Meatingplace

Starting last month, FSIS quietly began executing a small-scale sampling pilot program at certain ready-to-eat, post-lethality-exposed meat and poultry establishments. Under the pilot, FSIS inspection personnel, in a handful of circuits, are adding just four environmental swabs whenever they conduct an existing routine product-sampling task: two food-contact-surface swabs and...

U.S. cattle inventories in large feedlots increased from a year earlier even as July placements and marketings fell to record lows for the month, underscoring continued tightness in the nation’s cattle supply. Cattle and calves on feed for slaughter in feedlots with capacity of at least 1,000 head totaled 11.1 million head on Aug. 1, […]

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There has been a fair amount of discussion recently about the trend in the pork market and factors driving price action. But the basic argument is that pork demand is leaking since prices are down even as supply is at or often below year ago levels. One possible reason for the weaker demand is processed […]

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Cattle Report Is Bullish Today’s Cattle on Feed report produced one of the larger surprises we have seen in recent years. It appears to us that cattle futures will open sharply higher Monday morning as a result of the significant decline in placements during July. We also expect the December and forward futures contracts to […]

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The U.S. beef packing industry has shed a significant amount of slaughter capacity in less than eight months, but two cattle economists say the numbers tell only part of the story. Tyson Foods’ latest restructuring will close its Joslin, Ill., beef plant, eliminate a case-ready operation in Eagle Mountain, Utah, and put its Pasco, Wash., […]

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