I think that one of the best ways to avoid the hubris of discounting the other side’s arguments is to be forced to assume the other side’s position and defend it. This is exactly the approach taken at the Current Controversies in Food Safety Round Table at the International Association of Food Protection’s annual convention in Charlotte, N.C., and it made for an entertaining and thought-provoking exercise.

I have commented on the statements of Rick Berman, president of the public relations firm Berman and Company, which among other things runs Humane Watch, as recently as last month, but he made some recent assertions that require a response. In a website commentary Berman called the United Egg Producers' president, Chad Gregory, “the industry Neville Chamberlain.” Berman wrote, “Chamberlain, over the warnings of some in Parliament, met with Hitler and claimed to have secured ‘peace in our time’ with the Fuhrer—but instead was given a worthless ruse. Gregory finds himself in a comparable situation. Plenty of people told him not to trust HSUS, but he didn’t listen.”

Members of the National Turkey Federation’s Live Production Committee took a positive step by adopting new euthanasia guidelines at the group’s leadership conference in Washington, D.C. The guidelines were the result of a critical evaluation of when euthanasia is appropriate, what methods are approved and which method is best given the size of the turkey.

Backers of the Egg Bill got a bit of a reprieve when the Farm Bill failed to pass in the House of Representatives by a vote of 195 for and 234 against. The Egg Bill was not included in the Farm Bill legislation that didn’t pass, so supporters of the Egg Bill may get another chance to add it to the Farm Bill.

Rick Berman, president of Berman and Company, a public relations firm, which among other things runs Humane Watch, gave a presentation at the World Pork Expo that cries out for a response. I am aware of the activities of Humane Watch and think that they are providing a public service, but there were some factual errors in Berman’s presentation at the Expo, and I think he reaches the wrong conclusion.

After two days of speeches offering encouragement to United Egg Producers members to lobby their representatives and senators to support the Egg Bill, I was surprised by the seeming lack of enthusiasm in the room on the third and final day of the cooperative’s legislative board meeting in Washington, D.C. If egg producers want the Egg Bill to become law, it is up to them to step up to the plate and take a swing.

During the WATT Crop Forecast and Meat Supply and PriceOutlook webinar, Dr. Paul Aho covered the unexpected jump in breast meatprices.

The magazine most noted for its product reviews, Consumer Reports, conducted a nationwide sampling of ground turkey at retail and cultured the samples, testing them for the presence of Salmonella, Campylobacter, E. coli, Enterococcus and Staphylococcus aureus. After isolating these organisms, they were tested for antibiotic resistance following the government’s National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System.

When I heard that a writer had taken a job as a U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service line inspector at a Cargill beef slaughter facility for two months and then written a lengthy expose about his experiences, I was intrigued. I looked up the May 2013 issue of Harper’s Magazine online, and I hit the dreaded pay wall. Since I write a blog as part of my job, I figured the $19.97 one year subscription cost would qualify as a business expense, so I got out my credit card. As a public service, I would like to recommend that you save the $19.97 and not bother subscribing to Harper’s to read, The Way of All Flesh: Undercover in an industrial slaughterhouse, by Ted Conover.

For the most part, U.S. broiler and turkey processors have done a good job of reducing the percentage of Salmonella-positive carcasses found in post chill checks. Processors have employed various chemical sprays, rinses and dips along with treatment of the water in the chillers to rinse off, damage or kill enough Salmonella cells to stay in front of the performance standards established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service. Poultry processors have shown significant reductions in Salmonella tests since the post-chill carcass performance standards were first established.

"Antimicrobial resistance poses a catastrophic threat," said professor Dame Sally Davies, England’s chief medical officer. "If we don’t act now, any one of us could go into hospital in 20 years for minor surgery and die because of an ordinary infection that can’t be treated by antibiotics. Routine operations like hip replacements or organ transplants could be deadly because of the risk of infection. That’s why governments and organizations across the world, including the World Health Organization and G8, need to take this seriously."

If Congress does enact comprehensive immigration reform that includes a robust guest worker program, I don’t think it will provide a long-term solution for the shortage of eager applicants for jobs in poultry plants and on poultry farms.