If you like the convenience of frozen breaded chicken, Tyson Foods is probably on your shopping list. Nuggets, strips, tenders, flavored varieties. They’ve got a wide selection. It is not fine fare but passable, but those winds may be changing direction.
Tyson has purchased Protix in the name of sustainable protein production. What a strange thing to say. All you had to do was keep up with the chickens, and protein is sustained. Nope. Someone at Tyson has a Climate Justice Rasputin whispering in their ear. Make them eat bugs, she whispers (yes, I gendered Tyson’s Rasputin).
Tyson Foods Inc. TSN, 0.66% said Tuesday it is planning to acquire a minority stake in Protix, a Dutch company that’s a leader in insect ingredients, as it works on more sustainable protein production. Tyson did not disclose terms, but said it plans to fund Protix’s global expansion. The two have also entered a joint venture that will create and operate an insect ingredient facility in the continental U.S. “Upon completion, it will be the first at-scale facility of its kind to upcycle food manufacturing byproducts into high-quality insect proteins and lipids which will primarily be used in the pet food, aquaculture, and livestock industries,” Tyson said in a statement.
Chickens will eat bugs, so there’s no there there, but pet food? While dogs and cats will eat the odd bug, it’s more of a moving target sort of distraction thing. Oh, look, I can grab that. Done. And I’m no expert, but the pet food industry has been shifting toward more honest ingredients, fewer grains and fillers, and even real meat or some form of crude protein.
Are we expecting the generations of people who have eschewed the idea of having children for raising fur babies to embrace bug bits as a source? Is the Tyson Board seeing a forest for the trees scenario where the war on meat will create a vacuum into which they will be positioned to provide a crude protein alternative?
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Tyson’s Mission Statement, Who We Are Page, briefly shows us the statement: Raising Expectations for How Much Good Food Can Do. Is there an amendment in the works hinting at how much bugs can do for food? Is anyone going to remind anyone else that bug exoskeletons have components toxic to humans?
I only mention this becasue a global food concern with a struggling stock price has purchased a Dutch bugs-to-protein-business with an eye toward funding its global expansion. Absent all the recent 2020s talk about moving us away from food to bugs, it’s probably a nothingburger. But given the globalist obsession with consuming farmland to prevent farming, food production, and the war on meat, I think I’ll encourage my healthy suspicion about their motives.
