Stop the Idiocracy: Tyson Foods

Showing posts with label Tyson Foods. Show all posts

Friday, August 21, 2026

The price of an empty pasture

A darkly whimsical illustration depicts the collapse of an American meatpacking industry beneath punishing heat and economic strain. A barefoot, red-haired woman in a tattered burgundy slip stands before a vast, rusting meatpacking plant whose machinery, pipes and towers twist into mournful human faces. She holds a nearly empty plate bearing only a tiny sprig of food. Beyond the shuttered factory stretches a parched, cracked landscape scattered with cattle, abandoned feeding troughs and fencing. At right, a skeletal cattle figure presides beside an ornate sign declaring beef an increasingly unaffordable luxury, while an almost grotesquely cheerful sun burns overhead. Cobwebbed controls, empty meat hooks, a discarded steak and an abandoned shopping trolley reinforce themes of plant closures, scarcity, rising beef prices and industrial decline.

image generated via ChatGPT

Will Tyson Foods’ shuttering of two US plants mean even greater pain at the grocery store in Trumpistan? {The Guardian 21 August}

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/21/tyson-foods-close-facilities-beef-prices-cattle-shortage

Pray the experts have got this one right. Nobody hold their breath, though —

FTA: Tyson Foods, the largest meatpacking company in the US, announced last week that it is closing two of its facilities in Iowa and Utah and selling a beef facility in Washington state, and will lay off hundreds of workers as the supply of cattle hits a 75-year low.

The historic cattle shortage has been driven by a multi-year drought, rising costs and severe economic pressures, including consolidation among cattle ranchers. Beef prices have soared over the last year due to the shortage, though economists said the Tyson plant closures likely won’t hit consumer prices so hard.

Earlier this month, Tyson reported in its third-quarter earnings that beef volume is down 15.9% and beef operating loss is at $138m.

Glynn Tonsor, an agricultural economist at Kansas State University, said the US has had excess capacity for processing and packaging beef for several years now, and beef that would have been processed in Tyson’s Iowa and Utah plants will just be rerouted.

“For the majority of the last 40 years, nationally, the US has had more capacity to harvest cattle than we’ve had cattle,” he said. “Anytime you have too much capacity, or ‘too much’ supply relative to what is needed in the market, that puts downward pressure on the margins in that sector. That’s not new.”

With not enough cattle to harvest, meatpacking plants have been taking measures to slow down operations, including reducing shifts or cutting Saturday workdays. If operations don’t pick up, plants eventually close.

But these closures won’t change the amount of beef that is packed and processed, since the country has enough infrastructure to take on the current supply, experts said. While it may slightly increase transportation costs for the cattle producers who are located close to the shuttered Tyson plants, it is not likely to affect the price of beef overall.

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Friday, August 14, 2026

The silence after the siren: food and agriculture in retreat

A richly detailed editorial illustration depicts female workers leaving a vast American meat-processing complex at sunset. In the foreground, a blonde woman in a white work coat and boots carries gloves and a metal case, glancing back with a troubled expression. Around her, other women embrace, carry personal belongings or sit dejectedly after apparently losing their jobs. An open processing plant, forklifts and hanging carcasses appear behind them, while several enormous industrial facilities recede across a dry, sparsely vegetated landscape. The melancholy golden light reinforces themes of closure, economic hardship and uncertainty within American food production.

image generated via ChatGPT

Tyson Foods is to close or divest three facilities, as a historic cattle shortage lays waste to the US meatpacking industry. {Reuters 13 August}

https://www.agriculture.com/partners-tyson-foods-says-it-will-close-sell-three-sites-amid-u-s-cattle-shortage-12059640

This, alongside the Taylor Farms lettuce debacle and other food-safety concerns that have been in the news of late — compounded by natural disasters and a cattle shortage of the utmost severity — constitutes merely the visible tip of the iceberg (no pun intended) as to what is about to befall American agriculture and food production; all made worse under a regime hell-bent upon dismantling regulatory safeguards at any cost. Tyranny assumes many guises, among them increasingly unsafe food, water, and medicine.

I hate to keep saying it (but not really): what y’all voted for, #Murica.

FTA: Tyson on Aug. 3 warned that losses in its beef business would widen as tight cattle supplies keep livestock costs elevated. It forecast an adjusted operating loss of $500 million to $650 million in fiscal 2026 for its beef business, compared with a previous forecast for a $350 million to $500 million loss.

Cattle supplies shrank to a 75-year low after a prolonged drought burned up grazing lands in the western U.S. and Washington suspended imports from Mexico in an attempt to keep out the flesh-eating livestock pest New World screwworm.

However, screwworms were detected in June on Texas farms and in New Mexico after moving north through Central America.

Facing pressure to lower consumer costs, the Trump administration said it plans to start lifting the import ban this month. The average retail price of one pound of lean and extra lean ground beef hit a record $8.65 in June, according to federal data.

“We have paid the economic price of a closed border, disrupted a cattle supply chain built over generations and screwworm still made it into the United States,” said Texas’s Miller.

It may take up to a year for Tyson to benefit from removing the ban because imported feeder cattle must spend time grazing on grass or being fattened in feedlots to get ready for slaughter, Tyson Chief Operating Officer Wes Morris said on a conference call last week.

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Thursday, November 4, 2021

Tyson Foods: Once a COVID pariah, the meatpacker has successfully mandated that its employees be vaccinated

NYT

Every now and again, a corporation will display that they’ve learned a thing or two from their errors -

SPRINGDALE, Ark. — When Tyson, one of the world’s largest meatpacking companies, announced in early August that all of its 120,000 workers would need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or lose their jobs, Diana Eike was angry. Ms. Eike, an administrative coordinator at the company, had resisted the vaccine, and not for religious or political reasons like many others here in her home state.
“It was just something personal,” she said.
Now, Ms. Eike is fully vaccinated, and she is relieved that Tyson made the decision for her. The company, she said, “took the burden off of me making the choice.”
Across the country, workers have reacted to vaccine mandates with a mix of emotions. Employer requirements are taking effect without major controversy in many areas. But in some cities, government workers have marched through the streets in protest, while others have quit. Numerous companies, fearing a wave of resignations, have hesitated on mandates, even as they struggled with new coronavirus outbreaks.
Tyson’s announcement that it would require vaccinations across its corporate offices, packing houses and poultry plants, many of which are situated in the South and Midwest where resistance to the vaccines is high, was arguably the boldest mandate in the corporate world.
“We made the decision to do the mandate, fully understanding that we were putting our business at risk,” Tyson’s chief executive, Donnie King, said in an interview last week. “This was very painful to do.”
But it was also bad for business when Tyson had to shut facilities because of virus outbreaks. Since announcing the policy, roughly 60,500 employees have received the vaccine, and more than 96 percent of its work force is vaccinated.
Tyson’s experience shows how vaccine mandates in the workplace can be persuasive. It comes as many employers await the start of Biden administration rules that will require vaccines — or weekly testing — at companies with 100 or more workers. (Read more)