By Laurie Gorton
March 2022
A trusted
voice
Sosland Publishing’s protein platform builds its success on a solid foundation of industry knowledge and connections.
Successful trade magazines make their mark by earning reader respect and acceptance. They must cover complex subjects in a timely manner, provide insight into today’s concerns and look ahead to tomorrow’s trends, all done accurately and authoritatively.
“MEAT+POULTRY’s mission is to offer access, trust and credibility,” said Dave Crost, publisher of M+P. “That’s what we bring to our readers and advertisers.”
In its nearly 70 years, the magazine moved from a regional journal for West Coast meat processors and brokers to national – and recently, international – circulation and editorial coverage. It does so in print and, increasingly, digital formats. Its editorial assignment is to examine knotty technological advances, complex marketing matters and thorny labor, regulatory and business management issues. The magazine has also earned a reputation for its operationally focused features based on tours of dozens of meat and poultry processing plants during the course of most years.
“Our magazine is the meat industry’s leading information source,” Crost said. “Our coverage balances business and trends. We look at what’s over the next hill, at what’s happening in the plant and what’s developing with the technology.”
Over its history, M+P has broken many high-interest stories. It was the first among meat industry publications to cover workforce diversity, the impact of ethanol production on the feed-dependent industry, religion in the workplace, swine flu, animal welfare and, even, plant-based proteins and cultured meat production.
Meat plant operations are a major component.
“When I explain our operations coverage, I tell people that we put our focus on the loud part of the plant and cover the story in hardhats and boots,” said Joel Crews, editor of M+P. “We are out on the operations floor to do our reporting.”
“We cover the business from boardroom to plant floor,” Crost added. “We respect the industry, and they respect and trust us. Trust among the readership is vital to us.”
Trust, Crost added, fosters access.
“That’s why we get invited into facilities others don’t,” Crews said. “No one is better at that than us.”
Today’s MEAT+POULTRY
In Sosland Publishing’s portfolio, MEAT+POULTRY is the protein-focused platform. The company acquired the magazine in 1996. As company Chairman Charles Sosland explained, there has always been an important link between grain and commercial livestock. “Grain-based feeds sustain and finish herds,” he said.
Its circulation stands at 23,082 print and 3,573 digital for a unique total qualified circulation of 25,025, per the B.P.A. audit of June 2020. Job functions of recipients include the C-suite, plant operations, production, R&D, QC, marketing, sales and purchasing.
“Consolidation continues to happen in the meat industry,” Crost observed, “but we’ve seen our digital circulation rise substantially.”
Compared with the meat industry of the 1950s through the 1980s, industry demographics have changed, thus altering the magazine’s circulation profile. “Like the industry, our readership is still male dominated,” Crews said, “but more women are coming into the business, and the workforce is growing more diverse and inclusive. It has also started to trend younger, which you can readily see at industry conferences and conventions.”
“Companies need young, highly educated staff to manage technology and operations,” Crost said. “They aggressively recruit from other industries and actively seek engineering graduates from major universities.”
The magazine pushes hard to reach these new demographics. “That’s why our digital products are so important to M+P,” Crews said. “That’s why we strive to offer original content through our digital media, not limiting it to the magazine’s contents only.”
Out of the West
Launched in January 1955 by Oman Publishing, based in the San Francisco Bay area, and originally titled Western Meat Industry, the magazine was specifically written for meat handlers and processors in the far Western states. It was sent to approximately 10,000 recipients. It had two full-time writer/editors covering the northern California area and tapped experienced business news reporters throughout in the 11-state region. Its lead-off issue carried 48 folio pages, printed primarily in black and white, with red as a spot color on the cover and several ads.
In the first issue, founder Donald Oman wrote to his new readers: “There is little doubt in the minds of men who know this western industry best that the West needs and deserves its own magazine.”
This was an auspicious time. In 1960, Oman reported to readers, “During this past five years, western population has increased by 3 or 4 million. Meat production and consumption have increased. The industry has seen many changes and improvements. Two more western states – Alaska and Hawaii – have been admitted to the US, making the western empire bigger and more closely knit than ever before.”
Typical of magazines of this era, Western Meat Industry reported extensively on industry association meetings and conventions. “At that time, the editors and publishers were very tight with the West Coast meat associations,” Crews said. And like all good reporters, they used these relationships to gain story leads and insights.
