A historically tight labor market and pandemic combined to test the meat industry’s workforce this spring. The result? A reckoning with long-ingrained challenges.

Few could have predicted the changes the retail and foodservice industries would experience in the first half of this year. And while the past few months haven’t been without challenges, the seafood department was poised for growth heading into 2020 and many of those opportunities remain. 

Andy Hanacek warns that if you haven’t learned the importance of protecting your employees and how to do so, then you haven’t learned a thing from the spring/summer COVID-19 pandemic — which hasn’t really gone away either.

The loss of the foodservice market because of the COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating to the American lamb industry. 

The last time that White Oak Pastures was on the cover of this magazine, it was because owner Will Harris had decided to build a processing plant to slaughter his own grass-fed beef. Over the last dozen years, the company continues to be at the forefront of producing pasture-raised beef.

According to industry estimates, at least one-third of food recalls in North America may directly be related to sanitation, hygiene and material handling issues in food facilities. On an associative note, the CDC lists unsanitary equipment and surfaces as one of the top five contributing factors of foodborne illness outbreaks.

Unprecedented. Uncertain. Historic. Frantic. Challenging. Words have been used daily to describe the sudden havoc COVID-19 wreaked on the food system and the economy as America worked to slow the spread of the disease and save lives while we kept a nation fed.

Ingredient technology to produce clean-label products that meet quality expectations is leading development in gums, binders and other emulsifiers. Additionally, use of gums, binders and emulsifiers to make plant-protein-based meat analogs more similar to meat products continues to progress, says Wes Schilling, professor of food science at Mississippi State University.

Like many businesses and people who would like to find a reset button for 2020, the veal industry — from farmers to processors — feel the same way. Can anyone even remember what we were anticipating and implementing the first two months of 2020? The impact COVID-19 has had on people and businesses is so unparalleled that it overshadows any original plans for 2020.

Every person and every business was presented challenges they had never faced before. Nonetheless, the turkey industry’s response to the challenges it has faced during the past several months has been remarkable.