A diverse array of potent synthetic drugs are becoming more prominent in the opioid crisis, creating difficulties for medical investigators and public health officials.
In the larger picture of Wisconsin's forest products industry, the volume of birch theft is very small. However, illegal cutting steals future revenue from forestland owners, and destroys trees that will never be legally cut and sold.
As more and more Wisconsinites die of opioid overdoses, public and private toxicology labs are ground zero for understanding an ever-evolving mix of illicit drugs.
Over the course of 2016, Richland County in southwestern Wisconsin had five drug overdose deaths, one of which involved a synthetic opioid. This latter case startled the county coroner's office.
Wisconsin's dairy industry is dealing with a big shock after one processor, Grassland Dairy Products Inc., dropped its contracts to buy milk from dozens of farms, citing a new Canadian policy that favors that nation's domestic milk producers.
Spring has brought gut-wrenching uncertainty to scores of dairy farms around Wisconsin. On April 1 a Clark County-based processor dropped their contracts, leaving them without a place to sell their milk.