For its first 20 years, Western Meat Industry served beef, pork and lamb processors and purveyors in the now-14 western states exclusively. Availability of frozen distribution and advances in packaging technology were prompting those readers to venture over the Rocky Mountains and into national distribution. The magazine attracted the attention of a larger audience.
“We have been urged in recent years to give our annual special June ‘Frankfurter & Sausage Issue’ wider distribution,” Oman wrote in 1970. Recognizing the opportunities to gain audience and advertising revenue, the magazine officially changed its name to Meat Industry and raised qualified circulation to 16,000 recipients at more than 11,000 federal and state-inspected meat plants throughout the United States.
Steve Bjerklie, former editor of M+P (1980-96), summed up the move: “In short, the regional industries were shrinking by the mid-1970s, and the big companies were all going national. Advertisers followed, so it only made sense for Western Meat Industry to become Meat Industry in 1975.”
Writing to the Meat Industry audience in January 1970, Oman and Michael Alaimo, associate publisher, explained their reasoning.
“Most of the editorial contents of our monthly issues are unavailable from any other convenient source, so we will not be duplicating editorial service already available elsewhere,” they wrote. “Western packers and processors have had easy access to this kind of information in our magazine for years, and we like to think it is one of the reasons why there are so many progressive, well-informed packers in the West.”
Editorial and publishing offices remained in the San Francisco area.
Editorial driven
From the start, the editorial content of MEAT+POULTRY has centered primarily on production and packaging technology, industry news and business strategy. The first issue carried articles about a new supermarket meat center, two new meat plants and the addition of a new meat packaging department along with news of company, personnel and association activities plus new products from suppliers.
This blend of news, operations, technology and association matters set the early pattern for the magazine. As the years progressed, the magazine added technology reports written to help readers understand highly complex topics. It developed a schedule of special issues devoted to the industry’s products, such as portion-control meats, burgers, hot dogs and sausage, deli meats and, most recently, barbecue along with an annual Buyer’s Guide and pre- and post-convention issues.
From its launch to today, the magazine benefited from a devoted editorial staff and a stellar assortment of contributing writers.
In the January 1960 edition, Oman announced the promotion of Alaimo to editor from associate editor. By 1977, Alaimo also carried the title of associate publisher, and he would devote his career to the magazine, rising to owner and publisher during the 1980s.
Another individual long associated with M+P, Bjerklie joined Oman Publishing in 1980 as an assistant editor, progressing to associate editor, with a brief stint as assistant to the publisher. Alaimo continued to act as editor until 1989 when Bjerklie was named managing editor and shortly thereafter became editor.
“When I came aboard in 1980, Katie Supinski was managing editor, Janet Basu was associate editor, and Judy Bischoff was assistant editor,” Bjerklie recalled. Basu moved into freelancing a short while later. In the mid-1990s, he brought in Keith Nunes, as managing editor and Zack Stentz as assistant editor.
“We published some of what I consider the best trade journalism anywhere and certainly the best the meat industry had ever seen,” Bjerklie said.
Bjerklie continued as editor until 1996, when Sosland Publishing purchased M+P, and he then became a contributing editor.
One of the most remarkable aspects of M+P is its outstanding roster of contributing editors. Many of the meat industry’s thought leaders are on that list, and their articles have bolstered the magazine’s content and burnished its reputation.
In the 1970s, the magazine offered “Doc Williams’ Forecast”, a monthly column by Willard F. Williams, a leading market analyst who specialized in livestock forecasts and futures trading. “The Knocking Pen” offered folksy observations made by an anonymous writer, who asked to be identified only as “a West Coast packer.”
In 1987, M+P listed among its contributing editors three university professors, two lawyers, a retired meat packer, a director of R&D and a livestock handling specialist.
“Our contributors have made a real difference in the credibility of the magazine,” Crews said. “Temple Grandin is America’s foremost expert in animal welfare, and her ‘From the Corral’ column has been exclusively with M+P for about 40 years.”
As M+P readers know, Grandin possesses an expertise in animal handling with a unique perspective. At the time Bjerklie first interviewed her on this subject, she was already consulting with major beef and pork packers. Her theory that mishandled and mistreated animals meant poorer quality meat has changed animal management practices substantially. Being autistic, her gift of visual thinking allows her to provide unique animal handling solutions and livestock handling design consulting with a unique approach.
