IBP buys Alberta firm
IBP Inc. has acquired Lakeside Farm Industries Ltd., a Brooks, Alberta-based agribusiness company that raises and slaughters cattle, and raises hogs and broiler chickens. Terms were not disclosed.
The sale gives Dakota City, Neb.-based IBP its first production facility outside the United States.
Lakeside, with sales of $660 million, employs more than 650 people at its Brooks operation, about 100 miles east of Calgary.
"It's a logical step for both [companies] given the global competitiveness of today's meat industry," IBP Chairman Robert L. Peterson said. "The addition of Lakeside's operations provides the strategic link and momentum for growth."
IBP is the world's largest producer of fresh beef and pork, with sales of $12 billion in 1993.
IBP said it will keep Lakeside's management team led by Garnet Altwasser, president and founder of the company.
USDA begins reorganizing
Outgoing Secretary Mike Espy has signed orders beginning the massive job of reorganizing USDA. The Clinton administration projects that reorganization will save $2 billion through 1998. Here is a summary of the reorganization act:
-- It creates a separate food safety and inspection division, apart from marketing services. Michael R. Taylor assumes the title of undersecretary for food safety. Taylor's job now entails all food safety activities in FSIS, Agricultural Marketing Services and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
The food safety undersecretary will be required to have extensive food safety or public health activity experience.
-- Other new departments and positions include Ellen Haas, undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, responsible for food stamps, school lunch, child nutrition and special feeding programs; and Patricia Jensen, assistant secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs, responsible for supervising all non-food related actions at AMS and APHIS.
All undersecretaries are subject to Senate confirmation.
-- It eliminates 14 agencies, leaving 29 agencies.
-- It closes 1,100 field offices.
-- It cuts at least 11,000 jobs in the next five years.
-- It creates a national appeals division, which will give farmers an impartial panel where they could challenge department decisions.
Pizza Hut goes on-line
For those hungry hackers who can't tear themselves away from their computer keyboards for a sausage and/or pepperoni pizza, Pizza Hut has the solution: Dial up your pizza on Internet.
Pizza Hut marketed the new system in Santa Cruz, Calif., which has a large concentration of pizza eaters and Internet users at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
The 90-day trial, which ended at the end of November, enabled users to order a pizza, simply by logging on to "PizzaNet."
The order was transmitted to a computer in the company's Wichita, Kan., headquarters, where it was confirmed and routed back to Santa Cruz.
"A lot of our customers are on the Internet," Pizza Hut vice president Rob Doughty said. "If they get hungry in the middle of the night, we want to be there for them."
If the Santa Cruz trial proves successful, Pizza Hut plans to expand it to other communities where the Internet, the web of computer networks that links users worldwide, is popular. Pizza Hut is expected to make the decision by the spring.
Meat scientist joins AMI
Janet Williams, a dietician and meat scientist, has joined the staff of AMI as vice president of scientific and technical affairs. She will handle industry technical issues, including nutrition and food safety.
She will also be vice president of research for the AMI Foundation.
Designer appoints three
Designer Foods Inc., a Pomfret Center, Conn., meat processor for retail and foodservice, has announced three personnel changes.
-- Eric J. Cole is the new director of marketing. He will be responsible for overseeing the marketing of four product lines, including Spare-The-Ribs barbecue rib entree.
-- Michael J. Lamb is the new director of foodservice sales. He will be responsible for sales and marketing of branded products, including Spare-The-Ribs, as well as the relaunch of Steak-umm.
-- Andrew Sancomb is the new manager of foodservice sales, overseeing six broker markets and all multi-unit accounts based in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic areas.
Foreign trade takes time
Courting foreign markets takes time and flexibility, and U.S. marketing conventions should be discarded if exporters want to compete internationally, according to Michael Woolverton, former professor of agribusiness at the American Graduate School of International Business.
"We are seen as more interested in doing business than developing lasting trade relationships,' Woolverton said during a U.S. Meat Export Federation meeting in Orlando, Fla. "Americans are not likely to do much business unless they spend more time developing valuable business relationships. Americans think everyone should be on time, cut the chatter and get on with the deal."
Speaking only English, cultural ignorance, insensitivity and rushing the deal-making process "tend to have a negative effect on trade," he said.
Not only do attitudes impede international trade, but Woolverton believes that the conventional U.S. marketing system does not work overseas.
GAO Report Criticizes Chemical Residue Monitoring
The nation's fragmented and incapable food safety system should be totally restructured to combat the use of unapproved pesticides and drugs, according to two reports to Congress on ensuring safe, quality foods.
