Norman Weber passes at 94

Norman Weber, founder of the Elmira business now known as Pullet Plus, has died. He was 94.

His son, Bruce, expanded the business which specialized in raising pullets and taking spent hens which he fattened and sold to Asians who wanted to buy live birds.

Clarence Martin bought the business in 2007 and has expanded it since.

The chicken market has changed dramatically, opening up many more opportunities for specialties, often for immigrants and refugees looking for something more familiar to their tastes and customs.

Norman was a stalwart member of his community, serving as president of the local Red Cross committee and in a number of roles in his Mennonite congregation.

Food waste difficult to reduce

Reducing food waste is proving a difficult challenge, according to a new report from the Value Chain Management Institute.

The study found that 31 per cent of the total food available for consumption in retail (10 per cent) and household (21 per cent) was lost or wasted in 2010. 

That’s six billon kilos, enough to fill 60,000 rail cars, stretching 1,000 kilometres.

The authors found that most efforts that have been taken are waste diversion, not waste prevention. That’s because waste diversion does not require fundamental change, requires limited investment to appear effective, and poses limited risk to government and industry, the report says. 

“No two food chains are alike, with the unnecessary food loss and waste that occurs along each chain differing in location, type and cause,” the report says. That means solutions need to be specific to each chain.

 “Government policies and legislation that are not transparently congruent have the potential to increase rather than decrease unnecessary food loss and waste that occurs along the value chain,” the report says. 

“The deeply rooted structural, cultural and institutional barriers that create unnecessary FLW would be best addressed through industry- government partnerships.

“The development of effective government policies and legislation is hindered due to the fact that insufficient information exists on what, where, why and how food losses and wastes are created along the value chain,” the report says.

“Effective and sustainable solutions could be achieved by voluntary agreements between industry and government versus forcing change through policies and regulations,” it says.

                                    

OSI fined $3.6 million in China

OSI Group of Aurora, Illinois, has been fined $3.6 million in China for tainted meat processed at its Husi Food Co. in Shanghai.

The 2014 scandal hit television news when an employee blew the whistle on unsanitary practices at the plant.

Yum Brands and McDonald’s stopped buying from the plant which the company subsequently closed.

According to the Shanghai Daily newspaper, Husi was fined 16.98 million yuan ($2.55 million) and had its food production license revoked by the Jiading Market Supervision and Management Bureau and OSI China was fined 7.3 million yuan ($1.09 million) and given a warning by the Xuhui Market Supervision and Management Bureau.

Shanghai Husi and those involved in the case are banned from food production and management for five years and face restrictions in areas such as credit and land use, according to Shanghai Daily.

In February 2016, a Shanghai court fined two units of OSI Group 2.4 million yuan (US$365,000) and sentenced 10 people to prison.

At that time, OSI called the ruling an injustice, saying the original China TV report was “sensationalized” and “false and incomplete.”  

A dire warning about antibiotic resist

A new report from the World Bank predicts losses of up to $100 trillion by 2050 from antibiotic resistance.

The global economic damage would be as bad as the 2008 financial crisis..

The report says a “high-case scenario” where antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs no longer successfully treat infections have the potential to: lower annual global gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as 3.8 percent by 2050; add 28.3 million more people to the ranks of those in extreme poverty over the next 34 years; reduce world trade by as much as 3.8 percent; and decrease global livestock production by as much as 7.4 percent per year.

“The scale and nature of this economic threat could wipe out hard-fought development gains and take us away from our goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity,” said Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank Group.

“The cost of inaction is unaffordable – especially for the poorest countries. We must urgently change course to avert this potential crisis.”

It gives me no pleasure to remind long-term followers that I have been warning about antibiotic resistance for 40 years, and decrying the use of sub-therapeutic levels to improve growth rates and feed conversion.

                           

More pigs than anticipated

There are more pigs than United States market watchers expected, according to the count released by the United States Department of Agriculture.

This adds to concerns expressed in the spring that there won’t be enough packing-plant capacity to handle all of the pigs.

USDA’s Sept. 1 survey puts the hog inventory at 64.8 million head, up by three per cent from last year, up by four per cent from last quarter and nearly two per cent above what analysts were expecting, based on a pre-report survey by Urner Barry.  

The June-August 2016 pig crop, at 32.0 million head, was up by two per cent from 2015 and more than two per cent above what analysts had expected.

“Each of the last four pigs crops has been record high. The last is the highest ever for any quarter,” said Bob Brown on a National Pork Board-sponsored teleconference after the report was issued.

“That portends record high slaughter for the foreseeable future.”