Latest news with #ReneeHickman
Mint
2 days ago
- Business
- Mint
CME lean hog futures firm on wholesale prices
By Renee Hickman CHICAGO, May 30 (Reuters) - Chicago Mercantile Exchange lean hog futures rallied on Friday after a big jump in wholesale values, according to analysts. Most actively traded CME July lean hog futures rose 1.950 cents to settle at 104.925 cents per pound. August feeder cattle ended down 1.100 cents at 298.825 cents per pound. August live cattle lost 0.725 cent to finish at 209.350 cents per pound. Lean hog futures drew support from pork belly prices climbing, said Doug Houghton, an analyst and editor at Brock Associates. Technical buying also added support, Houghton said. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported pork bellies rose $6.94 to $157.10 per hundredweight (cwt) on Friday afternoon. Pork carcasses rose $2.60 to $107.22 per cwt. The CME's Lean Hog Index, a two-day weighted average of cash prices, was up 0.61 cent at 94.13 cents per pound. Houghton said that in cattle, "The market had this big drop two weeks ago, and it's kind of gradually climbing its way back, but it didn't finish very well today." Cash prices continued to be strong and futures were discounted to the cash prices, Houghton said. Market-ready cattle traded in Texas at $223 per hundredweight (cwt), and in Kansas at $222 per hundredweight, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, up $1 to $3 from last week. But, large speculators hold a sizable net long positions in CME live cattle futures, leaving the market vulnerable to bouts of long liquidation. Beefpackers averaged losses of $98.45 per head compared to losses of $112.10 per head, according to livestock marketing advisory service The USDA priced choice cuts of boxed beef at $366.34 per cwt on Friday afternoon, up 25 cents from Thursday, while select cuts were up $3.01 at $356.65.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Trump administration report on US child health cited nonexistent studies, media report says
By Renee Hickman (Reuters) -A U.S. government report on the health of American children cited scientific studies that did not exist to support its conclusions, according to a media report and some of the purported study authors on Thursday. The report produced by the Make America Healthy Again Commission, named after a movement aligned with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, was released last week. It said processed food, chemicals, stress and overprescription of medications and vaccines may be factors behind chronic illness in American children, citing some 500 research studies as evidence. Digital news outlet NOTUS reported the citation errors, saying on Thursday it found seven studies listed in the report's footnotes that did not exist, along with broken links and misstated conclusions. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters that any citation errors were due to "formatting issues." The government said it posted a corrected version of the report later on Thursday. "The substance of the MAHA report remains the same - a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic disease epidemic afflicting our nation's children," the Department of Health and Human Services said. Katherine Keyes, an epidemiology professor at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, was cited in the report as the author of "Changes in mental health and substance use among US adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic," which the report said was published in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics. She said that neither she nor the named co-authors of the paper had written it. "It does make me concerned given that citation practices are an important part of conducting and reporting rigorous science," she said. Psychiatry Professor Robert L. Findling did not author the article cited in the report as "Direct-to-consumer advertising of psychotropic medications for youth: A growing concern" in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, according to a spokesperson for Virginia Commonwealth University, where Findling is a professor. Kennedy has spent decades sowing doubt about the safety of vaccines, raising concerns within the scientific and medical communities over the policies he would pursue as health secretary. Since taking the role, he has fired thousands of workers at federal health agencies and cut billions of dollars from U.S. biomedical research spending. The studies attributed to Findling and Keyes no longer appeared in the MAHA report on the White House website as of Thursday evening.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
RFK Jr. calls for healthier school meals as Trump cancels program that funded them
By Renee Hickman TUCSON, Arizona (Reuters) -First-graders at John B. Wright elementary school in Tucson bounced into the brightly lit lunchroom, chattering with friends as they grabbed trays featuring juicy mandarin oranges, cherry tomatoes and butter lettuce, all grown at nearby farms that coax fresh produce from the Sonoran Desert. Those fruit and vegetables were supplied with the help of the federal Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program, or LFS, which was set to distribute $660 million to school systems and child care facilities in 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The USDA abruptly canceled the program in March as part of President Donald Trump's plans to gut the federal government. 'People think it's crappy food, it's processed, unhealthy, they think it's mystery meat,' said Lindsay Aguilar, who heads up the Tucson Unified School District's nutrition program. 