The trade press magazine Meat & Poultry has come out with its annual Top 100 rankings of the industry’s biggest companies. In doing the annual rankings, Meat & Poultry discloses the economic damage done to Dakota Dunes, SD-based Beef Products Inc. by last year’s media storm over the use of “lean finely textured beef” by… Continue Reading
JBS Swift, Tyson Fresh Meat, Beef Products Inc. (BPI) and several other companies have been blamed for the 2010 death of a Minnesota man due to E. coli poisoning in a lawsuit filed against the defendants on Jan. 8. Robert Danell, a 62-year-old man with Down Syndrome, died from medical complications days after falling ill… Continue Reading
Colorado-based JBS USA will fire up its JBS Food Canada Inc. subsidiary Monday by closing the purchase of several XL Foods operations located north of the 48th parallel, including the troubled Lakeside beef processing plant in Brooks, Alberta. In the purchase, JBS Food Canada will acquire the 4,000-head-per-day beef packing plant at Brooks, XL’s 1,000-head-per-day… Continue Reading
About 40 agricultural and consumer groups have asked the U.S. Justice Department for an expanded, in-depth antitrust review of the possible takeover of XL Four Star Beef Holdings in the United States by Greeley, CO-based JBS, USA. The request came in a Dec. 21 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Renata B. Hesse, the… Continue Reading
On Tuesday the Kansas City Star published the final installment of “Beef’s Raw Edges,” its three-day investigative series examining the current state of the U.S. beef industry. The project was spearheaded by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Mike McGraw. The work follows a yearlong investigation during which The Star was given rare access to the processing plants of… Continue Reading
Another E. coli case linked to beef from XL Foods’ Brooks, Alberta processing facility has raised the number of victims in the ongoing outbreak to 18. This newest victim, an Alberta resident, became ill around Oct. 15 from eating beef kept in a home freezer, according to the provincial health agency, which is continuing the… Continue Reading
Set aside its less-than-stellar first week on the job, set aside the howling by some ranchers about the usual antitrust complaints, and set aside that nothing is yet final, and you still have smart money betting that this new makeup of the North American beef industry is going to be around for a long, long… Continue Reading
The biggest beef recall in Canada’s history was eclipsed within a few hours this week by a new management agreement shifting control and potentially the ownership of the troubled Brooks, Alberta plant to the world’s biggest beef company, JBS of Brazil. Brooks’ Mayor Martin Shields immediately said it was positive news that means the processing… Continue Reading
Greeley, CO-based JBS USA Beef says it saw a two-thirds reduction in microbial counts for E. coli O157:H7 in its eight domestic processing plants during the first half of 2011 when compared with the year earlier. Cattle Buyers Weekly in Petaluma, CA reports that JBS, the American subsidiary of Brazil’s JBS S.A., credits a… Continue Reading
The anhydrous ammonia leak Wednesday at the JBS pork plant in the Butchertown neighborhood east of Louisville’s downtown was called “an extremely scary industrial accident” by a local resident leader who plans to meet with Mayor Greg Fischer on Saturday. About 700 JBS employees were forced to flee from the pork slaughterhouse when alarms went… Continue Reading
In another step forward in the battle against foodborne illnesses, the world’s largest beef producer and processed-beef exporter is installing around-the-clock remote video auditing in its eight beef plants in the United States. On Dec. 2, Colorado-based Beef Division of JBS USA Holdings, Inc., a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of JBS S.A., announced its decision… Continue Reading