Immigration enforcement is ramping up — again — and regardless of how carefully a company adheres to federal programs like E-Verify, it’s no guarantee that Immigration and Customs Enforcement won’t darken the door. But, companies can take concrete steps to properly prepare for and respond to a visit from ICE, as David L. Barron, a labor and employment law attorney with Cozen O’Connor in Houston, explains in this episode of MeatingPod.

Developing new products that attract consumer attention is a goal for all food manufacturing companies, and Land O’Frost, a manufacturer of specialty meats and packaged deli meats is no exception. Julie Lubash, director of research and development and innovation at Lansing, Ill.-based Land O’Frost provides insights on how the family-owned company developed one of its newest innovations: a line of premium chicken breast and ham deli products featuring hot honey flavors. She describes how consumer interest in protein-rich snacking is inspiring meat companies to keep an eye on the types of new products that will boost consumer attention along with sales.

Hybrid meat products — those that combine conventional animal protein with vegetables or plant-based proteins — have had difficulty getting consumers on-board. In fact, new research by Food System Innovations (FSI) indicates that prospective customers get turned off by too much information about what’s actually in the burger or chicken nugget or the like. But without that ingredient information, these products fair remarkably well in blind consumer taste-tests: Half of tasters in the recent TASTY Award competition offered by FSI affiliate NECTAR rated what NECTAR calls “balanced protein” products as the same or better than their animal protein equivalent. Tim Dale, FSI’s category innovation director, joins Alt-Meat for this MeatingPod episode to discuss balanced proteins and new avenues for helping this category find what could be a lucrative market for processors of all kinds.

As processors continue to expand efficiencies and improve worker safety, Dr. Brian Kiepper from the University of Georgia takes our MeatingPod listeners on a tour of early automation efforts, notes where technology stands today and outlines the potential for tech advances in the near future. Dr. Kiepper also explains that meat plant automation doesn’t eliminate jobs, but offers an opportunity to redeploy experienced employees to other parts of the processing plant, even in the early days of adoption. Additionally, he provides insights on opportunities to use data collected by automated equipment to improve plant operations.

In this inaugural episode of the MeatingPod Editor’s Roundtable, Meatingplace Co-Editor-in-Chief Tom Johnston and Managing Editor Peter Ricci discuss the state of the poultry processing industry and where the protein may be headed in the near future. Both editors have covered protein processing businesses for years and offer their insights regarding poultry demand fluctuations. Tom and Peter also describe how the industry is covered in Meatingplace through contacts with processing managers through trade show visits, webinars and other one-on-one channels. The discussion also covers the impact of avian influenza and some of the more unusual observations they’ve seen across the poultry industry over time.

The challenge of implementing and maintaining food safety standards at any food manufacturing plant requires strict record-keeping, solid communications and a commitment to working with inspectors on both the federal and state levels. In this episode, Brian Kellerman, chief quality and food safety officer at Kellerman Consulting, describes implementation of technically complex food safety projects and describes how food safety efforts have evolved in the last five years. He also offers insights on where these food safety initiatives may be headed as meat processors continue to aim to provide safe products.

The way Jeff “Trip” Tripician sees it, he didn’t leave his job as CEO of a conventional meat company to become CEO of the Dutch cultivated meat company Meatable; rather, he went from CEO of one meat company to another. After decades working to institute progressive practices within the U.S. meat industry, Trip is pushing the cultivated meat industry to progress by, essentially, helping them understand that they are meat companies, not food-tech companies. And by hammering home the idea that feeding the world’s population is strategy, not a competition, he aims to create that brass ring of business — synergy. Trip Tripician joined MeatingPod for a wide-ranging and frank discussion of meat, alt-meat, food-tech, the climate, and the crossroads at which they all are standing.

In this episode, Stephanie Major, a senior at Iowa State University, outlines a research project that aimed to better understand how bacon becomes discolored under varying types of retail lights. With Major as co-leader of the research team, the study involved treating cured bacon with natural antioxidants and then packaging the product in aerobic (overwrap) and anaerobic (vacuum packed) containers. Major and Dr. Terry Hauser, associate director at Iowa State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, explain the results of the study, which found that the type of packaging was more effective than an antioxidant treatment alone in preventing photo-oxidation in bacon in storage or on retail shelves.