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.

Three major pork plants in South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa — which collectively represent 15% of pork production, according to CNN — were forced to close indefinitely in April.

"During this pandemic, our entire industry is faced with an impossible choice: continue to operate to sustain our nation's food supply or shutter in an attempt to entirely insulate our employees from risk," Smithfield said in a statement to Bloomberg News on Friday. "It's an awful choice; it's not one we wish on anyone."

According to data from the US Department of Agriculture, the amount of frozen pork in storage dropped 4% from March to April. Slaughterhouses, meanwhile, processed 25% less meat while 400,000 animals wait in a backlog as plants work at lowered capacities.

Worker shortages are only the tip of the iceberg.

Other agricultural products — from milk, to beer, and vegetables — are going to waste as restaurants, hotels, schools, and theme parks go dark.

"People don't make onion rings at home," an onion farmer in Idaho who mainly supplies restaurants told The New York Times.

Some farms have sent unsold crops to food banks — where Americans are flocking in droves as record jobless claims pile up — but for many, the donations aren't possible without financial assistance for harvesting and transporting.

"As we hit into the peak berry production in May, that could be berries that would not get picked and never make it to the market," Soren Bjorn, president of the berry producer Driscoll's, told Business Insider. "We think that by far, the best thing that could happen is that that product makes its way to the food banks. And that will require some financial assistance from the government."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/2-million-chickens-euthanized-single-165800309.html

Abundance of food and shortage at the same time.
People should better tune away from Donald Trump's twitter and see what is really going on in the USA instead of following what ever fallacy trump decides to cook up.
This is what is really going on. I am now t saying he should be ignored but at least mix am, right wing media plus left wing media so you can get a balanced opinion.

During this pandemic, our entire industry is faced with an impossible choice: continue to operate to sustain our nation's food supply or shutter in an attempt to entirely insulate our employees from risk," Smithfield said in a statement to Bloomberg News on Friday. "It's an awful choice; it's not one we wish on anyone."

Only one state in the USA alone produces over 600 million chicken yearly, yet a whole country like naija total annual chicken production is not up-to 200 million. This is one of the major reasons why there is high level of unemployment and poverty.