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/A>Cargill Ship Hit In Missile Attack In Ukraine WatersStar Tribune reports a vessel chartered by Cargill Inc., a Minnesota-based agribusiness giant, was hit in a missile attack after leaving a deep-sea port on the outskirts of Odessa on Thursday. “Right now, our priority is the safety of our people in the region. This is a rapidly evolving situation with a great deal of uncertainty,” said April Nelson, a Cargill spokeswoman, in an e-mail. “We are currently gathering information and assessing potential impacts to Cargill and our customers.” Cargill said that the crew was safe, and the vessel was rerouted to...

CARACAS, May 18 (Reuters) - Venezuelan officials and soldiers inspected a warehouse of U.S. agribusiness giant Cargill Inc [CARGIL.UL] on Wednesday as part of a crackdown on alleged hoarding and price-gouging with foodstuffs. ... With Venezuelans complaining of oil, flour, meat and other shortages in recent days, Chavez over the weekend urged ministers to hunt speculators and said he would have no hesitation in expropriating any companies found guilty. Government officials, together with armed National Guard members, found 148 tonnes of food oil at the Cargill warehouse in Caracas during Wednesday’s operation. “We are checking how oil reaches black market...

Looking for someone to blame for high and rising prices at the pump, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) has found a familiar villain: big corporations. During an appearance on MSNBC's The ReidOut on Thursday, Warren said price gouging is to blame for the pain that Americans are feeling at the gas pump these days. Amid rising inflation, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline sits at $3.40 nationally, up from about $2.11 at this same time last year and higher than at any time since 2014. This, Warren argued, is great news for oil companies and their shareholders....

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Like other ranchers across the country, Rusty Kemp for years grumbled about rock-bottom prices paid for the cattle he raised in central Nebraska, even as the cost of beef at grocery stores kept climbing. He and his neighbors blamed it on consolidation in the beef industry stretching back to the 1970s that resulted in four companies slaughtering over 80% of the nation’s cattle, giving the processors more power to set prices while ranchers struggled to make a living. Federal data show that for every dollar spent on food, the share that went to ranchers and...

Down, down, down. In three minutes, the skip drops nearly 1,700 feet below Cleveland. Then the giant metal door swings open, and you’re deposited in an other-world, with walls, ceiling and floor made of salt. Dirty brown salt at the Cargill mine’s entrance, where the rock has absorbed diesel fumes and dust for more than 60 years. Pristine white, with glimmering flecks, at the mine’s far reaches, 3 miles north, under Lake Erie. “I look out at the water, and it’s like, man, we’re under that!” said Cargill employee Cachet Hilton, 45. Every day, the 5-mile wide mine gets a...

Two employees are still unaccounted for at the Cargill Salt Mine at Avery Island after a roof collapse in the mine early Monday morning. The facility has been shut down while rescue operations and an investigation into the incident are underway. According to a statement from the company, local rescue workers and members of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration are on site. There were 18 employees on shift at the time of the collapse. The other 16 employees have been evacuated without any reported injuries.

Cargill and Seoul-based AG Meat, a specialty import meat distributor are partnering to offer premium US beef brand, Excel®, in a new concept meat store called 'It’s Meat'. At 'It’s Meat', Korean consumers can now purchase high-quality, premium Excel® beef at competitive prices. Cargill Protein is focused on making sure the food it produces is safe to eat. The Excel® beef carried at ‘It’s Meat’ undergoes a seven-step, regulated production system, ensuring safe handling from the feeding environment to product packaging. In addition, micro-sized pathogens are accurately removed through a new scientific process offered by Cargill Protein globally to support...

Colorado’s labor department has ruled that more than 100 Muslim workers fired from a Cargill meatpacking plant are eligible for unemployment benefits because a company cannot force workers to choose between their religion and their jobs. The workers filed for unemployment payments after they were fired in December by Cargill Meat Solutions, amid a dispute over whether the Muslim employees could take prayer breaks during their shifts. Cargill challenged the claims, but the company withdrew its appeals this summer after losing 20 cases, officials with the state Department of Labor said. ... the payments could cost Colorado’s unemployment fund nearly...

Cargill Meat Solutions in Fort Morgan will allow more than 150 Muslim employees to reapply for their positions following a mass termination in December. The Wichita-based company let its employees go after a misunderstanding about the company policy on prayer breaks escalated. The Somali Muslim employees are being represented by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Cargill representatives reviewed the no-call, no-show termination policy which led to the terminations and decided to allow the workers fired in the dispute to reapply for their jobs after a 30-day period, rather than the company policy of 180 days. A CAIR news release on...

