One of the magazines that I receive is Food Processing (www.foodprocessing.com). This is the National Hog Farmer magazine for the food processing industry. I find it really interesting to learn of their challenges/opportunities as they convert our products into consumer products.

The magazine just released its’ annual listing of the top 100 food processing companies in the United States and Canada. Five of the top 30 companies, based on food sales in 2013, are very familiar names to North American producers.

At the top of the list (No. 1) is Pepsico with $37,806 million (37,806,000,000) in North American sales and $66,415 million total sales. Second is Tyson with $32,999 million in NA sales and $34,374 million worldwide sales. Number 4 is JBS-USA with $22,140 million NA sales and $41,000 million worldwide. Smithfield is number 8 with $12,531 million NA sales and $14,000 million worldwide. Hormel is number 14 with $8,752 million in NA and total sales and Maple Leaf is number 28 with $4,406 million in NA and total sales.

Tyson and JBS-USA are 2 of the top 4 largest slaughterers of cattle, while Tyson also is one the largest players in the broiler industry. In addition to pork, Hormel is now also heavily invested in the poultry industry with its’ Gold’nPlump division.

With over 330 million US mouths to fill daily, plus a rapidly growing world population, it is only logical that animal protein companies are among the leaders in the US and Canadian food processing industries.