Last Friday, we reported on the new Executive Order from the Administration on various competitive issues for agriculture and the meat sector. As we mentioned, USDA will issue a new rule on meat labeling with regard to what can be labelled as “Product of USA.” Secretary Vilsack added some clarity to that effort in his remarks at an event in Council Bluffs, Iowa. First, the issue. In June, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) filed a petition with the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) to change the current regulations that allow meat products to be labeled Production of the USA if the product included imported product which had been processed or packaged at an FSIS inspected facility. The U.S. Cattlemen&rsq...
What You Need to Know Today: Shipping in the Black Sea is at a standstill, with neither Ukraine nor Russia yet ready to swerve in this game of maritime and export brinkmanship. Israeli media suggests the U.S. and Iran may be close to making a deal or at least restoring the memorandum of unders...
Just when it seemed the restaurant industry had finally moved beyond the pandemic disruption, the arithmetic of the American food dollar caught up with it. The National Restaurant Association projects that total restaurant and foodservice sales will reach a record $1.55 trillion in 2026, but on...
The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement has reached a critical point after the Supreme Court ruled on 25 June that Bayer is shielded from state-level lawsuits because federal regulation does not require the company to warn of alleged cancer risks from such products. Thousands of "failure...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.