The food industry is routinely allowed to use unapproved pesticides and drugs, and wrongdoers are seldom punished, according to the General Accounting Office.
"Chronic violators can, and do, continue to sell contaminated animals without fear of penalty," one GAO report said. "The use of unapproved chemicals has become routine" by users of pesticides and animal drugs.
One report criticized USDA's National Residue Program, saying testing is not comprehensive, and its methodology is flawed. The report said that most compounds identified as capable of leaving residues in meat and poultry are not tested.
Currently, FSIS conducts thousands of residue tests to ensure that U.S. standards are met. The program is designed to identify and select chemical compounds in meat and poultry products that could present health-based concerns to consumers.
The report recommended a risk-based approach established and operated by the meat industry with FSIS' assistance and oversight. Such action would need congressional approval.
Many USDA officials disagreed with the GAO assessment of the current program, saying the results may be reliable for animal species and compounds. However, Michael R. Taylor, USDA acting undersecretary for food safety, said a new system is needed.
He said preventative controls-similar to a Hazard Analysis and Critical Point program-are needed to stem the residue problem, instead of the current system where inspectors detect and correct problems after they occur.
The one agency theory
The GAO called for a number of changes in the current food safety system, including having all inspection duties rest in one agency. Currently, USDA, the Commerce Department, Health and Human Services Department, and the Environmental Protection Agency are responsible for food inspection.
John Harman, GAO director of Food and Agricultural Issues, identified several weaknesses in the food safety system's monitoring of chemicals in foods:
-- Different regulations for chemicals posing similar risks.
-- A reactive program rather than a preventive program.
-- Lack of strong enforcement authority.
-- Inadequate control over imported foods.
In addition to one inspection agency, Harman recommended that Congress enact a uniform set of food safety laws that include standards for chemical residues and contaminants, and move food safety away from end-product testing to contamination prevention.
In 1991, an estimated 817 million pounds of pesticides, worth more than $6 billion, were used by U.S. agriculture. An estimated 80 percent of livestock and poultry are treated during their lifetime with some of the 748 approved animal drugs.
Improper use of animal drugs is the most common cause of chemical residues in meat, but producers guilty of residue violations are hardly ever prosecuted, according to the report.
From 1989 to 1992, only one prosecution was obtained by the government out of 21,439 reported violations. Instead, there was a reliance on warning letters that carry no legal weight, the report said. Federal agencies spent more than $157 million in fiscal year 1993 to monitor chemicals in food. USDA alone spent more than $67.7 million.
FDA eyes adult sheep offal as adulterated
FDA is proposing that specified offal from adult sheep be considered adulterated because it believes the offal may contain an agent that causes scrapie, a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE).
In the United Kingdom, scrapie has been epidemiologically associated with the occurrence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
Because a direct link between scrapie, BSE and human TSE cannot be discounted, FDA wants the ruling to protect the health of animals and humans.
If enacted, any feed ingredient that contains specified offal from adult sheep would be classified as a food additive when added to the feed of ruminants.
For sheep processors, the proposed rule would mean a ban on sheep offal from use in ruminant feeds from 293,000 slaughtered head of aged ewes 12 months and older.
The specified offal includes tissue from the brain, spinal cord, spleen, thymus, tonsils, lymph nodes and intestines. The protein extracted from adult sheep offal products during rendering is turned into cattle food, hog food and pet food.
FDA estimates the rule would cost sheep processors about $2.4 million. The American Sheep Industry Association believes the cost will be closer to $5 million.
ASIA believes there is a lack of scientific proof linking scrapie and ruminant to human neurological conditions, according to Paul Rodgers, associate director of producer services.
A study by USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services seems to lend credence to sheep processors' argument. The study says the risk of transmitting BSE through sheep scrapie is low, and is getting lower each year.
An FDA official familiar with the proposed rule confirms that there is no scientific evidence to establish a definite link between scrapie and BSE. But he tells Meat Marketing & Technology that epidemiological studies have linked the feeding of scrapie-infected feedstuffs to BSE-infected cattle.
The agent responsible for the transmission of BSE and TSE-related diseases is believed to be a cattle variant that has been spotted in Great Britain, according to the official.
Again, he admits that there is no evidence that the occurrence of BSE in cattle has led to the appearance of TSE-related diseases in humans. But he is quick to add: "The possibility of a casual relationship has not been ruled out."
Rodgers points out that while renderers and processors cannot totally eliminate TSE, current rendering procedures-subjecting animals to heat and steam-can eliminate most of it.