly sprang up to direct immigrant Basques into the burgeoning American sheep industry despite the antipathy of the cattle ranchers who wanted the land for themselves.
The shortage is being felt at meatpacking plants and large feedlots, where industry giants such as Cargill Inc. fatten cattle before slaughter.
The first minister said that the decision was "disappointing" and stressed that bovine TB was a "serious problem for the milk industry in Wales and had led to the culling of thousands of cattle in recent years".
Five years ago he exported many cattle to Italy, and he hopes the ending of the ban will enable him, and the industry as a whole to re-establish such trade routes.
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