How many people countrywide is Tyson chicken allowed to harm from a recall and continue business as usual?

[11th Hour Poultry]

The product was shipped to distributors in Alabama, California, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin for further distribution to the retail level.

https://www.fsis.usda.gov/recalls-a...ken-patty-product-due-possible-foreign-matter

Local chicken is the future.

 

[Sally PB]

We don't eat our chickens because my husband won't. He knows fresh chicken tastes much better, but he'll have no part of it.

He's happy to eat the eggs they produce.

So I buy chicken meat (grudgingly) but not eggs. My relationship to my husband beats my desire for self sufficiency in that regard. (And my chickens have become what I call "petstock.")

I don't lose sleep over any of the possible sicknesses or government intrusions that could happen. I have too many other concerns on my radar.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

< merely offering fact and context for those seeking less sensationalism in their readings.

and, seemingly, being deliberately misunderstood...

I observed that most - the very vast majority of most - don't raise meat for their own table, for many, many reasons.

 

[Aardyn]

Tyson's been putting out recalls multiple times a year for, "foreign matter contamination" or "possible metal parts" for years now. I haven't bought anything from them in forever. Its actually surprising how they are still in business .

 

[U_Stormcrow]

You linked a recall from 2021?

Here you are - FDA's recall central, keyword "Chicken"

Why, its almost as if the big producers are using regulatory capture in the name of public safety to raise the barriers to entry (they are, actually). By testing for things like metals, plastics, listeria, salmonella, e coli and using granular tracking to follow lot numbers, suppliers, production runs, and locations. Much as "certified Organic" has the backing of a few large producers who have used regulation to raise the record keeping and inspection requirements to a point out of reach for the typical small farmer.

Local chicken is the Past.

...and yes, I raise and eat my own (chicken, goat, duck, rabbit). Others are unwilling to take such risks, and choose instead commercially produced products where the risk of injury or illness from consumption is remote. Tyson processes 47,000,000 chicken a week (2022). To help you put 9 million pounds of breaded chicken product into perspective.

and NPIP doesn't test for listeria.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

If 15% of the US population kept 6 layers and 12 broilers… It would replace all of the industrial chicken production. Karl Hammer.

Its a nice thought, but the math doesn't work. 15% is roughly 1 in 6, which is to say that if each person maintained one hen and two broilers, they'd be kept in chicken. I don't like eggs, and use more than 200 to 250 eggs a year. and I certainly eat more than two broilers a year, to say nothing of the chicks you would have to hatch to replace aging layers and replace culled broilers.

Tyson processes 45 million chickens a week, there are about 300 million of us in the US. If they were the only chicken producer (obviously, they aren't here in the US), that's 8 broilers per person per year. US residents actually eat almost 100# of chicken per year, or roughly 2# of chicken per week, call it two broilers per month.

Thats either more owners or larger flock sizes, or both. How large depends on how eggs are beign ijncubated, hatch rates, mortality, rate of lay. My guess is that the numbers would be more like 15% of the pop maintaing a flock of 24 layers 18 if they are prime production birds) and 36 broilers, with incubation, 90% viability, and a decent rate of lay from the broilers.

So, on the right track, but needs a recheck on the math.

 

[CatInTheHenHouse]

But a big reason NOT to have animals is that they tie you down. Want to take off for a week and go to a friend's wedding 1200 miles away? Road trip! Nope. Who will take care of the chickens?

This is one of the reasons I don’t have chickens presently. I looked into various ways of cutting down the workload and/or automating as much as possible - automatic doors on the coop, deep litter method to cut down the amount of cleaning that needed to be done, keeping them fed and watered by the simple expedient of having way more food and water on hand than they could eat in the time I would be gone, possibly rollout boxes to ‘harvest’ the eggs so they don’t fall victim to egg eaters…I’m probably missing things even without taking emergencies into consideration, but even just all of that took quite a bit of research to put together as a plan, so I can’t really blame anyone for wanting to find something else that allowed more personal flexibility.

