Driven by consumer preference for natural or clean-label products, shelf-life-extending ingredients that are growing continue to be natural or clean-label ingredients.

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has allowed many professions to rethink how they do business, including meat and poultry processing plants. Increased automation and robotics allow plants to continue operations, while limiting the risk of infecting workers — or animals.

As the COVID-19 pandemic lingers on, some people are becoming lax in three areas that are critical to decreasing the spread of the COVID-19 virus: face masks, social distancing and handwashing.

This year’s cover story isn’t about one processor. It’s about all the processors who read this magazine, really. The “Year of the Independent Processor” is meant to show how hard the small processor community has worked during this pandemic, largely under the radar.

On June 4, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS, or the agency) published a Federal Register notice, Expansion of Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli Testing to Additional Raw Beef Products.