Don Tyson, an aw-shucks Arkansas farmhand who turned his father's single-truck poultry-hauling business into a worldwide protein empire, crowning himself America's "Chicken King," died Jan. 6 at his home near Springdale, Ark. He was 80 and had cancer.

Tyson was the longtime leader of Tyson Foods, the top U.S. meat producer with sales of more than $28 billion a year and 115,000 workers across the globe.

Under his direction, Tyson Foods became the leading supplier of chicken and meat products to 88 of the top 100 fast-food restaurants.

Tyson sold chicken to Burger King and KFC. When McDonald's wanted to mass-produce a new poultry product, thumb-size boneless tenders, the world's largest fast-food chain turned to Tyson.

He helped develop a new breed of chicken, genetically engineered to grow large breasts, and supplied the company with an endless pile of McNuggets.

For many Americans, Tyson products became the answer to a daily question: What's for dinner?

By the early 2000s, Tyson Foods marketed more than 6,000 products and turned out more than 25 billion pounds of beef, chicken and pork. At peak production, Tyson Foods facilities are capable of slaughtering 25 million chickens in a week.

The key to Tyson's success was in processing meats in innovative ways. In 1972, his company was one of the first to sell frozen chickens to be cooked in microwaves.

His facilities could also debone, marinate, slice, batter, bread, cook and freeze chicken meat into patties, nuggets, tenders, quarters, legs, breasts and whole birds.

"People say, I dont want to cook that damn chicken, it takes too long,' " Tyson once said. "They just want to take it out of the package, plunk it in the microwave and serve it."

Tyson was not one to waste any part of a chicken. Feathers, blood and internal organs were rendered into pet food. Large shipments of chicken feet went to China to be used for soup stock.

Not all of Tyson's products were successes. When his plants had a surplus of chicken gizzards, a small, muscular pocket of the bird's digestive tract, he tried to find a way to market them by adding hamburger flavor.

Gizzard burgers turned out to be a grocery-store flop. Never one to miss an opportunity, Tyson sought another untapped market.

"I called a man I knew in the prison system," he said in 1994. "He agreed to serve gizzard burgers to the prisoners. Well, the first time they served them, he called me up and said, Don, if we try to serve em again, these prisoners are gonna riot.' "

Donald John Tyson was born April 21, 1930, in Olathe, Kan. The family moved to Springdale when he was an infant after his father's truck ran out gas in the middle of town.

As Tyson recalled, his father "came into town in 1932 with 11 cents and a half-load of hay." He began supplying feed and baby chicks to poultry farms across the state.

Tyson attended the University of Arkansas but left in 1952 to join the family business. In 1965, he made an indelible mark on the company's history by helping to introduce a new kind of chicken to the market.

Tyson is credited with developing Rock Cornish game hens, small fowl that weigh a few pounds. He sold them whole for 50 cents each - earning more of a profit than with larger chickens that sold by the pound.

A year later, when Tyson's father and stepmother were killed in a car-train accident, control of the fledgling company was thrust into his hands. At the time, the Tyson company had revenue of $35 million. When Tyson left the business in 2001, revenue had grown to $7.4 billion.

Much of Tyson Foods' success came with Tyson's "grow or die" mentality. Under his stewardship, Tyson Foods gobbled up more than 20 companies in 20 years.

In 1989, he engineered the purchase of Holly Farms, which immediately doubled Tyson Foods' size and made it the largest poultry producer in the United States. In 1998, he had the company buy Hudson Foods, a beef processor.

In the early 1990s, Tyson made a failed attempt to expand his meat business to fish.

In 1983, Tyson stepped down as chief executive but continued serving as chairman until 1995. He was "senior chairman" until 2001. His son, John Tyson, is now chairman.

In 2007, Forbes estimated Tyson's net worth at $1 billion.

Tyson was close to Bill Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas, even flying the governor and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in his private plane.

When Clinton became president in 1993, Tyson was accused of providing then-Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy with gifts, including football tickets.

Tyson agreed to testify against Espy in grand jury proceedings in exchange for a plea bargain. Espy resigned, and the scandal cost Tyson $6 million in fines and legal fees.

Tyson was married multiple times. Besides his son, survivors include three daughters and two grandchildren.

Tyson made sure that all of his company's executives and workers wore the same outfits: khaki coveralls embroidered with the Tyson logo patch and each person's first name.

He referred to all of his staff members as "co-workers," not employees. Anyone who used the "E" word was fined a quarter.

Tyson was proud of his reputation as America's "Chicken King." His office in the company's Arkansas headquarters was a replica of the White House Oval Office, with a chicken-man's twist: The room had a rooster head above a fireplace and brass egg-shaped doorknobs.