Pork IPOs and Lobster Rights

Welcome back Food Junglers. As we settle into the new year and schedules fill up, I’m trying a new format: quick, bullet-point updates. This way, you can catch up on the week’s biggest food news in just 30 seconds. Let me know what you think. Let’s dig in.

THE BREAKDOWN…

☕️ Brian Niccol - CEO of Starbucks - has already been paid about $96 million since joining the company in August 2024.

📉 Speaking of Starbucks, their earnings weren’t so good last quarter. Same store sales fell, while quarterly per-share profit dropped 23% compared with the same period last year.

🐔 The first outbreak of a novel strain of bird flu in poultry, H5N9, has been detected on a duck farm in California, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health.

🫘 Arabica coffee prices hit an all-time high after President Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs and economic sanctions on Colombia.

🛒 Workers at a Whole Foods Market in Philadelphia voted last Monday to become the first unionised store in Amazon’s grocery chain.

🥩 The world’s largest meat producer - JBS - plans to enter the egg industry through a merger with a major South American producer, Mantiqueira Brazil Inc.

🐖 The largest pork producer in the world, and Chinese-owned, Smithfield Foods Inc. raised $522 million in a US IPO, with shares pricing below the marketed range.

🍦 Ben & Jerry's accuses its parent company - Unilever - of suppressing a social policy statement the U.S. ice cream maker wanted to release because it mentioned President Donald Trump.

🍫 Nestlé discontinues its vegan KitKat chocolate bars everywhere except in the UK.

🌊 President Donald Trump is asserting more federal government control over water management decisions in California and ordered US officials to override local authorities.

💩 Walmart will stock the garden departments of at least 600 U.S. stores with compost made out of food waste collected from its grocery operations.

🦞 A US federal appeals court restored a U.S. agency rule restricting lobster and Jonah crab fishing off the Massachusetts coast to protect endangered whales.