Corn is a basic cost in all three major species of meat at the U.S. supermarket: chicken, pork and beef. It has gone through the roof due to ethanol production for gasoline, and none of the meats is immune from the effects.
Chicken is only the latest meat to be facing price increases at the meatcase. It is easier to raise the price, because two big companies dominate the chicken business--Tyson and Pilgrim. If you'd like to raise chickens, you go to one of them and buy your unhatched eggs and they'll tell you when you pick them up at which price they'll buy the grown chickens back from you. They rigidly control chicken prices from the fertilized egg to the parts you see packaged in the meatcase.
Pork is nearly like that, although not quite as tightly controlled, while beef is much more of a free market affair. That's because chicken and pork lend themselves to factory style production, while beef cattle don't.
The biggest competitor to beef is cheaper chicken and pork. Beef is high right now, due to tight supplies and high corn prices. However, pork and chicken are as susceptible as beef to the higher corn prices, and were inevitably going to go up too.
Consumers will be frosted at higher chicken prices, but for cattlemen, it's good news indeed--lessening their competition.
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