meat production

Legislation aimed at increasing meat processing and packing in Washington unanimously cleared the state Senate Tuesday. Senate Bill 5045, sponsored by Judy Warnick would make small and medium sized meat producers statewide eligible for support from a newly created Processing and Marketing Assistance Program ...

The USDA made primarily minor changes to its most recent meat supply and use balance sheet for 2020. "Looking forward in to 2021 with the tighter supplies especially of corn and soy beans and much higher prices that are expected to follow from that," said World Outlook Board Chair, Mark Jekanowski ...

During the 81st annual meeting in early December, the Idaho Farm Bureau Federation voiced support for several proposals looking to make it easier consumers to purchase meat directly from ranchers across the state. Lori Anne Lau President of Caribou County Farm Bureau, said one proposal that received traction encourages the state to develop a meat inspection system, using the federal model ... Rea

To help the meat processors across the state, many of which are relatively small in size, the Washington state Department of Agriculture has made pandemic relief grants available. The funds will go to help address expenses associated with improving capacity during the coronavirus pandemic ...

Food supply chain disruptions and how to reduce them in future as well as disease outbreaks were front-and-center recently at the House Small Business Committee. One of the farm leaders with suggestions was National Farmers Union chief Rob Larew ...

The USDA's most recent cattle feed lot report shows a lot of activity nationwide. First, the inventory of cattle and calves in feedlots (with capacity of 1,000 head or more) was 11.4 million head as of September 1st. According to USDA Livestock Analyst Shayle Shagam, that was the highest inventory level since 1996 ...

One of the current priorities for USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service is reaching out to small-scale meat processors. "At FSIS we have about 6500 regulated establishments throughout the United States and Territories. And as you can see on the slide about 5200 of those or 90% of all federally inspected establishments are either small or very small," said FSIS Assistant Administrator

The USDA has raised its estimates of beef, pork, and broiler production. "Basically what we're looking at here for both 2020 and this carries forward in to 2021 as well is just the fact that we are moving toward more of a normalized slaughter/capacity slaughter volume," said World Outlook Board Chair, Mark Jekanowski ...

According to the latest consumer price index, grocery store food prices contine to rise, increasing about a half a percent last month, and coming in about 5.5% higher than June a year ago. And even though by mid-June or so, US meat processing plants  were reportedly operating at pre-COVID-19 capacity. " ...

Meat production continues to rebound in the United States from its low point when dozens of plants were closed because of COVID-19. However, industry experts said consumer prices are likely going to stay higher than they’re used to, plus it will take months to work through a backlog of millions of pigs and cattle that had nowhere to go for processing. As ...