Supply Scan
News and Trends from across the Food Supply Chain
Senior vice president Bill McCormack notes that work from the Spartanburg plant will be moved to the Schwan dessert plant in Stillwell, OK.
"The Stillwell plant has a capacity of 630,000 square feet," McCormack says. "You can imagine how big that is. There is room for expansion, to continue the operations and be more efficient. That is important to us."
Schwan, based in Marshall, MN, will continue to operate a dessert plant in the Atlanta area as well as the Stillwell plant. According to McCormack, the Spartanburg plant closure is driven by the need to be more efficient and more competitive.
"Every company is faced with increased costs," McCormack notes, referring to increased fuel prices and increases in the ingredients used to manufacture foods.
McCormack says Schwan will likely sell the Spartanburg plant. "We will look for a buyer who can use that type of facility, another food manufacturer."
Cloning Companies Develop System To Track Cloned Livestock In Processing Chain
National livestock cloning companies have created a tracking program using a supply chain management system that will allow food companies to identify cloned animals when they move into the food processing chain.
The program was developed last year with all critical participants in the food chain. Representatives of the beef, dairy and pork industries, as well as producers, processors, grocers and food service providers helped design the system.
The program is designed to facilitate marketing claims. A rigorous assessment by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and two previous reports by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) found there are no safety concerns with the products of cloned animals.
"Because so few clones currently exist, putting this system into place immediately virtually ensures that processors will be able to identify food from a cloned animal if that's their goal," says Mark Walton, president of cloning company ViaGen Inc., Austin, TX.
The program works through use of a national registry, affidavits and incentives. Cloning companies will give each cloned animal a unique ID. This identification will be entered into a registry that can be queried and verified by the livestock auction market or packer/processor.
When the cloning company delivers the animal, the owner will sign an affidavit committing to proper marketing or disposal of the animal or, in the case of dairy cattle, proper marketing of its milk. The owner is returned an incentive deposit from the cloning company when they notify the company of death (verified by veterinarian), consumption by owner (verified by meat locker) or sale to a packer/processor that accepts clones (verified by signed statement from packer/processor).
Last December, the FDA released a draft risk assessment stating that food derived from clones and their offspring is indistinguishable from that of conventionally reproduced animals. This report was based on hundreds of domestic and international peer-reviewed studies conducted over decades. Several of these in-depth studies analyzed multiple generations of animals.
"There is no argument about the safety of these products and the extremely limited number of clones makes it unlikely anyone will eat food from a cloned animal," says Walton. "However, we wanted to accommodate those industry segments who may wish to market only traditional products."
