An excessive number of questions can turn “reporting” into a full-time job. So what happens when an industry decides to cut the noise and keep only what actually drives improvement? Sarah Muirhead sits down with Kristi Block, lead for the Meat Institute’s reporting strategy, to unpack the newly updated Meat Institute Reporting framework and what it means for packers, processors, and the wider meat and poultry supply chain.

We walk through how the framework started as a proactive way to gather credible, sector-wide data on priorities like animal welfare, food safety, worker safety, environmental performance, and sustainability. Block explains why the framework was refreshed for 2026 and how the updated approach reduces complexity by shrinking the survey from roughly 500 questions to about 50 while still meeting customer and stakeholder expectations for consistent, comparable data. A big theme is flexibility: reporting is voluntary, and companies can start where they are strongest, then expand as capacity grows.

The conversation gets especially practical on sustainability reporting and ESG metrics, including greenhouse gas accounting, the GHG Protocol, and the pace of change around science-based targets. We also cover what participating companies get back, including establishment-level data that rolls up into a dashboard view across facilities, plus options for audit uploads and verification steps designed to support trust without creating extra chaos. Finally, they look ahead to the long game: tracking trends over time and aligning progress toward 2030 targets alongside initiatives like the US Roundtable for Sustainable Beef and the US Roundtable for Sustainable Poultry and Egg.

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Antibiotics can save pigs and protect performance, but only when we stop treating “a problem” and start treating the right pathogen at the right moment. We sit down with Dr. Megan Hindman, swine technical consultant with Elanco Animal Health, to break down what smart antibiotic use actually looks like on farm and why so many disappointing outcomes trace back to one issue: mismatch. Wrong bug, wrong drug, wrong time.

We walk through the real-world decision tree producers face, starting with diagnostics. Dr. Hindman explains how timely lab work and past herd history help narrow the cause, then how to choose a therapy that reaches the target tissue where disease is happening. From there we compare common swine antibiotic delivery options feed medication for planned challenges, water medication for fast barn-wide treatment when pigs are drinking well, and injectables when you need certainty that each animal receives a full dose.

The conversation also zooms out to antimicrobial stewardship and long-term sustainability. Vaccination, biosecurity, ventilation, and feed management form the foundation, while antibiotics act as the sealant that closes gaps. The big takeaway is simple and demanding: prevention first, treatment second, paired with early detection by the people closest to the pigs every day.

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Immune health is one of those topics everyone agrees matters, yet it’s easy to oversimplify until a flock starts slipping in ways you can’t explain. We’re joined by William Stanley, senior key account veterinarian with Boehringer Ingelheim, to get practical about what “strong immunity” really means for layer flock health and day to day decision making on farms.

We start with what Stanley calls the immune health triad (also known as the disease triad): the host bird, the pathogen and the environment. That simple model helps us make sense of messy real-world cases where more than one factor is changing at once. We talk through the immunology terms vets use, the classic immunosuppressive threats like infectious bursal disease and chicken anemia virus, and why emerging pressures can look like “everything is off” instead of one clear diagnosis.

Then we dig into what’s keeping poultry veterinarians up at night, including renewed attention on Marek’s disease and the idea that field strains may be evolving in ways that drive immunosuppression even with solid vaccination and good technique. From there, we lay out control strategies that go beyond a single fix: tightening vaccine programs, checking air quality and other environmental stressors, and staying alert to feed risks like mycotoxins. We also connect immune status to food safety, since opportunistic bacteria such as Salmonella, Campylobacter and E. coli can take advantage when immunity is compromised.

If you care about layer performance, disease prevention, vaccination strategy, and practical poultry health management, this conversation will give you a clearer framework and smarter questions to ask. Subscribe, share the episode with a colleague, and leave a review with the immune-health challenge you’re seeing most right now.