The effects of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreak have had a bigger impact on Tyson Foods than some people might think, Donnie King, the company’s president and CEO said.
Tyson Foods, which released its quarterly financial results on February 6, hosted an earnings call with analysts that day, followed by another call with the media.
Speaking on the media call, King acknowledged that the broiler industry has not been hit by HPAI as hard as the egg and turkey industries, it has had a meaningful impact in its overall chicken operations.
“We have had some impacts from an export perspective, and typically for us, it’s the chicken paws. That’s a big deal for us,” said King.
Chicken paws are largely exported, although their domestic consumption is rising. But because Tyson operates in many areas that have had an outbreak of HPAI – regardless of whether the virus was confirmed in any of Tyson’s flocks – it is affected by trade restrictions.
“We’ve not been able to harvest those or sell those based on all the states in the U.S., except for two, where we have locations have a ban (related to) avian influenza. So that’s had some negative impact in terms of our earnings in Q1. Those are very profitable items for us from an export perspective, and even growing from a domestic perspective.”
Turkey operations also hit
It isn’t just Tyson’s broiler operations that have been impacted by HPAI, but also its turkey operations.
“We do have a turkey operation that had some impacts as it relates to avian influenza, and they’re dealing with all of the same type of things,” said King.
Tyson obtained its turkey operations, including a plant in Storm Lake, Iowa, in 2014 with the acquisition of Hillshire Brands.
According to the WATTPoultry.com Top Poultry Companies Database, Tyson Foods slaughtered 383 million pounds of live turkeys in 2021.
View our continuing coverage of the global avian influenza situation.
