WASHINGTON, D.C. — USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack provided farm owners and producers one additional week, until April 7, to choose between Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC).

The final day to update yield history or reallocate base acres also will be April 7.

If no changes are made to yield history or base acres by the deadline, the farm’s current yield and base acres will be used.

If a program choice of ARC or PLC is not made, there will be no 2014 crop year payments for the farm and the farm will default to PLC coverage for the 2015 through 2018 crop years.

Producers who have an appointment at their local Farm Service Agency offices scheduled by April 7 will be able to make an election between ARC and PLC, even if their actual appointment is after April 7.

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The new labeling of the world’s most-popular weed killer as a likely cause of cancer is raising more questions for an aerial spraying program in Colombia that is the cornerstone of the U.S.-backed war on drugs.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a French-based research arm of the World Health Organization, has reclassified the herbicide glyphosate as a result of what it said is convincing evidence the chemical produces cancer in lab animals and more limited findings it causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in humans.

The ruling on Thursday is likely to send shockwaves around the globe, where the glyphosate-containing herbicide Roundup is a mainstay of industrial agriculture.

In Colombia, there is an added political dimension stemming from the fierce debate that has raged over a program that has sprayed more than 4 million acres of land in the past two decades to kill coca plants, whose leaves are used to produce cocaine. The fumigation program, which is financed by the United States and partly carried out by American contractors, has long been an irritant to Colombia’s left, which likens it to the U.S. military’s use of the Agent Orange herbicide during the Vietnam War.

DALLAS, Texas (AP) — An outbreak of listeria that contributed to the deaths of three people has been traced to a second production facility operated by Blue Bell Ice Cream.

Blue Bell spokesman Gene Grabowski said last week a contaminated 3-ounce cup of ice cream was traced to a plant in Broken Arrow, Okla. Ten products recalled earlier in March by the company were traced to a production line at a plant in Brenham, Texas, where the company is based.

The recall began when five patients at Via Christi St. Francis hospital in Wichita, Kan., became ill with listeria while hospitalized. Officials determined at least four drank milkshakes that contained Blue Bell ice cream. Three of the patients later died.

The contaminated 3-ounce cup was found at the hospital.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — An outbreak of a bird flu strain that’s deadly to poultry deepened on March 28 when state and federal officials confirmed a third Minnesota turkey farm has been infected, this time in one of the state’s top poultry producing counties.

The federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said a commercial flock of 39,000 turkeys in Stearns County of central Minnesota has been infected with the highly pathogenic H5N2 strain of avian influenza, which also killed tens of thousands of turkeys at two other farms in Pope and Lac qui Parle counties of western Minnesota.

Saturday’s announcement came one day after officials announced the outbreak at the Lac qui Parle County farm, where the virus quickly killed 22,000 of the 12-week-old turkeys in one barn.

That farm must kill 44,000 birds in two other barns as a precaution to prevent the disease from spreading.

The confirmation at the Pope County farm on March 5 marked the first detection of H5N2 in the Mississippi Flyway, a major bird migration route. H5N2 was also found within the next several days in commercial and backyard flocks in Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas.

The same strain also has turned up in several western states in the Pacific Flyway.

The Stearns County farm has been quarantined and the remaining turkeys there will be killed and kept out of the food supply, according to the Minnesota Board of Animal Health, which said it planned to release further information Saturday afternoon.

More than 40 countries have banned poultry imports from Minnesota, the country’s top turkey producing state, since the virus was first detected in the state.

According to the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association, Stearns County is the state’s No. 2 turkey-producing county, behind only Kandiyohi County in western Minnesota, where the virus has not been reported.

Stearns County is also one of the state’s top chicken and egg producers, according to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.

Scientists consider wild migratory waterfowl to be a natural reservoir for avian influenza.

While they don’t generally get sick from flu viruses, they can spread them through their droppings. But top researchers say they don’t know how the virus got to Minnesota.