As schools around the country reopen after winter break, their students are being reminded of the lunch debt they've racked up this school year – an ugly reality that follows the end of federal assistance that paid for school meals for more than 50 million students during the pandemic. ​Click here to read the full article. 

The USDA announced that 25 projects will receive $9.6 million to help strengthen the resiliency of the country’s food supply chain. USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack hosted a teleconference to announce the investment, and that the department is taking several additional steps to help farmers, ranchers, processors and rural businesses diversify the nation’s meat supply.

The number of U.S. restaurants — including chain franchises and independents — is still meaningfully lower than what it was before the advent of COVID-19. Click here to read the full article. 

The surge in Covid-19 cases in China is impacting the completion of manufacturing orders, according to CNBC Supply Chain Heat Map data.
Logistics managers are warning clients that because of the spike in infections, factories are unable to complete orders — even with U.S. manufacturing orders from China already down 40% due to an unrelenting demand collapse. Click here to read the full article. 

Here’s a sobering statistic: Even if every single unemployed person in the country takes a job, there would still be more than 5 million unfilled positions according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The foodservice industry, a bit of a jobs powerhouse with a corps of nearly 15 million workers, has historically high turnover rates, a situation further complicated by the tight, post-pandemic jobs market. ​Click here to read the full article. 

Highly pathogenic avian influenza continued its destruction of U.S. commercial and backyard flocks in the final days of 2022. The latest tally from the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service had five outbreaks confirmed last week in four states: Kansas, Michigan, Tennessee and Washington.
The largest recent outbreaks involve two commercial broiler breeder producers in Tennessee’s Weakley County, and affected a total of 62,600 birds between them. Confirmed HPAI detections in 2022 include 306 commercial and 411 backyard flocks in 47 states, affecting 57.82 million birds, the federal agency said Wednesday in its last update.  
According to APHIS, commercial and backyard flocks in just three states — Hawaii, Louisiana and West Virginia — have been spared amidst the deadliest HPAI outbreak in U.S. history. The last major HPAI outbreak in the U.S. occurred in 2015, when 50.5 million chickens and turkeys perished. 
The ongoing scourge of HPAI is a global issue, with Japan and the Czech Republic among the nations reporting massive culling efforts in recent weeks. Outbreaks were also reported in Mexico and Canada during the month of December. 

​William W. Wilson, an expert in risk management and trading at North Dakota State University, predicted increased volatility in the U.S. grain market throughout 2023.
Part of the reason commodity prices rose so sharply, Wilson explained, is transportation rates are much higher for alternative grain shipping routes out of Ukraine, according to a report in Feed & Grain. Rail routes that traditionally went to Odessa now route through Romania, Poland and Moldova, which adds as much as $125/metric tonne to costs.
“Unblocking exports by sea will significantly strengthen the stability of the economy and alleviate the acuteness of the food crisis, but only under the condition of stable export of six million tonnes of grain per month at least until March 2023,” Wilson said.
Rising grain prices due to both the war in Ukraine and disappointing harvests in the US, Europe and Asia, are compounding challenges producers already face from global supply chain disruptions and labor and energy costs.
Wilson, who studies grain marketing as well as logistics and supply chain systems, offered his comments during the closing general session of the National Grain and Feed Association’s 2022 Country Elevator Conference in December 2022. 

Inflation has hit all parts of the economy, with the evidence in your grocery bill. For one item, however, there’s one factor that’s having a big effect. Avian flu is hitting farms hard, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating nearly 58 million commercial and backyard birds were affected in the past year across the country. Click here to read the full article.  

The Food & Drug Administration will begin treating sesame as a major allergen with the arrival of the new year, and along with that designation comes new rules for declaring sesame as an ingredient.
In an article posted on its website, USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service noted that sesame will not need to be declared on the labels of products under FSIS jurisdiction. However, the agency said, "the voluntary use of allergen 'contains' statements are permitted on meat, poultry and egg products."
A voluntary allergen “contains” statement may be added using a generic label approval, and so, adding "contains sesame" or similar on a label would not require that the label be submitted to FSIS for sketch approval.
FSIS has been allowing the voluntary inclusion of sesame and sesame derived components in “contains” statements prior to January 1.

