Boneless chicken breast gaining wings
One of the most versatile lines produced by the chicken industry has got to be boneless breast meat. This product can be sold as a chicken breast in several different cuts including split, thinly sliced, butterflied, or cutlets. Used as whole muscle, it is one of the most bought chicken products for home-cooking and it is popular among fast-food businesses for use in chicken sandwiches. Excess meat is turned into trim or chunk meat which can go into further processing to be turned into products like chicken nuggets, chicken strips, and popcorn chicken. The chicken breast meat can even satisfy a wing craving by cutting and further processing it to make boneless wings.
While there is a story behind each of the products, boneless wings are the star of this show. According to the Associated Press and Business Insider India, boneless wings were invented in 2003 by Buffalo Wild Wings. The National Chicken Council shares that bone-in buffalo chicken wings were first made in 1964 at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York. As they were a much more economical option than beef, pork, or most other chicken cuts at the time, but still a dish that many found very tasty, they became a popular bar food. This led to their association with football. Every year, the National Chicken Council puts out a Wing Report forecasting the number of wings that will be eaten during the Superbowl. For the 2024 game, they projected that Americans would consume 1.45 billion wings. In their report, they found that while 38% of Americans preferred breast as their favorite cut of chicken with wings as second (20%), 53% of Americans at the time were more likely to want to eat bone-in wings compared to boneless wings.
While over half of Americans would prefer bone-in wings, that leaves 47% that prefer boneless, which is a large amount when you consider that boneless wings have been around 21 years compared to bone-in’s 60 years. From February 2022, until September 2023, wholesale jumbo wing prices were lower than jumbo boneless breast prices. Beforethat, for most of the time from October 2014 through January 2022, wholesale jumbo wing prices were above those of jumbo boneless breast. Here is the catch though, if we look at an all-time line graph comparison of Expana’s quotations in both lines, we find that over time jumbo wing prices have trended upwards, while jumbo boneless breast prices, apart from 2021-2023, have trended downwards. So, we end with two questions looking forward: if these trends continue, over time could boneless wings become a more attractively priced option than bone-in? If they do, might consumer preferences shift?
Staying alive: turkey livability issues
Livability has been a major concern for the turkey industry in the past couple of years. By taking the USDA monthly turkey harvest numbers by the USDA egg set numbers from four months prior, we can get an estimate of livability. The 5-year average livability prior to 2022 was 87.8%, with the lowest being 86.4% in 2021 and the highest being 90.0% in 2019. The current outbreak of HPAI hit in the beginning of 2022 and approximately 9.4 million meat turkeys were lost to the disease during that year resulting in a livability of 81.8%. On a year-to-date (YTD) basis through June, 5.3 million meat turkeys were affected. If that number of birds were accounted for in the June YTD hatchability for 2022, it would have resulted in a YTD hatchability of 87.3%, which is much more in-line with the standard compared to the actual YTD hatchability of 83.0%. Less meat turkeys were affected by HPAI in 2023 with a total year-long number of 3.5 million and 0.3 million through June. Average livability for the year was 84.0%. 2024 has again seen an uptick in HPAI cases in meat turkeys, with a value of 1.2 million birds impacted through June. Current livability is at 81.9%.
Interestingly, when we account for the birds affected by HPAI, there are not dramatic changes in YTD livability for the years ’23 and ’24, as was seen in ’22. In 2023, adding in the turkeys lost to HPAI resulted in YTD livability increasing from 84.2% to only 84.5%. Similarly, in 2024 YTD livability moved from 81.9% to 82.8% when HPAI cases were accounted for. These values are well below the ’17-’21 YTD average of 87.8%, suggesting that an increased number of turkeys unaffected by HPAI are not making it to harvest. Many of these birds may be being affected by avian metapneumovirus (aMPV). The USDA put out an update March 1, 2024, that stated, “Over the past few months, diagnostic laboratories in several states have indicated an increase in serologic positives using a pan-aMPV assay. The positive serologic samples have increased since the early fall of 2023.” Additionally, APHIS confirmed that some turkeys in California had contracted aMPV subtype A between November and December 2023. Previously, aMPV subtype A had never been identified in the U.S. While reports of the number of turkeys affected by aMPV are not available for public information, it is a likely culprit in the large decrease in livability that the turkey market has experienced since 2023.
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