Cultivated versus Uncouth The Italian Chamber of Deputies passed a law banning the sale of cultivated meat. The law will prevent the production and sale of food or feed "from cell cultures or tissues derived from vertebrate animals." Apparently, you can only eat animals in Italy. But they’ll treasure their tripe and serve a bowl of nothing but animal fat and call it “soupe.” They try to fancy it up with names like Pani ca Meusa – Palermo, but it is still just a veal lung and spleen sandwich. They can ban whatever they like, but it likely is illegal under the WTO. All or Nothing India and 80 other countries are angry at World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. She initially scheduled an inform...
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.
What You Need to Know Today: The corn and soybean markets closed slightly higher in low-volume trade. The wheat market was mixed, with HRW continuing its downward trek on improved moisture. As expected, the bearish cattle on feed report drove down cattle prices and pulled hogs down with it. Mi...
Monday, 25 May is a U.S. holiday, and both the markets and our office will be closed. Please note that the next issue of Ag Perspectives will be published on Tuesday, 26 May. The WPI staff wishes everyone a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend...
USDA’s monthly cattle on feed report was released today. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity amounted to 11.6 million head, 102 percent of last year. Source: USDA, WPI Placements were up, but part of that is attributable to persistent drought c...