'Parents associate it from when we were in school 23 years ago. It is completely different from what it used to be.' The Trump administration's mixed messages on school meals -- funding cuts alongside calls for healthier, and more costly options -- create a challenge for those involved with school nutrition programs, they told Reuters. As part of his Trump-inspired campaign to "Make America Healthy Again," Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has accused schools of feeding children unhealthy food laden with food dyes and additives. 'We need to stop poisoning our kids and make sure that Americans are once again the healthiest kids on the planet,' Kennedy said at an event with U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins late last month, adding that the two agencies would be 'looking at' school meals. Aguilar is skeptical. 'In my opinion, if you want to make America healthy again, you have to invest in your school nutrition programs,' rather than cutting them, she said. "To me, it's like, walk the talk.' Kennedy did not respond to a request for an interview and a department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 29.5% of Tucson Unified School District families received SNAP food benefits in the last 12 months, well above the national average of 19.6%. Many live in so-called food deserts, where there is little access to affordable, fresh food, and large grocery stores are far away. That reliance on federal nutrition support stands in sharp contrast to the area's thriving food scene. Flanked by mountain ranges, and located just 68 miles from Mexico, Tucson sits within an actual desert, studded with soaring Saguaro cacti and buzzing with wildlife. In that landscape, with its 4,000-year-old agricultural heritage, farmers grow crops like prickly pear cactus, mesquite and chiltepin peppers that award-winning chefs serve at high-end restaurants. But outside culinary circles, hunger haunts many homes. Juanita Mesquita, a school district Student Success Specialist and a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, sits with colleagues at one of the district's Family Resource Centers, located in southwestern Tucson near Pascua Yaqui and Tohono O'odham reservations. Mesquita works with Native students to help them graduate, and said hunger is an ever-present obstacle. 'This morning, I had a little girl saying her stomach hurt because she didn't eat,' she said. Roxanne Begay-James, the district's director of Native American Student Services, said her family lives six miles away from the nearest large supermarket. 'I know in some neighborhoods here in Tucson, they have their little markets on the weekends where they can get produce and veggies and fresh baked goods. We don't have that out here,' she said. At Wright Elementary, Principal Brenda Encinas said a student at her school reported eating ice cream for dinner because there was no other food at home. FREE SCHOOL MEALS All students in the Tucson Unified School District are able to eat at no charge through the USDA's Community Eligibility Provision, which allows the country's highest poverty schools to provide free breakfast and lunch to their students without collecting individual applications. Aguilar makes sure those school meals are healthy, and packed with fresh produce. In a conference room at the Shamrock Foods distribution center in Phoenix, Aguilar and close to a hundred school nutrition program staffers gathered at a meeting of the Arizona School Nutrition Association on April 30. They shared anxieties about funding cuts and made plans to lobby state legislators to protect their school meal programs. They also grumbled about perceptions, buoyed by Kennedy, that school nutrition is poor, even dangerous. Since 2010, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, championed by former first lady Michelle Obama and signed into law by former President Barack Obama, has required schools to serve more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fat-free or low-fat milk, and fewer foods high in sodium and trans fat. Yet Kennedy regularly blames school food for chronic illnesses affecting American children. Kennedy recently visited Arizona to celebrate a newly passed state law banning certain dyes and additives in school meals. Those ingredients were in just a few items in Aguilar's district, she said, and some were already being phased out. After lunch at Wright Elementary school, staffers gathered at the school nutrition program's central office to try out new recipes for ranch dressing -- an item Aguilar said would need to change to comply with the law. The old dressing contained titanium dioxide, one of the ingredients on the Arizona list, used to make food look whiter. The Food and Drug Administration has deemed it safe. She said plans were in the works to change that recipe before the law was passed. Aguilar says the relationships her district has been building with local farmers stretch back several years before the launch of LFS. The district partnered with the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona and Pivot Produce, which distributes food from Tucson area farms to buyers, to provide the schools with local produce. More menu upgrades came with the addition of LFS. For instance, USDA requires that schools serve at least a half cup of dark green vegetables every week. A common choice is romaine lettuce, Aguilar said. But there were quality issues with the romaine the district was purchasing, so it tried using locally grown butter lettuce. The lettuce cost more, and needed to be washed and chopped by staff, but it was fresher, she said. 'We've introduced this local product that does take more labor and time and love to prepare. But in the end, our staff wanted that product because they saw the difference in that quality."
