Meat International.com

H1N1 affecting pork demand

01 Jun 2009 Worldwide attention has being intensely focused on outbreaks in Mexico and beyond of a human influenza epidemic with a generic name of swine fever. Read more »

The economics of beef globalisation

01 Jun 2009 Globalisation of the food chain has reached pretty much every sector and the meat industry is no different. While US pork and especially poultry remain relatively free of the negative financial after-effects of globalisation, its tough going for the beef industry. Read more »

Consumer spending

01 May 2009 New policy decisions at USDA included expanding food welfare, and implementing COOL. The big story garnering attention across the North American meat industry and in other parts of the world was research data presented at the American Meat Institutes annual Meat Conference, which was conducted across the US in 2008, concerned significant shifts in food spending by US consumers. Read more »

South Americas outlook not bright

01 May 2009 In the midst of numerous plant closings, bankruptcy filings, Argentinas drought, as well as the 40% devaluation of the Brazilian real, the outlook in South America, similar to the rest of the world, is not bright. Read more »

US beef prices fall in wake of crisis

01 Apr 2009 The US is reeling from mounting job losses said to be in the hundreds of thousands. People were awaiting an outcome to tense Congress debates about new President Obamas approx. US$800 billion Stimulus Plan, which is aimed to jump-start the American economy with infrastructure and other job-creating projects, but with hesitancy to call it a return to welfare politics. Read more »

Analysts examine Chinas first quarter

01 Apr 2009 Now that the celebrations for the beginning of the Year of the Ox are over, analysts in the region are now focused on the outlook for the remainder of the 1st quarter, and the critical second quarter, when general meat and food demand, as well as overall consumer spending, hits a seasonal low. The late January announcement of huge discount price promotions in China by leading restaurant operators Yum and McDonalds, among other chains, suggests apprehension about consumer spending patterns in the near term. Read more »

Upgrade our food safety laws for the 21st century

01 Mar 2009 US President Obama comments on the FDA and the USDA that governs meat products were under-funded and under-staffed" during Bush's tenure. Obama said that outbreaks of illness from contaminated food have risen from 100 a year in the 1990s to 350 today, and that only 5% of the nation's 150,000 food processing plants including meat are inspected each year. Read more »

2009 shaky ground for North American livestock and meat industries

01 Feb 2009 The North American livestock and meat industries (and indeed the entire world of nations) are facing a daunting New Year. In retrospect, the worldwide credit paralyses and financial market downturns during 2008 had disastrous impacts on many non-food industries. Read more »

US livestock industry awaits Obama effect

01 Jan 2009 The US Presidential election was but one factor (albeit a very important one) clouding the future of the US livestock-meat industry, and of all US agriculture. Its far-reaching effects were yet to be indicated, but one likely milestone could be President-elect Obamas policy on energy and US ethanol subsidies, which in the past two years had raised corn and feed prices, thereby created feed cost havoc for all livestock and poultry producers. Read more »

USDA continues to drag its feet over irradiation

01 Jan 2009 In 2005, the American Meat Institute (AMI) gave a submission asking the USDA to consider the use of irradiation, in low-level doses, as a processing aid to eliminate the possible presence of pathogens such as E. Coli 0157 on the surface of beef carcasses. Read more »