Big Mac: "Made to Order" Sandwichs and "Some Real Hot New Chicken Stuff"
Now here is a novel idea from the folks that gave us the Big Mac !!!
"We need to do more to meet the taste needs of customers," chief U.S. operations officer Thomas Glasgow Jr. told franchisees recently. To that end, Mr. Glasgow told the Wall Street Journal's Richard Gibson in an interview, McDonald's will install a food-production system in future U.S. stores giving customers just what they want "without giving up one iota of their expectations of service." That means sandwiches made to order, delivered as quickly as today.
Disappointing customer counts, shrinking market share and critics who contend its food should taste better, is occasioning McDonald's to abandon some longstanding procedures and test new ones in hopes of improving America's appetite for its food products.
Plans call for all domestic restaurants to be refitted with equipment making possible.
custom-made sandwiches. In Colorado Springs, for example, an Arch Deluxe hamburger ordered without onions arrives in seconds, with a sticker on the carton proclaiming, "Prepared just the way you like it." Grilled Chicken Deluxe cartons there are labeled "Made for me."
McDonalds, the Journal reports, has been quietly pursuing such upgrades for nearly two years. Their endeavors are believed to have gained urgency recently following the flop of the company's "Campaign 55" lunch and dinner promotion, and what franchisees say is a continued decline in U.S. same-store sales.
Technologies being tested range from machines that automatically make french fries and dispense soft drinks to sensors that track motorists in the drive-through lane.
"It's a way for us to look at how we'll deal in today's environment and tomorrow's environment, which are different from yesterday's," Mr. Glasgow says, terming the work "more evolutionary than revolutionary." McDonald's also has a team developing what it calls "breakthrough menu items." The company is silent on details, but told shareholders at its annual meeting in May to expect "some real hot new chicken stuff."
McDonald's already set to "revolutionize" the fast food business with an "innovative" marketing idea called the "custom-made sandwich" is now preparing to include offers for food at its outlets on the packages of some 14 Kellogg Co. cereal brands. In a press release McDonald's said the offers include items such as a free Big Mac with the purchase of a Big Mac, or a free Happy Meal with the purchase of a Deluxe Line sandwich Extra Value Meal.
McDonald's said also it will start putting 10-second tags on Kellogg's television commercials highlight the promotion.
"General Mills Raises Prices Of Cereals by 2.6% in Switch" The Wall Street Journal, July 3
"General Mills Inc., in a risky about-face, said it is raising the price of its breakfast cereals an average of 2.6% -- the first major price rise in three years. The price increase by General Mills, the No. 2 player in the cereal industry, took effect Wednesday. . . . Shoppers will see the cost for a typical box of cereal rise about a dime, estimates Nomi Ghez, food analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co. . . . ."
"General Mills Raises Prices Of Cereal, but Rivals Don't" The Wall Street Journal, July 7
"Is the breakfast food fight over? Kellogg Co. and the Post division of Kraft Foods Inc. are both mum on whether they will follow last week's 2.6% price markup by General Mills Inc. The move by Minneapolis-based General Mills apparently caught its two big competitors off guard. But investors took the silence from Kellogg, the No. 1 cereal maker, and Post, No. 3, as a sign of a truce in the cereal industry's nearly three-year price war. In New York Stock Exchange trading, cereal stocks jumped Thursday on that speculation. Shares of both Kellogg and Quaker Oats Co. set 52-week highs. Kellogg rose $4 to $91, and Quaker, a smaller player in cold cereals, rose 81 cents to $45.94. General Mills increased $2.44 to $68.19. . . . ."
LIFE is not all KIX for rural America in 19-97. While family farmers are getting SMACKS from corporate agribusiness, the CAP'N CRUNCH's of the cereal industry continue to engage in a VARIETY PAK of TRIX. Meanwhile, family farmers no longer have a HEALTHY CHOICE when COMPLETEly up against the BASIC FOUR of the cereal industry --- QUAKER OATS, GENERAL MILLS, KELLOGG's, POST.
