Derrick Teal, Editor in Chief, ProFood World: There's a lot of uncertainty in business right now, especially in the food and beverage space, which is why you should be asking yourself if you're sure about making any changes to your operations.
I'm going to be upfront and say this isn't political. ProFood World's audience is our business and our audience is all over the political spectrum. Consider this more of a public service announcement. It's the job of our staff to sift through all the information from the government, read through press releases from manufacturers, decipher it, and then share what we find with you so that you don't have to do all that legwork.
That's why, based on the information we've seen, I can safely say that we don't know what's going to happen either.
An example I can share about this is the recent decision and then clarification regarding the processing of certain young chicken and swine. In March, the Secretary of Agriculture said that processors were allowed to use faster line speeds. A few weeks later, a clarification was sent that said the previous announcement was only an extension that applied to establishments that had already been given a waiver for faster line speeds, and the FSIS had stopped offering those waivers in 2020 and wasn't going to offer any new ones.
I'm not going to get into the tariff issues, but many food and beverage manufacturers have been affected by the "will they, won't they," situation that has gone on. We've heard about companies making plans on top of plans, creating contingencies to cope with a variety of situations. But before they move ahead with any of them and you move ahead with your change, your operations or supply chain, take time to ask yourself probably the hardest question to answer right now, and is that, "Are you sure?"
