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FTC head wants investigation into grocery stores over inflated prices
(www.independent.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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Never saw it get $12 crazy, but at one point farmers had to kill off 100 million chickens because of bird flu. That's nearly 1 chicken for every man, woman and child in the US.
Imagine the disposal cost, let alone the costs for sterilizing monstrous chicken warehouses. Then factor in the costs of keeping operations going while they repopulated.
However, there was something I read and can't remember, about the prices staying jacked beyond what was to be expected.
The US population is 340 million.
Jesus save us from pendants.
It's not pedantic to object to "nearly 1 chicken per man, woman, and child" in the US when it's much closer to "1 chicken per 4 people" than it is to the former.
My dad worked for a private company that was a government contractor for almost 30 years before they were bought out by some international corporation.
I asked my dad if they used to have years where they didn't turn a profit. "Oh absolutely, but we made up for it the next year, or they had money set aside, or..."
None of that happens anymore. Those chickens, I guarantee, caught those diseases because of the practices put in place by the 4 or 5 companies that basically produce all of the poultry for this country. They made poor business decisions, they chose to pinch pennies and not put money aside for unexpected emergencies, they continued to pay out dividends and issue stock buy backs instead of creating an emergency fund like they tell us poors we need to do.
So no, I don't care to imagine any of their costs, because if they were a legitimate business, they would have contingency plans in place beyond "jack the prices up as high as they'll go and keep em there until it starts to hurt our wallets enough." They would take the hit for fucking once instead of passing the cost along to those who can least bare it so they can maintain their lifestyle built on greed and stolen wages.
The egg-laying chickens were not as affected from everything I heard.
Was it just meat birds?
Can't picture how that worked, but I know nothing about poultry farming. Person below posted a link saying the same, can't see the data I hoped to.
Didn't seem to impact egg production all that much: https://www.statista.com/statistics/196094/us-total-egg-production-since-2001/