Family farmers and consumers want more than COCOA PEBBLES, LUCKY CHARMS and Coupons, Coupons. As consumers want JUST RIGHT prices, family farmers also want a 100% BRAN new, democratic, economic policy that gives them fair and equitable RICE CHEX, CORN CHEX, WHEAT CHEX for their TOTAL cost of production.
The next time you see a child bite into a Nestle's Magic make sure the bite is not too big.
The newest product from one of the world's largest food manufacturers Nestle's Magic is a foil-wrapped chocolate shell covering a two-piece plastic ball about two inches in diameter. Inside the ball is a small plastic figure, representing one of 24 characters from Disney films.
While the label on the Nestle Magic box reads: "Safety tested for kids of all ages" the product has the National Safe Kids Campaign, calling for a ban on the product for children under three years of age while pointing out that some of the toys are so small that "they seem to be right on the edge of compliance." In their informal test, the children's advocacy group, noted that of 14 of the 24 toys, one of them, Pegasus, quickly broke into two pieces.
"One piece easily fit inside a small-parts tester," said Heather D. Paul, the organization's executive director, "making it a choking hazard for children under age 3."
However, on August 29 the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission determined Nestle SA's Nestle Magic doesn't violate federal safety regulations. In a press release the commission said that based on the size and shape of the Nestle product, it concluded the toys do not pose a choking hazard, and as a result does not violate the commission's small parts regulation.
A Food and Drug Administration regulation specifically bans non food products from being embedded in food, but Nestle's spokesperson Laurie MacDonald points out that her company does not believe that this regulation applies to Nestle Magic as the Nestle toy is not "embedded" but "encircled" by the ball, which is covered by the chocolate.
The company, while petitioning the FDA to create a regulation permitting the product's sale, has decided that rather than wait for such a regulation it will put Nestle Magic on the market at a cost of about $1 in stores like Kmart.
Apart from the choking hazard, said Paul of the Safe Kids Campaign, parents should be concerned that some children will confuse the toy with food. She compared Nestle Magic to food- scented crayons that were sold by Crayola for a short time but quickly removed from the market in 1995 after protests from parents and the Safe Kids Campaign.
Bonnie Liebman, the director of nutrition for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Washington-based advocacy group, noted to Marian Burros of the New York Times: "Parents try to convince young kids not to put toys in their mouth. Here's a toy covered with candy that sends the opposite message."
Proving that consumers should never underestimate the "ingenuity" of corporate agribusiness to capitalize on the obvious contradictions within our nation's food system Pepsico is presently test-marketing its sales of Fritos and Doritos chips in12-ounce aluminum cans which can be sold in Pepsi's vending machines.
"It looks as if Pepsico has found a way to create thirst and satisfy it, all from one vending machine," John Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest, the industry newsletter, observed in his magazine's report on the company's tests.
Testing the new product in Birmingham, Ala.; Des Moines, Iowa; Indianapolis; Kansas City, Mo.; St. Louis and Seattle, the move is keeping with Pepsico's desire for more joint marketing efforts between its Pepsico and Frito-Lay brands after the company spins off its fast-food restaurant division in October, according to Pepsico's chairman and chief executive, Roger Enrico.
Pepsi can now use its vending machines also as a promotional outlet to introduce new products such as its Olean potato chips, the brand name for olestra, the fat substitute that Frito-Lay is presently testing on an experimental basis in the Midwest. Industry analysts see a can of the snacks costing 75 cents and having a "high profitability."
"This adds an interesting new chapter to the cola wars," Sicher of Beverage Digest said, "and Coca Cola doesn't own a snack-food company."
Yet!
In an effort to challenge the dominant position in agricultural biotechnology already held by the Monsanto Corp., the DuPont Co., one of the nation's oldest chemical companies, has agreed to buy a 20% stake in Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., the nation's largest seed manufacturer, for $1.7 billion.
