MeatingPod

A lot of political fault lines have shifted in 2025. This is true also for animal agriculture — and the activist organizations that work in opposition to it. The last 12 months has introduced a number of new strategies to discourage meat production and processing. Some have been more successful than others, but the campaigns will continue apace in 2026. Hannah Thompson-Weeman is president and CEO of the Animal Agriculture Alliance, and as such, she leads the animal protein industry’s ef...

The machines in a meat processing plant are getting ever more sophisticated, efficient and programmable — but hacking them can be as easy as sending an email. Cyber attacks on companies, especially manufacturers, are picking up speed and food companies are a favorite target for bad actors looking to make high-profile trouble or arrange a ransomware payday. Paul Kafer of Anabasis Consulting has been writing and advising on how to manage that electronic portal for hackers for years. In most cas...

Jeff “Trip” Tripician has played in nearly every sandbox in the meat industry: Conventional animal proteins to claims-based brands, the meat industry’s bleeding edge of technology — cultivated meat — to, most recently, a step back in time as CEO of Charcuterie Artisans. In this position, Tripician oversees the storied Daniele and Creminelli brands of salumi and charcuterie. Charcuterie is exploding as a consumer category, spurred on by beautiful images of assembled charcuterie boards on Insta...

Sustainability in the meat supply chain is everybody’s business, and everybody needs to do their part to move the industry forward in this regard. Coordinating the efforts of every link in the domestic poultry chain, from feed to final sale, is the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Poultry & Eggs. This group organizes the discussions — and ultimately the agreements — among more than 100 members, ranging from the Environmental Defense Fund to Cargill to Jollibee. Executive director Ryan Benn...

Regenerative agriculture is more than just a lot of syllables. The term is tossed around more and more often along the food supply chain, but what does that really look like on a day to day basis, for food producers and processors. Diestel Family Ranch in Northern California is an enthusiastic proponent of regenerative agriculture. Heidi Diestel joins us today on MeatingPod to discuss what the company actually does that is regenerative, and how that affects the business, and the quality of th...