​The choice beef cutout has spiked in the past few days, partly due to significant disruptions at feedlots brought about by recent extreme winter weather. The supply of cattle with more than 120 days on feed on Dec. 1 already was the lowest inventory of market-ready cattle on that date since 2018, estimated to be 76,000 head smaller than the previous year, analysts at the Daily Livestsock Report said in an analysis published today.
"Add to this the stress of winter weather and availability suddenly plummets," the analysts wrote. Extreme cold negatively impacts cattle in feedlots as livestock burns more energy to stay alive. 
The recent storm significantly affected the movement of cattle from feedlots to processing plants, plants’ ability to bring workers in, and the movement of beef from processing plants from the middle of the country to metropolitan areas, the DLR said. Fed cattle slaughter was 15% lower for the week of Dec. 19 than two weeks prior.
But with supply needed for the meat case and to run further processing plants, the rib primal value on Tuesday was $548/cwt, the highest for the year, at a time when prices of bone-in and boneless ribeyes typically decline, after Christmas orders have been filled.
"Why are people paying that kind of price? Because they are short and when you need to fill orders in a market where supply is thin you end up paying whatever it takes to outbid the other guy," the analysts said. "So here we are with likely less supply of market-ready cattle for January in feedlots, more weather stressed cattle and more beef booked for delivery. Spot buyers/traders woke up to this reality during the Christmas week storms and may feel the effects of tight supplies well into January."

Highly pathogenic avian influenza’s assault on the poultry industry continues, with new outbreaks reported in the U.S. and across the Mexican and Canadian borders. The USDA’s Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service on Thursday confirmed outbreaks in Colorado, Idaho, Oregon and South Dakota during the past two days. That includes a commercial turkey operation with 31,800 birds in Hanson County, S.D., and 239,700 egg-laying hens in Colorado’s Weld County.
The 2022 tally currently stands at confirmed infections in 708 commercial and backyard flocks in 47 states, impacting 57.69 million birds, according to the agency.
The Huron Perth Public Health agency in Ontario recently reported HPAI was identified in live poultry delivered to a commercial processing plant. “The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, along with the Huron Perth Public Health, the Ministry of Health and Public Health Ontario are working together with the plant operator to respond to the situation,” HPPH stated.
Operations at the plant — identified by the London Free Press as operated by Sofina Foods — resumed on Monday, officials said. HPAI is also striking across the southern border, with the virus confirmed in 17 commercial poultry flocks in Mexico, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health.

Weather conditions and pest pressures in California, Florida and Mexico combined to create elevated vegetable fob prices in 2022, and a USDA report says higher prices may persist until at least early January. Click here to read the full article. 

After two years of pandemic-restricted service, chefs and restaurateurs were eager to ramp up menu innovation in 2022. Then the industry was hit with a triple whammy.
The supply chain was still erratic, kitchens were understaffed and inflation was starting to take a bite out of creativity. Click here to read the full article. 

Inflation began its decline in late summer, the short-term increase in gas prices has since subsided, and the impact of those economic trends can be seen in consumer spending at restaurants. Click here to read the full article. 

Inflation clouded everything this year, for consumers and operators alike. On the operator side, some commodity prices were at their highest levels in decades, forcing average menu price increases up by over 8% just to maintain margins. Click here to read the full article.

Breakfast has the power to turn everything around - from an energy and a profitability standpoint. Explore the resources, products and recipes that can help you grab your share of breakfast traffic. Click here to read the full article. 

Four new cases of bird flu at Iowa turkey farms in the past few days will push the number of birds slaughtered nationwide this month to limit the spread of the virus up to nearly 700,000.The latest cases announced by the Iowa Department of Agriculture only add to the toll of this year's ongoing outbreak that has prompted officials to kill more than 53 million birds in 47 states. Anytime the virus is found, the entire flock is killed to help control the disease.
Click here to read the full article. 

Production of oranges in Florida this season is forecast to be down 36% from earlier estimates, in part a reflection of twin hurricanes that battered growing regions, according to U.S. Agriculture Department figures released Friday. Click here to read the full article. 

The biggest challenge for U.S. potato grower-shippers in 2023 might be stretching their volume to last through the season. USDA estimates harvested acreage for 2022 at 902,200 acres. That’s down from 935,700 in 2021, which itself was a tight year. “Growers are doing their best to manage expectations and hold onto their pile of spuds to make them last,” said Ross Johnson, vice president of retail for the Eagle, Idaho-based Idaho Potato Commission. Click here to read the full article.