Diestel Family Ranch introduces Ultimate Turkey Burgers with Uncured Bacon to its sustainable lineup of year-round offerings. Combining Diestel’s turkey with Pederson’s Natural Farms’ no sugar, nitrite-free pork bacon, the new freezer-to-grill-ready burgers deliver incredible flavor and texture, plus 20g of protein.

How cold foods companies large and small are managing today's environmental expectations.

Jennie-O Turkey Store announced the launch of a new product called Jennie-O turkey burger blends. Made from a combination of white meat turkey, black beans, whole grain rice and pepitas, these carefully selected and nutritious ingredients offer consumers the combined benefits of lean, meat-based and plant-forward protein (15g) and fiber (5g) in one tasty turkey burger.

Butterball has promoted two longtime members of its operations team—Neal Walsh has been appointed chief operating officer (COO) and Bill Folk has been appointed to vice president of operations. Both appointments took effect at the end of 2020.

Butterball, one of the largest producers of turkey products in the United States, announced that it is investing a combined $8.7 million and creating a total of 360 new jobs within three years in two processing facilities in Northwest Arkansas. The expansion includes a $4.7 million investment in Ozark where the company will create 160 jobs and a $4 million investment in Huntsville where it will create 200 new jobs.

Butterball announces the hiring of Darrell Bradfield as director, corporate safety, health and security. Bradfield provides strategic planning and oversight of policies, programs, and processes to ensure on-the-job safety, health, and well-being of all Butterball team members. He is responsible for supporting Butterball’s Safety-First culture and promoting continuous improvement of safety performance.

Thanksgiving celebrations this year are likely to look a little different, with smaller gatherings and less travel. To help consumers celebrate the holiday during this unusual year, PERDUE announced the launch of PERDUE ThanksNuggets, a limited-time offering that packs all the best flavors of Thanksgiving into two nuggets: Breaded Breast Meat Turkey Nuggets and Breaded Dark Meat Turkey and Cranberry Nuggets. The drumstick-shaped dark meat nugget is inspired by traditional sides like cranberry sauce and stuffing, while the turkey-shaped white meat nugget is inspired by everyone's favorite Thanksgiving vegetable: sweet potato.

Farmer Focus Organic Poultry adds turkey to its lineup of humanely raised chicken, bringing delicious poultry to the Thanksgiving table. Each Farmer Focus Broad Breasted Bronze Turkey is humanely raised on an independent family farm in the picturesque Shenandoah Valley. Unlike commercially bred birds, this breed of heirloom turkey has a long purebred lineage. This means they grow more slowly, as did farm-raised birds of the past. That longer grow time leads to a more tender, juicier, and better-tasting bird.

Eckrich introduces bold new packaging for their Deli collection which will begin rolling out in stores nationwide this month. Through both qualitative and quantitative market research, Eckrich successfully created a design that breathes new energy into the heritage brand with a modern, approachable look, all with its key consumer top of mind. The designs feature a white background and crisp imagery, displaying the product and information in an organized, eye-catching way. The imagery also showcases the product in a prepared fashion, allowing consumers to see easy ways to create an Eckrich meal at home. 

Terry had a long and distinguished career in the turkey industry, working with AgriStats, Cargill and Butterball before joining Aviagen Turkeys in 2012. He had a passion for numbers and “looking at the data”. He liked to say that “Data is data. The data will tell the truth but you might not like it!”.