OSHA and FDA have developed a checklist for human and animal food manufacturers to consider when continuing, resuming or reevaluating operations due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has signed an alliance with the North American Meat Institute (NAMI) to provide information, guidance and access to training resources for protecting workers in the meatpacking and processing industry from exposures to the coronavirus.

Linde has announced that its U.S. subsidiary, Praxair, Inc., will begin operating under the Linde name, effective September 1.

PepsiCo and Keurig Dr Pepper have signed long-term cloud contracts with Microsoft and Google Cloud respectively to improve their data operations and have a more agile IT infrastructure.

Food packaging (and consumer goods packaging in general) are seeing some stiff demands. While PMMI is predicting that the global food packaging market in itself will reach $400 billion by 2025, with a CAGR nearly 5%, there are some real challenges to overcome, both in packaging and the supply chain. For example, processors struggle to keep up with new customer demands, while product and packaging changeovers occur frequently to meet consumer needs. In addition, OSHA has been cracking down on unsafe machines, and the need to clean is more important than ever.

Food, pharmaceutical, nutrition and other manufacturers typically consider automating manual operations when significant, immediate troubles are causing line downtime; when they need to meet increased production targets; or when they can no longer tolerate an ongoing series of problems.