Cargill's William Rupp to receive MMT magazine's annual Knowlton award.

CHICAGO -- William Rupp, president of Cargill Meat Solutions' Beef Division has been selected to receive Meat Marketing & Technology magazine's 2006 Richard L. Knowlton Innovation Award, which honors excellence in the U.S. meat industry in the areas of innovation, business success, leadership, and industry contributions. Johnson will receive the award at a breakfast in his honor on October 27 in Chicago.

In receiving the award, Rupp joins an impressive roster of past honorees, including Joel W. Johnson, CEO and chairman of Hormel Foods Corporation; James Stonehocker, COO of Odom's Tennessee Pride; Henry Davis, president of Greater Omaha Packing Co.; Temple Grandin, associate professor, livestock behavior, with Colorado State University; Bernie Hansen, former president of Flint Hill Foods; and Justin Segel, former CEO of Emmpak Foods.

The Knowlton Award is named after the storied former chairman of Hormel Foods who was renowned for product and brand innovation in the meat industry.

As recipient of this year's Knowlton award, Rupp was selected from a field of several prominent executives, all of them nominated by their peers, customers or associates. Finalists were screened by a panel that included past recipients of the Knowlton award.

"In his long and storied career with Excel and Cargill Meat Solutions, Rupp has not only been instrumental in advancing state-of-the-art slaughterhouse and pathogen control systems, but also in consolidating CMS's position as one of the industry's leading purveyors of quality, branded meat products," says MMT Editor John Gregerson. "His contributions speak to the very spirit of Knowlton award: leadership and innovation."

"In addition to supporting the development of food safety technologies, such as the hide wash cabinet, Bill has been a huge proponent of sharing food safety-related information with other industry members," says MMT Editor-at-Large Dell Allen, former vice president of technical services with CMS. "His philosophy is there shouldn't - and can't be - secrets in this important area."

For more information about Rupp and the award, see the December 2005 issue of MMT.

Meat Marketing & Technology magazine is published monthly by Marketing & Technology Group, a Chicago-based integrated media company serving multiple channels of the meat and poultry processing industries. In addition to MMT, the company's properties include Poultry, CarneTec (serving Latin American meat processors) and Plate magazines; and industry Web sites www.meatingplace.com and www.carnetec.com