The final episode of the POPCORN Innovation Podcast Series features Greg Bodak, Vice President of Business Development at CTB.Greg brings the market perspective into this series, which is exactly where the conversation needs to go before everyone gets in the same room at POPCORN.We have talked about digital theater, connected systems, live-side data, and Poultry 4.0 throughout this series. Greg’s episode pulls those threads into what processors, producers, and integrators are actually asking for right now.More visibility is part of it, but visibility alone does not solve the problem. Processors need information they can use. They need to understand what happened, why it happened, where to look first, and what decision needs to be made next.Greg and I talked about yield, traceability, customer expectations, automation, farm data, processing data, and why connected operations are becoming harder to treat as a future conversation.One of the biggest takeaways from this episode is how complicated “simple” metrics become once you start looking at all the variables behind them. Yield is not just live weight in and finished product out. It is shaped by bird size, health, feed, transportation, feed withdrawal, chilling, equipment, human technique, and the decisions made across the operation before, during, and after processing.Food manufacturing does not need more disconnected information. It needs operational context people can trust while decisions are still on the table.POPCORN: The Innovation Summit by CAT Squared takes place August 10–13, 2026, in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Poultry processors are already sitting on a ridiculous amount of data.• Chiller temperatures • Scalder temperatures• Line speed• Belt speed• PAA concentrations• Bird weights• Arrival times• Condemnations• Quality checks• Food safety records• Equipment data• Sensor data. The problem is not that the data does not exist.The problem is that too much of it is still trapped in separate systems, dashboards, spreadsheets, handwritten logs, and places that do not talk to each other when people need answers fast.That is exactly why I loved my conversation with Dr. Amit Morey for Episode 4 of the POPCORN Innovation Podcast Series.Amit brings the Industry 4.0 conversation back to the plant floor, where the work is already complicated enough without adding another layer of language that sounds impressive but does not help anyone make a better decision.He talks about the data processors are already collecting across the operation and what it could support if teams had a better way to connect it, understand it, and use it in time. Efficiency, food safety, quality, and prediction are not separate conversations. They are all tied to whether the information moving through the plant is usable when people need it.Because “more data” is not the win; better decisions are.We talked about Poultry 4.0, cybersecurity, data ownership, cloud analytics, and why the industry is closer to connected intelligence than some people may think. The pieces are there. The next step is making those pieces work together in a way that helps the people running the operation.Grab your popcorn and join us for a conversation about Industry 4.0, plant-floor data, food safety, and what it actually takes to make poultry processing intelligence useful.POPCORN: The Innovation Summit by CAT Squared takes place August 10–13, 2026, in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Episode 3 of the POPCORN Innovation Series features Dr. Neamat ElTazi, co-founder and COO of PoultrySync.A lot of food manufacturing conversations begin at the plant, but the operational story starts much earlier. Flock conditions, environmental changes, feed performance, mortality trends, planning decisions, and animal health can all influence what processors eventually see downstream.Neamat explained that poultry is an incredibly data-rich industry, yet much of that information still sits in disconnected silos. When upstream teams cannot recognize patterns early enough, processors are forced to react after variability has already reached the plant.We also talked about why working with living animals changes the speed and pressure of decision-making, what predictive intelligence looks like on the live side, and how stronger traceability helps teams move back through the value chain quickly when something goes wrong.Processing performance does not begin at processing. Better downstream decisions depend on what the operation can see, understand, and act on upstream.POPCORN: The Innovation Summit by CAT Squared takes place August 10–13, 2026, at Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort in Hot Springs, Arkansas.