As part of the agreement, DuPont and Pioneer are forming a joint venture designed to create crops that have special nutritional and pharmaceutical attributes.
"This deal effectively keeps Pioneer independent" from the merger wave that has swept through the crop biotechnology industry in recent years, John M. McMillin, an analyst at Prudential Securities Inc., New York told the Wall Street Journal.
Earlier this year, Pioneer rejected efforts by the St. Louis- based Monsanto Co., which is a major competitor of DuPont in chemicals and Pioneer in seeds.
In an interview with the WSJ's Scott Kilman and Susan Warren, Jerry Chicoine, Pioneer chief financial officer, acknowledged that AgrEvo GmbH of Berlin had expressed some level of interest in Pioneer, but Chicoine said the companies had had no serious discussions. AgrEvo, is a joint venture between Hoechst AG in Frankfurt and Schering AG in Berlin.
DuPont and Pioneer's joint venture, to be called Optimum Quality Grains, will be designed to create the second wave of so-called transgenic crops following the initial wave that seed companies allied with Monsanto managed to take away from Pioneer by being the first to introduce crops genetically modified to allegedly improve production efficiency.
For example, about 15% of the U.S. soybean crop harvested this year will come from plants genetically engineered to tolerate increased use of Monsanto's "Roundup" herbicide resulting in lucrative sales of the chemical.
Industry officials estimate the market for these early "farmer- friendly" transgenic crops at roughly $5 billion a year since the demand from food companies for crops engineered with nutritional attributes is far bigger, and much more valuable than the current biotech engineered crops. Such new crops will contain more of certain amino acids than they do naturally, such as lysine, or oils that can be used to decrease saturated fat in foods.
Already believed to have done the most research on how to genetically engineer nutritional attributes into crops DuPont in its joint venture with Pioneer will be provided with a system for selling these crops. Pioneer controls 42% of the seed corn sold in the U.S with DeKalb having 11.5%, Novartis (a joint venture between Ciba seeds and Nothrop King) 8.5%, and Mycogen 4.5%.
The joint venture also gives Pioneer Hi-Bred access to a form of biotechnology that few competitors have yet to fully develop. It is expected that the joint venture will start introducing transgenic crops in two years. Based on estimates supplied by DuPont and Pioneer, Wall Street analysts expect the joint venture to generate annual profits of roughly $500 million within a decade.
Fresh from its $1.7 billion "investment venture" with Pioneer Hi-Bred, which currently dominants the corn-seed market, DuPont Co. has announced that it is continuing its efforts to establish itself as a major player in agricultural biotechnology from "dirt to dinner" (as the Wall Street Journal puts it) by acquiring Protein Technologies International, a subsidiary of Ralston Purina Co. for $1.5 billion.
Presently, Protein Technologies supplies about 75 percent of the worldwide market for soy proteins used in processed foods.
The acquisition reflects the latest trend in the chemical industry, as biotechnology begins to blur the lines of demarcation between the different parts of the food chain. As the New York Times recently reported:
"Until recently those lines seemed etched in stone: Chemical companies provided fertilizers, pesticides and other products that helped farmers grow more of a specific crop; farmers grew the crop and sold it as cattle feed, or to companies like Protein Technologies; they processed it into food ingredients that companies like Nestle or Borden incorporated into everything from hot dogs to ice cream to infant formula."
In recent years, DuPont, Monsanto Co., Novartis AG (the Swiss company formed by the merger of Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy) and a small number of other chemical companies have been experimenting with plant genetics producing seeds that grow corn with a higher oil content, allowing feed lot managers to fatten cattle more quickly. They have also been engineering soybeans to make them more palatable.
"DuPont is just now ramping up its plants to make improved soybean seeds, and they need to be sure they will have the access to the most customers," Jeffrey Spetalnick of Oppenheimer & Co. told the Times' Claudia H. Deutsch.