Cargill plans to close a Milwaukee beef-processing plant which employs about 600 people on Friday due to a shortage of cattle. A Midwest drought in 2011 and 2012 hurt cattle levels, said Cargill spokesman Mike Martin. Now, many herders are breeding the cattle they have and not selling them. U.S. beef cattle herd is at its lowest level since 1951, Cargill said. …

With $119.5 billion in revenues in its most recent fiscal year, ended May 31, Cargill is bigger by half than its nearest publicly held rival in the food production industry, Archer Daniels Midland

"We know that some of our employees would like a guaranteed prayer time every day. That is not the legal requirement, and it would be impractical to accommodate this without shutting down the production line." Indeed -- especially since the prescribed times for Muslim prayers change slightly each day. But the Denver Post, as you can see, has decided that these Muslims demanding prayer breaks are victims -- "I'm sorry, I was only praying," and "It's not a good thing when you have a family and you are supporting your wife, your kids" -- and hence must be accommodated, despite...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Chinese National Charged with Economic Espionage Involving Theft of Trade Secrets from Leading Agricultural Company Based in Indianapolis WASHINGTON—Kexue Huang, aka John, 45, has been arrested and charged in a 17-count indictment with economic espionage intended to benefit a foreign government and instrumentalities, and interstate and foreign transportation of stolen property, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Timothy M. Morrison for the Southern District of Indiana. Huang was arrested on July 13, 2010, in Westborough, Massachusetts by FBI agents, and today made his initial appearance...

<p>Venezuelan officials accompanied by soldiers have seized "temporary" control of a US-owned pasta producer.</p>

CARACAS (Reuters) - President Hugo Chavez seized a local unit of American food giant Cargill on Wednesday and threatened to nationalize Venezuela's largest private company, Polar, as he demanded industry produce cheaper rice. The clash with the food companies came less than three weeks after Chavez, a Cuba ally who has nationalized swaths of the Venezuelan economy, won a referendum on allowing him to run for reelection. "I warn you this revolution means business," said Chavez. The anti-U.S. president is popular among the poor for pressuring companies to produce cheap goods and for government programs that provide subsidized food in...

Cargill profits soar as grain prices surge Apr 15, 2008 04:30 AM Cargill Inc., the largest U.S. agricultural company, said fiscal third-quarter profit rose 86 per cent because of surging global demand for fertilizers, grains and food ingredients. Net income climbed to $1.03 billion (U.S.) in the three months ended Feb. 29, from $553 million in the same period a year earlier, Cargill said yesterday in a statement. Cargill, which processes and distributes grains, oilseeds and other agricultural commodities, is benefiting from increasing demand from emerging economies that has pushed prices to records. Wheat futures have soared 93 per cent...

When the San Diego Natural History Museum applied to Stephen Spielberg's foundation for a $100,000 grant to help bring the Dead Sea Scrolls to San Diego and produce a film on the famous Khirbet Qumran site, the foundation was happy to oblige. Did Spielberg know (1) that the museum's scrolls exhibit would be plagued by allegations of bias due to the curator's decision to exclude a major group of Jewish scrolls scholars from the museum's lecture series; (2) that the money would go to a graduate student who is also a minister trained at Pepperdine University, affiliated with the Churches...

Why on earth did it cost six million dollars to bring the Dead Sea Scrolls to San Diego, and why has this exhibit become submerged in controversy? Hoping to shed some light on these matters, I decided to take a closer look at the parties involved. What I found was surprising evidence that members of several Christian fundamentalist organizations played a major role in creating the exhibit and choosing its content, a fact carefully covered up in the media campaign surrounding the exhibit's opening. For details, see my linked article.

Robert Poole, a mechanical engineer who has advised the administrations of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to privatize U.S. highways, estimates that more than $25 billion in Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) highway projects are planned or approved in the United States. Now, a prominent Oklahoma state representative has invited Poole to promote his PPP toll road ideas, a move evidently designed to counter growing citizen opposition. Poole Lobbies for PPP Highways in Oklahoma Oklahoma House Speaker, Republican Lance Cargill, the founder of a group known as The 100 Ideas Initiative, has invited Poole to give a June...

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- Authorities shut down an important deep-water Amazon River port owned by Cargill Inc. on Saturday, saying the huge U.S. agribusiness firm failed to provide an environmental impact statement required by law. The move by federal police and environmental agents to close Cargill's controversial soy export terminal was a major victory for environmentalists in Santarem, a sleepy jungle city about 1,250 miles northwest of Sao Paulo. It came after a late Friday ruling by Judge Souza Prudente, police and the Agencia Estado news service said. "It was peaceful," federal police agent Cesar Dessimoni said of the...