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Prior to her Feb. 10, 2011, presentation at the National Turkey Federation’s annual convention, Dr. Elisabeth Hagen, Under Secretary for Food Safety for USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), provided updates to several agency initiatives in a one-on-one interview with Dave Lurie, publisher of The National Provisioner. What follows is their conversation:

To be a pioneer, it takes a boatload of courage. To be a successful pioneer, it takes courage plus insight and innovation — along with, in some cases, a little bit of luck.

There’s a great deal of confusion about the term “natural” when it comes to food and beverage marketing, as product developers have been given very little guidance from federal authorities regarding its use. At best, the FDA disqualifies some ingredients from being called natural, as they have been deemed artificial or synthetic.

Modified-atmosphere packaging (MAP) technologies have the ability to provide incentives and opportunities for processors and retailers to positively affect their bottom line. However, product presentation as well as consumer acceptance are the primary factors that affect final decisions on packaging selection.

Sausage may have the dollar menu at McDonald’s to thank for its resilience last year. Savvy breakfast eaters could find sausage biscuits, burritos and McMuffins at their local drive-throughs, and other fast-food and quick-serve restaurants (QSR) — including a surprising rebound from pizza restaurants — offered more low-priced options.

In the 1990s, a meat-plant employee entering a work station might have to use a decontaminating foot wash. Now, plant employees have to navigate a boot-scrubbing system, put on personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gloves, masks and goggles, and their movement is restricted to prevent any contamination.

When manufacturing sausage products we essentially do four things; comminute meat (comminute is a fancy word for reduction in particle size i.e. grinding, flaking, dicing or chopping), season the product, manipulate proteins and shape the product. How we perform these four activities produces the wide variety of sausage products available.

Two-and-a-half years out from the start of what some are calling “The Great Recession,” it appears that economic growth is inching its way into the lexicon once again. That bodes

Walk through the facilities of many mid-sized to large companies in the meat and poultry industry, and you’ll find enormous amounts of respect for history yet often a history

Poly-clip System is the world’s leading manufacturer of clip closure systems. Its machines play a major role in enabling meat processors to develop new products and open up new markets.Since