That need will grow even more critical over the next few years, Paul Leming, an analyst with Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, predicted. "Companies like Archer-Daniels-Midland or Protein International will contract with farmers to grow a specific type of soybean or corn," he said. "Companies like DuPont and Monsanto want to be sure that it is their genetically engineered corn or soybeans that are being requested."
"Biotechnology allows for a real linkage between food and health and wellness and seed," Robert Fraley, co-president of Monsanto Co.'s agricultural sector, told the Times. "And there you're talking about 75 percent of the world's gross domestic product."
It is precisely such "linkages" which led Ralston Purina to agree to sell Protein Technologies, which ended last year with operating earnings of $84.5 million on sales of $420 million. While its official statement said the company wanted to concentrate on its pet-products and Eveready battery companies, one executive reportedly observed, "We just don't have the connections to make a go of nutriceuticals."
Meanwhile, Monsanto is in the process of buying Holden's Foundation Seeds, a seed-corn company, in an effort to get a stake in the corn seed business.
"ADM's lysine profits could shrink if Cargill, the nation's largest closely held company, sticks to its traditional strategy of entering markets intending to dominate them. `Cargill's entry could certainly make lysine a more competitive business,' Mr. [David] Nelson said."
Only in the corporate concentrated world of agribusiness and the pages of the Wall Street Journal could an analyst for a firm like NatWest Securities Corp., New York, get away with a statement like the above.
What occasioned Nelson's observation was the announcement that Cargill has announced that it has signed a letter of intent with Degussa AG of Frankfurt, Germany to form a joint venture to make the livestock-feed additive. The venture plans to build a plant near Cargill's Blair, Nebraska, corn-refining complex to make 165 million pounds of the amino acid annually.
It is estimated that the Cargill lysine plant, slated to begin operations in late 1999, will cost about $100 million to build and provide them the capacity to control roughly one-third of what is now a $1 billion world-wide market. ADM, is already capable of supplying roughly half of the global lysine market and is currently expanding its plant capacity.
Neither Cargill nor Degussa were involved in the recent price- fixing scandal which embroiled the world's leading lysine makers. Last year ADM paid $100 million in fines and pleaded guilty to two criminal price-fixing charges involving lysine and citric acid, a beverage ingredient. At the present time the European Commission is conducting an antitrust investigation of ADM's lysine business in Europe.
ADM has also paid $25 million to settle a class-action suit by U.S. customers, some of whom have since complained that they have had no choice but to continue buying lysine from ADM and Asian members of the former lysine cartel.
Degussa, a chemicals concern and a major producer of methionine, another livestock-feed ingredient, entered into discussions with ADM in the late 1980s concerning forming a joint venture, but the talks failed to produce an agreement.
A recent in-depth Seattle Times investigation found that, across the nation, industrial wastes laden with heavy metals and other dangerous materials are being used in fertilizers and spread over farmland. The process, which is legal, saves dirty industries the high costs of disposing of hazardous wastes.
In it's two part series "Fear in the Fields" the Times found that the lack of national regulation and of labeling requirements means most farmers have no idea exactly what they're putting on their crops when they apply fertilizers.
"There's a limit on the amount of lead in a can of paint, but not in fertilizer. There's a limit on the amount of dioxin in a concrete highway barrier, but not in fertilizer." Times correspondent Duff Wilson reports.
The Times found examples of wastes laden with heavy metals being recycled into fertilizer to be spread across crop fields.
Legally!!!!
In Gore, Okla., a uranium-processing plant is getting rid of low- level radioactive waste by licensing it as a liquid fertilizer and spraying it over 9,000 acres of grazing land.
In Tifton County, Ga., more than 1,000 acres of peanut crops were wiped out by a brew of hazardous waste and limestone sold to unsuspecting farmers.
And in Camas, Clark County, Washington state highly corrosive, lead-laced waste from a pulp mill is hauled to Southwest Washington farms and spread over crops grown for livestock consumption.