 

[Molpet]

I don't like how commercial meat is raised and that's why I have been raising most of my poultry since 2017.

They also treat the farmers that raise the chickens badly. The farmers have to follow their procedures and can't raise the broilers any other way due to the contract. That is how chicken went from this
special Sunday dinner to the cheapest meat.
It costs me about $7 a lb for mixed meat mutts. At the store the regular price of the Tyson whole broilers is $2.50 a lb. The CX broiler at the farmers market was $6 lb back in 2016. Not everyone can afford meat at those prices .

My brother works at a Tyson bacon plant repairing plant refrigeration equipment. I asked him about these recalls for metal and plastic in the meat. He said there's a metal detector and when it's tested if it's not working everything since the last test is recalled. I'm not sure how often it's tested.
If a piece of equipment looses plastic parts, everything is recalled that was made on that line.
In these two cases it's a precaution and nothing was actually found in the product.
If something is reported to be found in the product there's a bigger recall.
My brother is a typical worker and definitely not a company man so I don't think he is trying to cover for them.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

The numbers I quoted off of Karl Hammer don’t match up with what is being produced by commercial farms.
Thanks for pointing out the reality of production. If I ran the numbers personally… I would think my family of 4 eats 2 or 3 chickens a week. So 100-150 birds a year could supply the chicken portion of our protein.
I found him to be inspirational in that all of his chickens feed off of squandered human food and scraps destined for landfills.

its a REALLY big landfill. Someone here on BYC brought him to my attention a year or two ago, did some quick digging. He has a unique situation.

FWIW, I appreciate his longing for "simpler days". Just some assumptions baked into the math that seem a bit off which require recalculation.

Like it or not, the modern world of any first world economy has underpinnings made possible by specialization which allow economies of scale and efficiency not otherwise achievable. Tyson, Cal-Maine, Purdue, and all the rest produce reasonably priced, reasonably consistent, reasonably available chicken products for distribution all over. You aren't limited by what can be raised within 50 or 100 miles of home. That specialization isn't cost free of course - selction is usually the first thing to be sacrificed in the name of efficiency (i.e Henry Ford, "you can have any color you want, as long as its black"). But neither is it cost free to divert time and resources of, say, 1/6th of the population to do what a much much much smaller % of the population working for Tyson, Purdue, Cal-Maine and the like, instead of their current (assumedly gainful) use of time. The same is true of microchip production, fertilizer and plastics manufacture, and any other industry you might consider. Even banking enjoys benefits of "bigger" by spreading risk outside small geographic areas. But all of it carries a cost.

Up to you to decide whether those costs are worth it or not.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Of the 6 houses on my road (including mine), 2 of the families keep chickens (including me). Out here, we can have any farm animals we want; I don't think any of us would run into restrictions regarding space. So why doesn't every house out here have a chicken coop? Or barn with goats or bunnies, or any other animal raised for meat?

Well, lots of reasons, besides not wanting to. Poor health and infirmity is reason enough for one of the families.

But a big reason NOT to have animals is that they tie you down. Want to take off for a week and go to a friend's wedding 1200 miles away? Road trip! Nope. Who will take care of the chickens?

I'm going to run into this issue -- the friend's wedding 1200 miles away -- this coming fall. My "neighbor the chicken sitter" is the one with poor health now.

Maybe they'll elope...

Much likewise. I'm on 30 acres. Its one of the smaller properties in the area. To my knowledge, I have two neighbors within a several mile radius with flocks of their own, mine the largest by far. Technically, its "had" - one of those neighbors passed about 13 months ago. Strongly suspect the children who inherited the property simply let his flock "free". Meaning coyote food, most likely. By the sounds, we have two packs in the area.

https://weartv.com/news/local/seein...da-lately-its-winter-mating-season-02-20-2024