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Conagra Brands Inc. CAG, +1.11% stock rose 4.3% in Tuesday premarket trading after the food company said it has experienced "significantly increased demand" in the fourth quarter and now expects to exceed expectations. Conagra brands include Birds Eye, Marie Callender and Gardein. "While we are still early in our fourth quarter, we have seen significantly elevated demand for our retail products as consumers have started filling their pantries for more at-home eating," Chief Executive San Connolly said in a statement. Shipments and consumption have jumped by half even as foodservice demand has fallen.

A Spokane man is the first customer to file a lawsuit against Conagra Foods for their microwave popcorn. The product in question was pulled from store shelves three years ago. That’s because a chemical inside was making its workers sick. It involves an artificial flavoring called diacetyl. For years it was put in popcorn to give it a nice smell but the aroma is allegedly what made one Spokane Valley man sick. A man who loves popcorn. Attorney Richard Eymann says the man had it in a bowl and sometimes “he’d lap it out of the bowl like a dog...

Did you know that 1 in 5 American children—nearly 17 million—struggle with hunger? Peter Pan® believes no child in the United States should grow up hungry, so we're donating more than 1 million meals to Feeding America®. We want to help, but your family can help, too. How? Simply enter your child's first name below and read a story that helps teach children the importance of helping others. Then find out specific ways that you and your family can spread magic to make a difference in the lives of hungry children. Kids: This website contains advertisements and/or promotions for ConAgra...

Mind you, this is a guy who beat Hannity — a show that airs in primetime — in both total viewers and the demo last Friday at 5 p.m. Every last one of these advertisers is simply biding their time, wondering how long they have to wait until nutroots wrath is appeased and they can start advertising on Beck’s show again. I give it six months. Less if Greta gets dumped and GB ends up moved to 10 p.m. Twenty companies have pulled their ads from Beck’s show in just the last two weeks. The moves come after the Fox...

Sugar, the nutritional pariah that dentists and dietitians have long reviled, is enjoying a second act, dressed up as a natural, healthful ingredient. From the tomato sauce on a Pizza Hut pie called “The Natural,” to the just-released soda Pepsi Natural, some of the biggest players in the American food business have started, in the last few months, replacing high-fructose corn syrup with old-fashioned sugar. ConAgra uses only sugar or honey in its new Healthy Choice All Natural frozen entrees. Kraft Foods recently removed the corn sweetener from its salad dressings, and is working on its Lunchables line of portable...

ConAgra Foods is expected to plead guilty this week to violating the federal Clean Water Act for not reporting warm water discharges from its Hastings flour mill near the Vermillion River, a trophy trout stream. The Department of Justice this month accused the Omaha-based food producer of failing to report and maintain records about the temperature of water it discharged into the Vermillion, a tributary of the Mississippi River. Under a plea agreement reached earlier this month, ConAgra will pay a $138,513 fine and will donate an additional $110,000 to the National Park Foundation and the Friends of the Mississippi...

A Turkey In Your Tank Could poultry scraps be the next big source of fuel oil? FORTUNE SMALL BUSINESS Tuesday, February 1, 2005 By Ellyn Spragins One solution to america's energy crisis just may be gobbling away at a poultry farm near you. Changing World Technologies has developed a working system to convert turkey guts and scraps into fuel oil. But CWT's tribulations show how hard it is for even the most innovative green company to compete in the energy business. CWT's improbable alchemy is based on an idea that scientists have been kicking around for three decades: mimicking the...

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) -- A gunman shot and killed five or more people at a meatpacking plant Friday afternoon, a police dispatcher told The Associated Press. The Kansas City, Kan., dispatcher, who did not give her name, said an employee of the Con Agra Foods Inc. plant walked into the cafeteria and began firing, then killed himself. Broadcast reports from the scene gave various accounts of the number dead. Witnesses said the shooting took place shortly after 5 p.m.

Ask Umbra: Waste makes haste Grist Magazine - grist magazine 06.14.04 - For more environmental news and humor, sign up for Grist Magazine's e-mail list. Dear Umbra, What is thermal depolymerization? Ann Freehold, N.J. Dearest Ann, A polymer is a large group of linked molecules. We're made of polymers such as protein, eat polymers such as starch, and wear polymers such as leather and nylon. Thermal depolymerization is a heat-driven process that breaks down or transforms polymers into the shorter chains from whence they came: oil. Our planet's automatic transformation of dead dinosaurs and dead cavepeople and other organic matter...

The animal activist group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has purchased 140 shares of stock in ConAgra Foods Inc. This gives the group a right to speak at annual meetings and to submit shareholder resolutions. ConAgra reported sales of more than $19 billion in 2003. “Animals on factory farms are mutilated, drugged and abused,” says PETA. “Turkeys are jam-packed into crowded warehouses. Pigs are confined to concrete-floored stalls and are castrated and have their tails cut off, and cows are branded, dehorned and castrated.” PETA was also to be active in Iowa Dec. 14 with plans to...

A sluggish investigation by the Agriculture Department into evidence that tainted meat had entered the marketplace exposed thousands of consumers to potentially deadly bacteria, possibly contributing to some illnesses, members of Congress said yesterday. Though federal law requires daily inspections, nearly 100 days elapsed from when ConAgra Beef began producing the questionable beef and last week, when the department announced the second-largest meat recall, Democrats in the House and Senate pointed out. "The long delay between contamination and recall is striking," the Democrats, including Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, wrote in a...