Among the substances found in some recycled fertilizers are cadmium, lead, arsenic, radionuclides and dioxins, at levels some scientists say may pose a threat to human health. Although the health effects are widely disputed, there is undisputed evidence the substances enter plant roots.
Just as there are no conclusive data to prove a danger, the Times concludes, there are none to prove the safety of the practice.
Some health and environmental experts are pushing for regulations similar to those in other countries like Canada. But from Washington state to Washington, D.C., the $15-billion-a- year fertilizer industry is waging a successful campaign against it, the Times series reports.
In Congress three years ago, lobbyists for The Fertilizer Institute won removal of a section of the proposed Lead Exposure Reduction Act that would have banned fertilizers with more than 0.1 percent lead.
Internal minutes, obtained by the Times, of the Institute, the industry's main lobbying group, show it wants to streamline hazardous-material laws and "manage the issue of regulation of heavy metals in fertilizers." The industry also lobbies its own members to oppose fertilizer regulation.
In Colorado, for example, a manufacturer whose product does not include recycled hazardous waste was told by the director of the Far West Fertilizer Association to "stop adding fuel to the fire" by talking about the risks of heavy metals.
"I told him there are things going on that are bogus and I won't be quiet because I think this is unsafe," replied Kipp Smallwood, sales manager for Cozinco. "I'm crying for national regulation, or at least truth in labeling," Smallwood said. There is no requirement that toxic substances be listed on fertilizer labels.
The primary argument against labeling or regulating fertilizers with toxic wastes is that it would raise costs, both of waste disposal and food production.
"Agriculture is being used as a dumping ground," Smallwood said. "They get away with it because there's nobody watching, nobody testing. It's the lure of the dollar."
Bill Liebhardt, chairman of the Sustainable Agriculture Department at the University of California-Davis, previously worked for fertilizer companies but says the industry is wrong to oppose regulation.
"When I heard of people mixing this toxic waste in fertilizer, I was astounded," he told the Times. "And it seems to be a legal practice. I'd never heard of something like that - getting cadmium or lead when you think you're only getting zinc.
"Even if it's legal, to me it's just morally and ethically bankrupt that you would take this toxic material and mix it into something that is beneficial and then sell that to unsuspecting people. To me it is just outrageous."
In the largest pollution penalty in U.S. history, Smithfield Foods, one of the nation's largest pork producers, has been fined by U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith $12.6 million for dumping excessive levels of hog waste into a Chesapeake Bay tributary in violation of the Clean Water Act.
In December, 1996 the Environmental Protection Agency sued Smithfield for $20 million, alleging nearly 7,000 violations of the Clean Water Act since 1991. The government agency not only accused the company of dumping illegal levels of waste into the Pagan River, but also falsifying and destroying records to hide it.
"This decision sends a strong message that there can be no profit in pollution," noted W. Michael McCabe, the EPA's regional administrator. Roy Hoagland, staff attorney for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, commented on the penalty: "It's great for the bay. I'm pleased to know the federal government held Smithfield accountable."
Smithfield, a $4 billion conglomerate that sells products under the Smithfield, Gwaltney and Cudahay labels, has been considered by the EPA for quite sometime as a particularly flagrant violator of pollution laws.
The national significance of this story was underscored in an August 13, 1997 Washington Post editorial which noted in part:
"Nearly lost in the politics surrounding the $12.6 million water- pollution fine just levied against Smithfield Foods is the enormity of the deeds for which the Virginia meatpacker is being punished. Fecal and other bodily waste from slaughtered hogs, left untreated in millions of gallons of waste water, has been dumped since the 1970s directly into the Pagan River, a tributary of the James.
"Phosphorous in the waste produces an overload of nutrients that depletes oxygen and causes uncontrolled growth of incompatible plant life, creating "dead zones" that threaten Chesapeake Bay aquatic life and local drinking water. That's what's behind the bulk of the 7,000 violations of the federal Clean Water Act cited by the Environmental Protection Agency as it intervened in Virginia's ideologically tainted environmental debates. . .
