The Christmas season offers many opportunities for sales. People like to give gifts they know the recipient will enjoy and most people enjoy receiving food items as gifts. Two excellent gift items are gift cards and gift boxes.

The hot topic of the day is the new swine inspection rule. There appears to be a lot of fake news being tossed around, at the very least a lot of information about how this is going to affect industry and how the consumer is being left out.

Thrill-seeking and novelty is not specific to humans. In fact, many animals also display this curiosity toward unknown objects. In animal behavior, this concept is called the paradox of novelty.

Average U.S. beef production during the 12 months through May was up 1.5 percent from one year ago and at the highest level in more than seven years.

In the U.S., water immersion chilling (WC) is commonly used to chill poultry while other regions of the world, such as the European Union (E.U.), prefer air chilling (AC).

This summer, the dairy industry was dealt a hard hand with animal rights groups releasing multiple videos taken by "undercover" animal-rights activists employed on farms in Indiana, Nebraska and Texas.

Antibiotic usage in animals produced for food has been a controversial topic for the past several years. The concern has been centered on the concept that antibiotic use in food animals may induce antibiotic resistance in potential food-borne pathogens for humans.

Numerous stories have been published in recent weeks relating to a waiver request submitted by Tyson Foods that proposes to reduce the number of inspectors in its facility.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has been relatively quiet the past few months in terms of new regulatory initiatives. There are, however, a few recent noteworthy developments.