Packer
Losses continued to grow for feedyards and the spread between feeder losses and packer profits only widened with a $1.50 per cwt. decline in cash cattle prices last week.
Beef packer continued with a stranglehold on cattle markets last week, buying a few cattle to fill their needs at lower money and keeping operating margins historically high.
AgriTalk host Chip Flory discusses the status of the Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act with Senators Deb Fischer and Chuck Grassley.
Clear Lab uses a robotic platform to improve food safety and its method shortens testing turnaround times by up to five days.
Fifteen food and beverage associations sent a letter to President Donald Trump requesting priority access to COVID-19 vaccines to protect workers and keep the food supply chain running.
The bonus is intended to encourage employees to get inoculations, after thousands of U.S. meatpacking workers became infected with the coronavirus last year.
A U.S. Congress panel is investigating COVID-19 outbreaks at meatpacking plants nationwide. Here’s how some of the packing plants responded.
A new report from the Meat Institute shows new COVID-19 infection rates among meat and poultry workers are 60% lower than in the general U.S. population and two-thirds lower than case rates in the sector in May 2020.
A Nebraska bill has been delayed that would have extended COVID-19 protections for meatpacking workers for another year.
More than 44,000 Tyson Foods employees have been vaccinated, the company reports. Tyson recently hosted League of United Latin American Citizens CEO Sindy Benavides to an on-site COVID-19 vaccination event.
The company says it will also provide $200 to fully vaccinated frontline team members.
Cases and deaths from COVID-19 among workers at the leading U.S. meatpacking plants were three times as high as previously estimated based on an investigation by the House Select Subcommittee.
November employment data was called disappointing despite the unemployment rate dropping slightly. Retaining workers has become difficult even as employers raised pay, which eventually gets passed along to consumers.
New research has concluded that higher wages, among other benefits, are necessary to attract workers to meatpacking jobs.
If finding employees to fill positions wasn’t hard enough, finding available and affordable housing has encouraged companies to provide housing options as part of employment.
Cheyenne, Wyoming’s mayor fueled speculation about possible relocation of the Western Legacy beef packing project with his comments in a weekly column in Wyoming media.
The combination of tightening supplies and packers seeking higher-grading inventory helped push cash prices a little higher last week.
Is Walmart’s investment in Sustainable Beef a big deal? If Walmart were serious about beef, they would be buying or building their own kill plant, Barnard says, unless it’s a precursor to a bigger move.
Once operational in late 2024, American Foods Group’s new beef facility in Warren County, Missouri, will process 2,400 head of cattle per day.
While all packers were in the market for cattle last week, none were aggressive enough to push the cash market any higher than steady.
Buying for a holiday-shortened week, packers were not aggressive and prices suffered. This week should produce more robust trading.
Sustainable Beef LLC received a giant boost in its efforts to bring a new, 1,500 head per day beef processing facility online with a commitment from Walmart.
For many industry stakeholders, the go-to solution seems to be more localized, regional supply chains. To these folks, the cohort of soon-to-be-built processing plants looks like a golden next era of the meat business.
Efforts to regulate profits away from packers is a commodity mindset, columnist Nevil Speer writes. A better investment of time and money is toward consumers and growing beef demand.
Construction will begin this fall on a $200 million upgrade to the existing beef complex and add employee facilities, including locker rooms, a cafeteria and office space.
Livestock Marketing Association says allowing livestock auction owners to invest in small and regional packers will create competition against large packing entities that already exist.
During a ceremony in downtown Amarillo, principals for Producer Owned Beef announced their plans for a 3,000-head per day beef packing facility that will break ground next year.
Beef packers were forced to pay up to attract inventory last week, a bullish signal that the longer-term trend is higher for cash cattle.
Packers had to pay up to acquire the numbers of cattle they wanted last week helping to clean up show lists and signaling the summer lows may be in the rearview mirror.
Cattle feeders continue to fight for shackle space as cash price continue slumping toward a summer low.