Attacking Fake Food Claims Proactive work by the U.S. FDA has greatly helped the food industry while its inactions have harmed it. The GMO labeling debacle is just one example. Its newest commissioner, physician and policy wonk Scott Gottlieb, is apparently a man of action. He has jumped into the fray over what food products can use the term milk (see Got Milk, 18 July), and now he will investigate the truthfulness of organic food labels. He has been stirred into action by Henry Miller, a former FDA official now at Stanford University. Both have experience working for conservative think tanks and are no doubt policy soulmates. Miller wrote valid criticisms about organic labeling that are similar to those made previously by WPI, but he doe...
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: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...