Meat snacks and sticks, particularly in the better-for-you market space, are soaring in popularity, but not all brands are benefitting the same way. Archer has reached aggressively across distribution channels with statistics that not only tell the obvious story — “stock us, we’re better” — but also educates retail buyers on exactly how the meat snack category performs for them vis-a-vis competitors and what they can do to boost their sell-through, as Archer’s Vice President of Marketing Andrew Thomas explains in this episode of MeatingPod. Meanwhile, the data also informs Archer’s new marketing campaign, a tongue-in-cheek look at what it means to be “real.”

Would your plant — or your company — survive the overnight disappearance of more than half of your operations workforce? Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha did, after an ICE raid in June. In a conversation with Meatingplace Editor-in-chief Tom Johnston, Glenn Valley President Chad Hartmann tells the inside story of the raid and what the company did in the days and weeks that followed that got it back on its feet. And Hartmann issues a warning: Any processor, big or small, could be next.

What goes into the decision to fight — or settle — accusations of price-fixing and collusion? The calculation is different for each company, but the fallout of the antitrust cases filed against meat and poultry processors still rains on the industry, and will do so for years.

Meatingplace News Editor Chris Moore joins MeatingPod for the second episode of a deep dive into the raft of antitrust cases filed against processors over the last nine years. In this installment, we tackle the hidden costs of a lawsuit, what the next wave of cases probably will look like, and the bipartisan sentiment that pushes hard against the ongoing consolidation in the processing industry.