Tyson Foods is raising the cost of their meat and poultry due to “accelerating and unprecedented inflation.”
There has also been major concerns of a possible national meat shortage due to coronavirus restrictions on meat processing plants.
Fox Business reports that “the Springdale, Arkansas-based food products company last quarter hiked its average price for pork by 39%. Beef and chicken prices jumped by 12% and 16%, respectively.”
“We have seen accelerating and unprecedented inflation,” CEO Donnie King said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Monday. “Inflation is up about 14% during our 3Q [third quarter] and 9% year-to-date.”
According to the report, Tyson is planning to raise retail prices on Sept. 5 — after already having increased prices for restaurant customers. They are also not ruling out continued price hikes in near future.
“We will continue to take price to match the nature of the cost that’s coming to us,” he said.
The Daily Wire noted that “the firm’s $12.48 billion revenue greatly surpassed analysts’ prediction of $11.49 billion — a reality driven by higher prices for consumers.”
Tyson was the first and largest food employer to require vaccines for their workforce. Earlier this month, they claime that half of their 120,000 person staff had already been jabbed.
John Federspiel, owner of Feder’s Meats, has said that they believe vaccination mandates may scare off a lot of potential workers, exacerbating the potential for a meat shortage. However, they are still optimistic for the industry because their customer base expanded during the pandemic.
“When all the restaurants shut down, people had to learn how to cook,” Federspiel told WANE. “They had to cook for their families, and that sounds pretty simplistic but I think that’s basically what it boiled down to. People had to provide for their families. So they had to go to the grocery stores. They had to go to businesses like that, like us, and we expanded our customer base because of that.”