Columnist Steve Kay, publisher of Cattle Buyers Weekly, is an icon in the red meat industry and has contributed his editorial expertise to M+P for more than three decades. Contributor Steve Krut, another living legend in the industry, writes “Small Business Matters” to spotlight this innovative segment and inform readers about their larger business concerns. Richard Alaniz, the magazine’s labor correspondent of more than 20 years, taps his considerable legal experience to write about what owners and executives have to think about as an employer. Donna Berry and Bernard Shire complete today’s roster of M+P contributing editors with their expertise in ingredients development, packaging and Washington, DC, developments, respectively.
“The contributors bring a tremendous amount of industry knowledge,” Crews said.
About the time the magazine expanded to national distribution, it introduced its annual Red Book. This special issue, now published in May, assembles a comprehensive guide to suppliers of equipment, products and services along with a roster of industry associations.
The magazine’s Salary Survey, initiated in the 1990s, is unique among the trade magazines serving the meat and poultry industry.
“No one has ever done this in our field, yet it’s been offered for more than 30 years now,” Crews said. “Like all research-based special reports, they take considerable time and resources, but they are well read.”
Today, the survey is conducted by Kansas City, Mo.-based Cypress Research.
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Acquisition mode
In 1996, Sosland Publishing acquired MEAT+POULTRY from Oman Publishing. Charles Sosland praised the magazine for its reputation and history, describing it as the leading publication in its field.
“Acquisition of M+P extends Sosland’s reach farther into food processing and complements as well as reinforces our commitment to serving grain-based foods.” Sosland wrote to the magazine’s readers at the time.
“We already knew Mike Alaimo,” Sosland said. “We saw this as a way to expand into additional food categories. And through feed, the meat and poultry industry has a grain connection.”
The change of ownership opened new vistas for the magazine.
“Sosland [Publishing] gave us the opportunity to scale up our efforts,” Nunes said. “I wanted to push the magazine forward, beyond what we could have accomplished at Oman.”
One dream was to develop a robust website.
“We had a template,” Nunes continued. “We could not have done it without Sosland.”
Another goal was publishing up-to-the minute reporting on food safety. About the time M+P joined Sosland, the tragic E. coli O157:H7 outbreak happened. Concerns about bovine somatotropin (BST), an artificial growth hormone, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, a.k.a. “mad cow disease”) added urgency to this subject. Also, USDA was about to mandate use of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) programs to improve food safety.
Digital media capabilities at the new parent company enabled M+P to later roll out Sosland’s Food Safety Monitor e-newsletter as a joint project with sister publication Food Business News.
The new owner moved the magazine’s editorial and advertising offices to Kansas City, Mo. The purchase and move placed the publication in the traditional and geographical heart of the industry.
Charles Sosland was the magazine’s first publisher at its new home. In 1998, Chuck Jolley, a marketing communications executive from a major packaging supplier to the meat industry, was named publisher. When he left in 2004, another Sosland executive stepped in as interim publisher until Crost was named to that role for M+P in 2005.
In 2005, Sosland launched Food Business News and tapped Nunes to be its first editor. M+P then appointed Crews as its editor. He joined the publication in 2000 as managing editor.
“For a few months, my job was roughly 50:50 M+P and FBN,” Nunes said, “but that arrangement rapidly tapered into more of a consulting role as Joel and Dave picked up the ball and ran with it.”
Today, the M+P editorial staff consists of five full-time editors. Executive Editor Kimberlie Clyma arrived at Sosland Publishing in 2006 as associate editor of Baking & Snack magazine. With previous experience in the meat industry, she became the managing editor of M+P in 2010 and was promoted to her current position in 2019. Bob Sims, named M+P features editor in 2016, started at the company as a staff writer for Bake magazine. Erica Shaffer is the magazine’s digital media senior editor, having served in similar roles with Sosland since 2009, and works with Ryan McCarthy, digital media editor, who joined the company in 2016.
Sosland acquired Meat Processing, a competing magazine, from Watt Publishing (now Watt Global Media) in 2006.
“The intention was to fold Meat Processing into M+P,” Sosland said. “The circulation, which included some international recipients, was the biggest part of the acquisition.”
