A poultry processing plant in Delaware has made the “difficult but necessary” decision to kill two million chickens as worker shortages push the US meat supply chain towards a breaking point.

Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc., a cooperative that works with some 1,300 farmers, said it looked at all other options, “including allowing another chicken company to transport and process the chickens and taking a partially processed product to rendering facilities to utilize for other animal feed,” but ultimately decided on euthanization.

“If no action were taken, the birds would outgrow the capacity of the chicken house to hold them,” the company said, noting that the birds will be killed “using approved, humane methods” and farmers will still be compensated.

It’s a small percentage of the 609 million chickens that Delmarva’s farmers raised in 2019, but the interruption highlights a problem facing meat producers across the United States: meat slaughtering operations can only be so automated.

Tyson, one of the world’s largest meat producers, said in a full-page advertisement in national newspapers on Sunday that “the food supply chain is breaking” as workers get sick and plants are forced to close.

“There will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed,” Tyson said in the ad. – READ MORE

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