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The US egg industry has evolved considerably over recent decades by incorporating new technologies and production practices. To date, there has been no comprehensive assessment of the resource demand and environmental effects of these changes. This study quantifies the environmental footprint of egg production supply chains in the United States for 2010 compared with 1960 using life cycle assessment. The analysis considers changes in both foreground (e.g., hen production performance) and background (e.g., efficiencies of energy provision, fertilizer production, production of feed inputs, and transport modes) system variables. The results revealed that feed efficiency, feed composition, and manure management are the 3 primary factors that determine the environmental impacts of US egg production. Further research and improvements in these areas will aid in continual reduction of the environmental footprint of the US egg industry over time. Per kilogram of eggs produced, the environmental footprint for 2010 is 65% lower in acidifying emissions, 71% lower in eutrophying emissions, 71% lower in greenhouse gas emissions, and 31% lower in cumulative energy demand compared with 1960. Table egg production was 30% higher in 2010; however, the total environmental footprint was 54% lower in acidifying emissions, 63% lower in eutrophying emissions, 63% lower in greenhouse gas emissions, and 13% lower in cumulative energy demand compared with 1960. Reductions in the environmental footprint over the 50-yr interval considered can be attributed to the following: 27 to 30% due to improved efficiencies of background systems, which outweighed the declining energy return on energy invested for primary energy sources; 30 to 44% due to changes in feed composition; and 28 to 43% due to improved bird performance.

We study business organization and coordination of specialty-market hog production using a comparative analysis of two Iowa firms marketing niche pork. We analyze each firm's management of five key organizational challenges: planning and logistics, quality assurance, process verification and management of “credence attributes,” business structure, and profit sharing. Although each firm is engaged in essentially the same activity, there are substantial differences across the two firms in the way production and marketing are coordinated. These differences are partly explained by the relative size and age of each firm, but also by the formal organizational separation between marketing and production activities in one of the firms. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.

Dietary manipulation can substantially lower ammonia (NH3) emissions from laying-hen houses or manure storage. Recent lab studies showed a NH3 emission reduction for experimental diets with EcoCal™ and corn dried distiller’s grain with solubles (DDGS) as compared to the standard or control diet. The study reported here was a field verification test about the effects of diets containing DDGS and EcoCal™ on air emissions, hen production performance, and the economic returns for a commercial high-rise layer operation in Iowa. Comparative data were collected during December 2007 to Dec 2009. Feeding EcoCal diet at 7% inclusion rate and DDGS diet at 10% inclusion rate to laying hens in the high-rise houses showed 39% and 14% overall reduction in NH3 emissions, respectively. There were few differences in egg production, egg weight or egg mass (output) for hens fed the EcoCal or DDGS diet as compared to hens fed the control diet. Compared with the control and DDGS hens, the EcoCal hens consumed more feed and had a lower mortality rate, and had a similar feed conversion. The EcoCal hens also tended to have a greater body weight. Egg production was slightly lower for hens fed the DDGS diet (424 eggs hen-1 or 58.5 lb hen-1) than that of the Control (435 eggs hen-1 or 59.2 lb hen-1M) and EcoCal (447 eggs hen-1 or 61.9 lb hen-1) hens. The lower egg production by the DDGS hens (during the first cycle) could have resulted from learning management of the new strain birds during the first cycle. The cash returns (revenue – total cost) of each hen were, respectively, $11.88, $11.18 and $12.35 for Control, DDGS and EcoCal regimens over the 91-wk production period.

The pork production industry is moving toward payment methods that are based on pork quality. To do so creates the need for collecting pork quality measurements. It is typically not cost effective to take pork quality measurements on all pork carcasses to determine quality payments for a pork producer. To determine a cost effective prediction of a pork quality grade for a producer it is necessary to know how many samples should be taken. Information is presented for the percent of pigs which will need to be tested for a 90 percent confidence level. These vary by pork quality measurement. It ranged from 10 percent for color to 62 percent for drip loss. The projected cost of obtaining a pH measurement on 2,000 hogs per week was $0.057 per hog.

This report focuses on pork quality in a free range pork production system. The positive relationship found between pH and eating quality in earlier research is supported by this study. An increase in the pH level was positively associated with a more desirable value for each of the eating quality variables: flavor, juiciness, tenderness, and texture. The implication here is that production strategies which improve pH will lead to an increase in the quality for each of the measured eating quality characteristics. This study found further that although pH is a good predictor of quality, measuring two other key variables of Instron (Star probe) and marbling can improve the prediction of eating quality characteristics.

U.S. beef producers are striving to improve the quality of their product. Most packers send economic signals to producers by paying quality grade and yield grade premiums based on the USDA standards in an effort to reward the higher quality beef producers and receive better quality animals in their slaughter plants. But the premiums and discounts for quality and yield grade vary between plants and grids. Therefore, identifying the characteristics of the lot before deciding which plant or grid system to sell their cattle is of special relevance for the producers.