M+P celebrated its 60th year of publication in 2015 with a series of articles that traced the industry decade by decade. These reports included summaries by Maureen Ogle, a historian and author of “In Meat We Trust”; Steve Kay; and Steve Bjerklie, leading off with his extensive interview of Rosemary Mucklow, emeritus executive director of the North American Meat Institute, about the industry as it was in the late 1950s through the 1960s.
M+P is no longer solely a print publication, it now publishes a variety of digital products.
“Digital is a necessity for content delivery today,” Crost said. “You have to communicate with readers in the manner they choose.”
He explained that the M+P audience tends to prefer print, but because reader demographics continue to skew younger, digital gets increasing attention. The electronic side supports numerous channels and a dynamic website, meatpoultry.com. The newest is Bacon Business News, the first and only monthly e-newsletter dedicated to all things bacon. A weekly podcast was also launched in 2018.
“The delivery platform has changed,” Crost said. “No matter where you are or what time it is, you can access our content around the world. You can display information in a readable fashion through a channel you prefer.”
A changing industry
In the 1950s, as the American economy shifted out of World War II necessities, a new model for cattle feeding emerged, cutting out seasonality concerns. Stockyards were eliminated in favor of finishing closer to slaughter. Trucking shouldered out railroad transportation, and unlike rail, trucking was unregulated.
“At the time Western Meat Industry was founded, the meat industry in the US was still largely regional, with just a few national companies,” Bjerklie said. “The industry in the West was particularly robust, and in fact, there were two San Francisco-based trade associations representing western meat companies, the Western States Meat Association and the Pacific Coast Meat Association. They eventually merged in the 1980s.”
By the 1960s, industry norms were being broken left and right. The top-heavy corporate structures of the old guard, the so-called Top Five, were crumbling. New plants now side-stepped old-fashioned multi-story structures for more efficient single-story layouts; moreover, the industry’s most advanced facilities opted for rural settings and eliminated unions altogether.
Customers were changing, too, with supply chain relationships favoring grocery store chains over middlemen merchants. Meat began to sell as a value-added item and ingredient for other food products.
Poultry feeders brought down the consumer price of chicken and became a serious competitor for the protein portion of the plate. They did it by integrating operations from hatcheries and feed mills through processing.
“Our magazine renamed itself Meat Industry to be able to bring in coverage of poultry,” Nunes said. “And of course, the big poultry show posed many advertising opportunities.”
All these subjects found their way into the pages of the magazine.
“Refrigeration and freezing technology – that changed everything and created a national/global industry,” Crews said. “Vacuum packaging technology extended the shelf life of products and facilitated increased distribution across the country.”
By the 1970s, automation had started to play a much larger role in the meat industry.
“It’s been mostly used at the end of processing lines (packaging and logistics), but there is a strong push for it upstream because labor shortages in plants have been a huge problem that is only getting worse,” Crews said.
Consumerism, regulation
As the 1960s flowed into the 1970s, meat and poultry purveyors encountered even more tectonic change. “Boxed beef became the norm for many processing companies versus receiving shipments of primals and subprimals,” Crews noted.
Industry consolidation and vertical integration on the slaughter side created economies of scale and reduced the price of meat to the point everyone could afford it. Within a decade, poultry emerged as the nation’s most popular animal protein.
Contract poultry production became a primary market. Niche markets began to rise, and foodservice flexed its supply chain muscles, creating franchise-based businesses that could provide a chain operator’s every need from hamburger patties to buns, ketchup packets and cleaning chemicals, all distributed from one location, i.e. the “single source” vendor.
Biotechnology in the form of protein somatotropin (pST) entered herd management practices.
Although powerful labor unions had journeyed well into their long twilight decline, they still put up a furious fight as the industry reshaped itself around newly dominant companies.
“In the meantime, consumerism took the wheel to steer the food industry in new directions,” Crews said. The result of 50 years of federal legislation and policy affirmed consumers’ rights and nurtured and encouraged consumer consciousness.
USDA inspection ramped up.
Advancing technology continued to occupy the pages of the magazine. For example, the February 1975 issue carried a special three-part report on mechanically deboned meat for making sausages and other meat products intended for human consumption.
In 1980, the Food and Drug Administration issued its first Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which suggested consumption of “alternate proteins” for a part of an individual’s daily intake of food.
“Features about regulatory issues, from labeling to beef grading, from environmental rules to access to export markets as well as dealing with unions became staple material,” Bjerklie said. “From 1980 on, I don’t think we published an issue that didn’t have at least one story about regulatory matters, and usually the focus was on Washington, DC, rather than state capitals.”
