Tyson Foods says its roosters didn’t deliver, and the nation’s chicken supply suffered
Every other day, it seems, there’s another explanation for problems with the chicken supply. Now, one school of thought says that roosters—and Tyson Foods—are partly responsible. Apparently, the company switched to a particular rooster known to yield robust, meatier offspring. Yet these cocks have nothing to crow about. There were fewer eggs, and fewer of them hatched—an issue for a volume business like poultry. On one hand, it’s refreshing that the female of the species is not being blamed. On the other hand, investigative minds want more detail: What breed is it, and does “switching out” breeds mean mass slaughter on the horizon? Prolly. That one processor’s problems can affect the chicken pipeline shows just how big Tyson is—it produces almost a fifth of the country’s poultry. According to The Wall Street Journal, Tyson is feeling the pinch in this sector of its business; its chicken income in the most recent quarter dropped to $6 million from $99 million for the same period last year.
