Koch Foods Announces $16 Million Expansion, 135 Jobs; City Approves Tax Abatement

After a year of work and an investment of over $30 million, the poultry slaughterhouse and cutting plant in St-Damase in Montérégie Est has opened its new pre-packaging facilities. This major work—which enabled the plant to add additional cutting, deboning and tray packing lines, as well as install state-of-the-art equipment—was done without impacting normal operations, which is a remarkable feat. …

Cooks Venture, a vertically integrated, independent poultry company, has partnered with Food In-Depth to become the first in the poultry industry to roll out a verified No Antibiotics Ever label backed by testing. The USDA-approved label provides customers with the assurance that the antibiotic free claims on the chicken they are buying are backed by scientific testing. FoodID has been providing rigorous, regular on-site testing  at Cooks Venture since March 2020— ensuring that their no antibiotics labels are verified and transparent. …

To size up what might make chickens happy in their brief lives, researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, are putting 16 breeds through physical fitness and behavioral tests. They’re watching how well birds scramble over a barrier for food, how skittish they seem and whether they play with a fake worm, which may be a sign of happiness. …