The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[DewDiligence]

TSN revises chicken business model in China:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303559504579197662165181956

…in this rural outpost outside Shanghai is a huge, super-sanitary chicken farm—a bold bet by Tyson Foods Inc. that it can thrive in China by overhauling a decades-old business model.

Instead of buying chickens from independent farmers, as Tyson long has done world-wide, the company is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build its own farms in China. The effort is aimed at making inroads in a crucial growth market by addressing one of the country's most vexing problems: food safety.

…Tyson aims by 2015 to run 90 such farms in China and supply its processing plants here almost exclusively with company-raised broilers, as chickens raised for meat are called. Today the Springdale, Ark., company has 20 farms in China. Three years ago, none. The goal is to double production in China to three million birds a week for supermarkets and restaurants to help offset sluggish growth in the U.S.