Meat+Poultry - October 2017 - 13

BUSINESS NOTES

CEO at Smithfield. "SHR has vast
resources, both on and off the track,
that will improve our competitiveness
and strengthen Smithfield's position as
a leading consumer packaged goods
company. Smithfield will also benefit
from SHR's connections with other
food companies."

IMPOSSIBLE FOODS
STARTS UP PRODUCTION

Impossible Foods

Impossible Foods launched production
this week at its 68,000-sq.-ft. Oakland,
California, production plant. The
new facility will eventually have the
capacity to produce 1 million lbs. of
plant-based meat per month, which
is enough to make 1 million ¼-lb.
Impossible Burgers per week.

The Impossible Burger, which was
developed in 2011, is the first burger
made entirely from plants that looks,
smells and tastes like ground beef,
according to the company. The burgers
are starting to appear on restaurant
menus around the country including
Umami Burger locations in California,
Bareburger restaurants in New York
and Hopdoddy locations in Texas as
well as award-winning establishments
in New York, San Francisco, Houston
and Las Vegas.
"Our mission to transform the

global food system is urgent, and
the opportunity is huge - so we
are embarking on one of the most
ambitious scale-ups of any startup in
the food industry," said Impossible
Foods CEO and founder Patrick O.
Brown, MD, Ph.D. "Our goal is to make
delicious, sustainable, nutritious and
affordable meat for everyone, as soon
as possible."
Impossible Foods employs about
200 people, including more than 40
people in Oakland. When the new plant
is running at full capacity it will employ
around 80 people.

NCC RELEASES STANDARDS
FOR BROILER WELFARE
In an effort to provide consumers
with information regarding how
meat chickens are raised, the
National Chicken Council (NCC) has
published animal welfare standards
as part of its Chicken Check In
program. The Chicken Guarantees are
a set of industry-wide standards for
broiler chicken welfare in the US.
"NCC and its members remain
wholly committed to advancing chicken
welfare, continuous improvement
and consumer choice," Ashley
Peterson, Ph.D., NCC senior vice
president of scientific and regulatory
affairs, said in a statement. "But
consumers today are constantly being
bombarded with negatives on labeling
- no preservatives, no hormones, no
additives, no this, never that. Through
our Chicken Guarantees, we want to
provide the baseline principles that
always hold true, no matter what
chicken you eat."
The Chicken Guarantees ensure
simple, clear and accurate information
to consumers explaining how their
chicken is cared for and raised.
"In addition to the industry's
comprehensive chicken welfare
guidelines that chicken producers
use and are audited against, and
other available welfare programs, the
Chicken Guarantees are a simple set of

baseline welfare standards that people
can expect and understand when they
buy and eat any chicken," Peterson
added. "We support choices in the
meat case for consumers, but the data
clearly show that with so many options,
consumers can become confused. We
believe that by providing our
consumers with facts about chicken
care, their choices can become easier.
No matter what chicken they choose
to buy and feed their families, they can
be assured that their chicken was well
cared-for."

JBS COMMITS TO CAGE-FREE
EGGS IN BRAZILIAN PRODUCTS
JBS SA announced that by 2020, the
company will now abstain from the
use of eggs sourced from confined
chickens in the company's products
manufactured in Brazil.
The company said in its
sustainability commitments, which are
posted on its website, that starting this
year, JBS "...assumed the commitment
to buy commercial eggs, which are
used as ingredients in its products, only
from chickens raised free of cages."
Additional advances in poultry
welfare include the gradual reduction
of antibiotics used in production
at Seara, a unit of JBS. "Seara has
gradually reduced the amount used
in its production, not being used in a
preventive way, and the company is
committed to continue to advance the
reduction of the drug in the coming
years," according to the website.
Antibiotics are only administered with
veterinary recommendations.
Other animal welfare initiatives
include transitioning to collective
housing for sows. "The adopted pattern
is the European one, which defines
the maximum of 28 days' gestation in
individual stalls, passing the remainder
of the pregnancy in collective stalls,"
the company's website states.

For more news,
visit MEATPOULTRY.com
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