#agalerts

#AgAlerts: New feed mill and meat packaging facilities; weather; plant-based meat taste

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A roundup of news, reports, and research on agribusiness and related issues. Cargill opens expanded $34m feed mill at Texas site | Feednavigator.com   

A renovated Cargill feed production facility in Temple, Texas has gone live; it has been expanded to 70,000 square feet to address feed demand in the region. Inside the little-known world of flavorists, who are trying to make plant-based meat taste like the real thing | Washingtonpost.com

These new foods are the opposite of whole foods. Some nutritionists and food industry leaders are wondering if the food system is being led astray by foods that need their flavor and appeal inserted industrially. China trade deal in sight | Agweb.com

The Trump Administration said the U.S. aims to sign “Phase One” deal this month (possibly in Iowa).  China’s Xinhua News Agency said U.S. and China had reached a “consensus on principles” during Friday’s phone call. 

Rain, early snows delay U.S. harvest in latest blow to farmers | Reuters.com

The farmers just can't catch a break with the weather.

Opinion

Opinion: Time for Tyson to be up front in chicken marketing

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Lawsuits filed by the Organic Consumers Association and Food and Water Watch do not seek monetary damages. Instead, the non-profits want Tyson to cease pulling the wool over the public's eye when it comes to marketing chickens.

Opinion

Opinion: Tyson sees the future … and it ain’t only about livestock

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The question is: Will the Impossible Burger (and other
competitors eventual entries including Beyond Meat, Memphis Meat and Cargill)
be a craze, or is this the future?

The nation's top meat producer Tyson Foods has gazed into
the crystal ball and thinks it’s coming up meat substitutes. 

Inspector General

Poultry growers, caught between strict rules and financial risk, lean heavily on government-backed loans

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Since 2010, poultry growers have taken out more than 3,000 loans backed by the SBA, totaling $2.9 billion, according to analysis of Small Business Administration loan data by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. In March, the Inspector General released a report looking into the relationship between poultry integrators and growers. It said the rules big poultry companies placed on chicken farmers means they are not independent small businesses, calling into question their eligibility for Small Business Loans. Now, the SBA is considering revising

Agribusiness

Foreign-born poultry processing workers face challenges

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That could be why 28.7 percent of meat and poultry workers in 2015 were foreign-born non-citizens — more than three times the rate for manufacturing industries in general, according to a 2016 Government Accountability Office report. The work can be an attractive option for newcomers to the country.

Agribusiness

Poultry processing workers still face high number of injuries
Conditions at a Tyson plant in Sedalia, Missouri — the state’s second-largest — are a window into what workers face industry-wide.

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Although the meat and poultry processing industry’s injury rate has been dropping for years, it remains higher than average for manufacturing, and vast numbers of injuries never get reported in the first place, according to a 2016 report from the Government Accountability Office.

Poultry

Insult to injury: How the poultry processing industry treats hurt workers
In the poultry processing industry, where reporting systems are often flawed and management intimidating, getting hurt may only be the beginning.

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The injury rate in the poultry processing industry is already higher than many other industries. Yet the rate would be higher still if not for faulty data collection methods and widespread underreporting problems across the meat and poultry processing industry, according to a 2016 Government Accountability Office report.