IPPE initially expected 28,000 poultry, meat and feed international industry representatives but final attendance was nearer 24,000, with bad weather blamed for reducing the amount of drive-in traffic.
Despite the shortfall, the sponsors said they were pleased with this year’s event, which featured 1,148 exhibitors spread over more than 410,000 net square feet of exhibit space.
“It speaks to the strength of integrating these three shows together that attendance held up so well in spite of the inclement weather,” said the sponsors – the US Poultry & Egg Association, the American Feed Industry Association and the American Meat Institute – in a joint statement.
One of the main features of IPPE 2014 was its “largest-ever” education slate, which featured 16 programs, on topics including ground poultry pathogen reduction to antibiotic use in the meat and poultry industry to a program on how to export feed and feed ingredients to the US.
Other featured events included the International Poultry Scientific Forum, Pet Food Conference, VIV International Pork Production Summit, Tech XChange program and Meat Me in @LANTA activities, including the chilli competition.
The winner of the latter was Jeff Clark, chef at Ruth’s Chris restaurant, who won the Best Overall Chilli award. In second place was Anna Firmani of Hard Rock Café, while Dave Myree of PittyPat’s Porch came third.
Twelve professional chefs competed for the title by cooking their best chilli using beef, bison, boar, turkey, pork or chicken.
The winners, voted for by IPPE delegates, received their awards from Miss Georgia 2013 Carly Mathis.