The Wall Street Journal has blogged an interesting piece about how the recession is hitting the chicken industry. I would have thought that chicken producers would actually benefit from a recession since you’d have tons of people abandoning pork and beef for less expensive cuts of chicken. And since chicken are quite efficient at converting feed to flesh, it wouldn’t seem that chicken producers should be hurting much by a rise in feed corn prices.
Turns out, however, that chicken producers are hurting a lot. The price of feed corn is destroying their margins, and meanwhile consumers are picking cheaper, less profitable cuts of chicken. Both Tyson and Pilgrim’s Pride stock prices are getting hammered.
If the chicken industry is feeling this sort of pain, imagine how the beef and pork people must be doing. I think vegan activists have a great opportunity here. If people are switching to cuts of chicken they don’t really like, you have to think they’d be receptive to trying out inexpensive vegan foods. Link.