"But this fine -- the largest of its kind in U.S. history -- is a suitable climax to a sorry tale," the Post continues. "This major employer in a state ranked last in its region in fining polluters spent years delaying mandatory reporting of violations. It watched as a manager of one of its waste water treatment plants pleaded guilty and began a 30-month prison term for pollution that he says Smithfield officials told him to disguise. Only last week did the firm deliver n a six- year-old promise to link its Pagan River waste water into a sewage treatment line.
"Because water and air pollution respect no state boundaries, and because pollution-prone businesses may shop for locations with the weakest environmental protections, the Smithfield case is a good example of the need for more uniform federal enforcement, " the Post concluded.
Judge Smith's ruling also put a spotlight on the environmental policies of Republican Gov. George Allen's administration, which the EPA has accused of coddling corporate polluters such as Smithfield.
Environmentalists and Democratic critics point out the $12.6 million fine is significant not only in itself but also because it underscores what they have termed Allen's laissez-faire approach to environmental regulation that places business interests above all others. For example, they point to the fact that Smithfield's chairman, Joseph W. Luter III, gave $125,000 to Allen's political action committee while the firm was negotiating a pollution settlement with the state.
The EPA has threatened to take over the state's water pollution program, saying it has failed to enforce anti-pollution rules. A federal review of the state's program is underway.
Prior to the Smithfield fine the largest court-imposed fine for violating water pollution laws was $4 million, imposed earlier this year against a Pennsylvania dairy firm. The largest settlement in such a case was for $6 million, which an Ohio steel company agreed to pay in 1991.
Smithfield officials have maintained that a dumping agreement they signed with former Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder's administration in 1991 allowed the company to discharge pollutants at levels above the legal limits as long as it hooked up its slaughterhouses to a public waste water system extension as soon as possible.
In commenting on the fine Smithfield said it was outlandish because the company was merely abiding by the agreement. "Twelve point six million for doing what we were told to do?" Smithfield attorney Anthony F. Troy said. "Thank God we weren't doing things that we weren't supposed to do."
Company officials said that hooking up their plants to a public waste water system took longer than expected because a pipeline to Smithfield was delayed.
Judge Smith, however, ruled in May that the federal government was not bound by the 1991 agreement. She added that the agreement was so lax that it was virtually "toothless."
"White House Subdued on NAFTA's Impact" Washington Post, "U.S. Report to Congress Nafta Benefits Are Modest" New York Times, " NAFTA deemed a moderate success" (USA Today), "Nafta Is Good for U.S., White House Study Says" Wall Street Journal.
Even the nation's North American Free Trade Agreement's media cheer leaders were hard put (save the Wall Street Journal) to find much in a recent White House evaluation of the three year old trade agreement between Mexico, the U.S. and Mexico to trumpet.
As Rep. David E. Bonior (Dem-Mich.) noted in his July 13, New York Times "I Told You So" op-ed essay "the most the Administration could bring itself to say is that Nafta has had a "modest positive effect" on the American economy. That's a far cry from the extravagant promises made by the accord's proponents during the 1993 debate."
He enumerates:
Three hundred thousand new jobs? No. The report, required by Congress, suggests that Nafta-related exports have created 90,000 to 160,000 new jobs. But such figures do not account for 132,000 Americans who lost their jobs as a result of the pact. According to the Labor Department's Nafta Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, set up to help displaced American workers that's the number of certified Nafta-related job losses.
Higher wages? No. Mexican wages along the border have dropped from $1 to 70 cents an hour, according to International Monetary Fund figures. A commissioned 1996 U.S. Labor Department study by Cornell University revealed that 62 percent of U.S. companies surveyed used the threat of moving to Mexico to hold down wages here at home.
Environmental cleanup? No. Toxic sites along the border have continued to multiply. To date, only 1 percent of the $2 billion in cleanup funds promised under Nafta have been spent.
