Sustainability is an increasingly powerful meat and poultry sales trigger.

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. 

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

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.

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.

COVID-19 has been brutal on the industry. We have seen major producers temporarily shut down, entire segments put out of business, regional disruptions and politicians getting involved in the manufacture and distribution of meat and poultry. I am not telling you anything you don’t know; we have all lived it.

When a look ahead was taken a year ago at this time, the discussion focused on the pending game-changer. That is, when and how much will the China market reopen for U.S. chicken?

Demand drivers. Even without a worldwide pandemic, economic shutdowns and disruptions in food processing, Dan Basse would have covered demand drivers at the 15th annual Feeding Quality Forum.