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Kennedy's confirmation in top US health job could boost beef tallow demand
By Renee Hickman (Reuters) - Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lowered a raw Thanksgiving turkey into a bubbling pot of cooking fat in a video posted to social media last November. "This is how we cook the MAHA way," said Kennedy, who the Senate confirmed as head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday, referring to his Trump administration slogan, Make America Healthy Again. Kennedy was cooking with beef tallow, or rendered beef fat, which he has repeatedly claimed is healthier than canola or other oils from seeds. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. Beef tallow, used primarily for cooking but also in products like soap and biodiesel, has been championed by a subset of online wellness influencers. Its nutritional merits compared to seed oils, however, have been disputed. The market for beef tallow was worth an estimated $480 million in 2023, up from $446 million in 2018, according to the North American Renderers Association, and producers expect that to grow as a result of Kennedy's enthusiasm. Some companies had taken note of rising interest even before his confirmation. In January, Indianapolis-based fast food chain Steak 'n Shake announced it would begin cooking its shoestring fries in beef tallow. The chain posted a photo on social media of Kennedy in a car with the window rolled down, with the caption: "Did this man just pull up in our drive thru?" Other restaurant chains have also jumped onboard. Sweetgreen, the Los Angeles-based salad chain, is eliminating seed oils from its menus and using products like olive and avocado oil instead, while Blue Collar Restaurant Group, which owns restaurants in Wyoming and Montana, is replacing seed oils with butter and beef tallow as well as olive and avocado oil. Since U.S. President Donald Trump nominated Kennedy to lead the sprawling health department in November, the former environmental lawyer's claims about food - from beef tallow to raw milk - have come under scrutiny. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit consumer advocacy group, has said that seed oil opponents overstate the risks of inflammation, heart disease and obesity from seed oil, and that a diet rich in saturated fats such as those found in meats, butter and cheese poses a larger health risk. Yet a shift away from seed oils in cooking could accelerate with Kennedy as Health and Human Services Secretary. Kennedy may hold sway in appointing advisors to a panel that determines the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a document created every five years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, according to Sarah Sorscher, director of regulatory affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The guidelines are used in everything from the preparation of school lunches to the determination of daily values on food nutrition labels. Sorscher said Kennedy may influence research funding and push for regulation or even bans on products such as seed oils. He could also use the visibility of his new position to pressure companies to follow his lead on seed oils and beef tallow without having to enforce any changes in policy, she added. "Those companies that are seeking to please him and secure favor might reformulate to remove products that he's targeted and remove ingredients that he's targeted," Sorscher said. Eric Gustafson, chief executive of California-based animal fat refiner Coast Packing Company, said he watched in the 1990s as fast food companies like McDonald's led a wholesale shift away from beef tallow to vegetable oils in response to medical research linking animal fats to heart disease. Gustafson said he has started to see the pendulum swing back, with sales increasing steadily over the past decade. Kennedy, often referred to by his initials RFK, used tallow from one of Coast Packing's customers in the Thanksgiving video, Gustafson said. "We're trying to figure out how (that customer) can get to RFK to give him a few more cases of tallow and tell him thank you," he said.