"It is true," Bonior, the House Minority whip, states, "that trade has risen between the United States and Mexico in the last three years, but it has been lopsided. Imports from Mexico have surged by 83 percent since 1993. What was a $2 billion trade surplus with Mexico before Nafta became a record $16 billion deficit last year."
Who, he asks, has actually benefited from NAFTA?
"Some of the big winners are the 28 core members of USA-Nafta, an industry group that lobbied for the agreement. Forty-two percent of these multinationals shipped jobs abroad once Nafta was adopted, an analysis of the Labor Department's trade adjustment assistance data shows. Their profits have increased by 296 percent, according to financial information published in Forbes."
He concludes:
"Nafta has not delivered on its promises. Let's not repeat the errors of the past. Instead of rushing to expand it and putting other countries on the `fast track,' let's concentrate on fixing Nafta first."
Claiming that it is suffering from the decision of many Iowa farmers in recent years to shrink their hog herds, or get out of hog production entirely IBP, the nation's largest beef packer, has said it is considering whether to raise its own hogs for slaughter.
Currently, the Company claims that it buys most of the millions of hogs it kills
annually in the state, where it operates five hog-slaughter plants, on the open market from family-owned hog farms.
In a recent telephone conference call with Wall Street analysts, company officials suggested they are considering everything from building their own hog farms to contracting with hog growers.
"We believe we must align ourselves closer to pork production," Robert L. Peterson, IBP chairman and chief executive officer, said in a prepared statement. "This will give us better access to hog supplies." An IBP spokesman refused to elaborate.
Between 1980 and 1994 hog production in Iowa remained steady between 17 and 15 million hogs while the number of hog farmers dramatically decreased from 64,000 to 30,000 as the move toward corporate hog farms increased.
Consequently, in recent years many Iowa farmers aren't expanding their herds, despite strong hog prices, because of a growing environmental movement against large-scale hog farms, which generate large amounts of extremely odious manure. Iowa law also prohibits meat packers from raising livestock in the state, which IBP claims would force it to build any farm-to- factory complex outside the state, further weakening Iowa's position as the nation's largest hog-producing state.
IBP also announced that for the quarter ending June 28, IBP earned $33.9 million, or 36 cents a share, compared with $87 million, or 90 cents a share, for the similar 1996 quarter, an earnings drop of 61%. Sales climbed 5.8% to $3.45 billion.
Livestock industry leaders from across the nation emerged from a recent two day meeting in Jackson, Mississippi with an agreement over the principles necessary to restore a free, fair and competitive marketplace for independent cattle producers.
Some 50 leaders attending the session agreed that the enforcement of the Packers & Stockyards Act provisions requiring a competitive marketplace is a top priority for the nation's livestock producers. Growing concern among producers over the increasing economic concentration in the livestock marketplace prompted the meeting here.
In a statement adopted at the session, the group said, "We the Market Reform Coalition, unite to restore and maintain a fair, open and competitive market for all livestock producers." The "Jackson Principles" adopted during the meeting include:
- Free, open, competitive markets with price disclosure that reflects true market value.
-Commitment to delivering high quality, safe, healthy products to consumers.
The group also appointed a steering committee to develop the next steps needed to enforce the Packers & Stockyards regulations. P & S is the primary federal agency charged with enforcing laws and regulations to assure competition in the livestock industry.
The steering committee appointed to develop the strategy for implementing enforcement of the principles, includes: Mike Callicrate, Kansas, Cattlemen's Legal Fund (committee coordinator); Kathleen Kelley, National Farmers Union; Jim Newsome, Mississippi, National Cattlemen's Beef Association; Dave Miller, American Farm Bureau Federation; Skinner Hardy, Oregon; Fred Stokes, Mississippi, Mississippi Cattleman's Association; Dudley Butler, Attorney, Mississippi; Wes Simms, Texas, Texas Farmers Union; Skip Waters, Wyoming, and Jerry Petik, South Dakota.