The magazine swiftly reported the impact of the 1993 E. coli O157:H7 episode that occurred on the West Coast. That tragedy upended processing systems and inspection protocols. It was reported in the February 1993 issue, and later the same year, new regulatory powers over pathogens were granted to USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).
By 1995, the HACCP protocol – little known before 1990 – became the foundation of federal meat inspection.
When introducing Sosland Publishing as M+P’s new owner in the October 1996 issue, Sosland commented on the importance of food safety initiatives to the industry and the magazine. “The Pathogen Reduction/Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point final rule is going to change this industry,” he said, noting that sanitary operating procedures, such as HACCP plan development, implementation of pathogen intervention technologies, plant floor design and layout, as well as equipment maintenance, would be regular topics for the magazine’s in-plant operations features.
Consumerism turned to the animal welfare practices of meat processors. M+P covered the 2008 voluntary recall by a California meat packer of 143 million lbs of frozen beef products – the biggest recall to date – following an investigation into animal cruelty.
Technology isn’t immune to regulatory attention either. “A few landmark recalls resulted in equipment companies producing machines that feature sanitary design and easy-to-clean configuration,” Crews said.
Going global, managing local
By the end of the 1990s, US meat exports climbed to 8.1% of meat and poultry sales. Coverage of this increasingly important activity was added under Sosland.
The other side of the “going global” coin – animal diseases – has been a longtime thorn in the industry’s side, according to Crews. This problem has global consequences, and the magazine covers it on an ongoing basis. A 2003 case of BSE in the United States, for example, cost the American meat industry $16 billion, mostly in lost exports. Japan, a key market, did not reopen to US beef until 2013. Other coverage by M+P documented how porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDv) devastated pork production around the world and how African swine fever and avian influenza have wreaked havoc in China and Europe in the late 2010s.
“The impact on US processors of such matters, and their coverage in M+P, are largely a product of the growing international nature of the meat and poultry industries,” Crews said. Many of the industry’s largest companies are not only active in the United States, they are global.
Public and media scrutiny of the industry continues unabated. In 2002, it focused on Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB), what the critics villainized as “pink slime.”
Crews observed, “That was a recent example of what can happen when media misinformation fuels misunderstanding among consumers.”
He also noted the recent controversies over country-of-origin labeling (COOL) and the legal challenge to the beef checkoff program. Both continue to receive M+P editorial coverage.
Another issue local to the United States that was examined in depth by the magazine and its digital offerings was the diversion of corn from animal feed channels, especially poultry, to ethanol production. Federal support of ethanol worsened the tight supply situation. With the bloom fading from the ethanol rose, this concern has subsided.
As M+P’s reader audience entered the 2020s, magazine editors planned to give more attention to increasing productivity and efficiency by covering the way processors link multiple operations, even multiple locations and plants, via secure cloud-based systems to monitor production and streamline processing.
“In recent years, we have taken our coverage further upstream to include animal production and downstream through packaging, distribution and into retail channels,” Crews said. “We still have more of a micro focus on the processing side of the business.”
The emphasis on operations is deliberate. “What you see in the plant is changing the business and the magazine. What’s coming off the packaging lines is altering the marketplace. And MEAT+POULTRY is ready to report this to our readers, in print and digital formats alike,” Crost said.
Editorial excellence accolades
Over the years, several MEAT+POULTRY articles received awards for editorial excellence.
During the late 1980s, a three-part series about labor and another series about contract farming in the poultry industry won top awards, according to Steve Bjerklie, former editor of M+P. Keith Nunes, former editor, also assisted a Wall Street Journal reporter with a story about the poultry industry that won a Pulitzer Prize. The magazine also garnered a Jessie H. Neal Award in 1998 for editorial commentary. This was given by the American Business Media (now known as SIIA).
“More recently, we won Tabbie Gold Awards in 2019, and a Bronze Award in 2021,” said Editor Joel Crews. One went to M+P’s Annual Sausage Report, while another was for an editorial commentary. “We were also named one of the Top 25 features for a story on inclusion and diversification,” he added. The 2021 award recognized M+P’s Family Business Focus special report. The Tabbies are given by the Trade Association of Business Publications International.
“We have also had numerous regional awards from the American Society of Business Publication Editors,” Nunes said.