Campbell Soup Company completed the sale of its Godiva Chocolatier business to Yildiz Holding A.S. for $850 million. Yildiz is a public company and the owner of the Ulker Group, a diversified food company based in Istanbul, Turkey. Nearly three-quarters of the net proceeds from the sale will be used to purchase company stock in open market transactions.

PepsiCo and Strauss Group announced the completion of their joint venture partnership to operate Sabra, a manufacturer of hummus. Sabra had sales of $65 million in 2007. The joint venture will produce and sell fresh dips and spreads in the US and Canada.

Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. sold its turkey production and distribution center in New Oxford, PA to New Oxford Foods, LLC., a subsidiary of Hain Pure Protein Corp. As a result of the sale, Pilgrim’s Pride is no longer a turkey producer.

Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. will reduce weekly chicken processing by approximately 5% in the second half of fiscal 2008 compared to the same period a year ago to better balance supply and demand amid record-high costs for feed ingredients such as corn and soybean meal.

Hain Celestial Group, Inc. acquired London, UK-based Daily Bread, Ltd., a manufacturer of branded fresh prepared foods for the foodservice channel in the UK.

Stewart Systems (Plano, TX) and AMF Bakery Systems (Richmond, VA and Sherbrooke, PQ) signed a definitive agreement to merge the ownership of the companies. Both companies will continue to operate under their current names, said Ken Newsome, president and CEO of AMF Bakery Systems.

Silliker, Inc., which owns an international network of accredited food testing and consulting laboratories, promoted Robert Colvin to vice president of operations, Pamela Coleman to vice president of marketing and business development and Mark Carter to division vice president of technical sales.

FIJI Water joined the Carbon Disclosure Project Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) will work with FIJI Water to engage suppliers to disclose their emissions. For the base year ending June 30, 2007, FIJI Water’s total annual carbon footprint from every stage of production and distribution was 85,396 metric tons of CO2 equivalents. Estimates of the US total carbon footprint are about 7 billion metric tons of CO2.