TYSON SHUT NEBRASKA.
JBS JUST SHUT CALIFORNIA.
AND YOU STILL THINK GROCERY STORE BEEF IS SAFE?This isn’t downsizing—it’s consolidation.
Fewer plants. Fewer choices. Higher prices. More control.
RANCHER DIRECT CERTIFIED℠
Go direct 🇺🇸 https://t.co/ml7XAEF2qf pic.twitter.com/cExM01avWm— Beef Initiative🇺🇸🇸🇻Beef.com (@beefinitiative) December 13, 2025
The announcement that Tyson would shutter a massive beef processing plant in Nebraska was the first such closure in more than a decade. Beef processors are running at lower capacity, as the U.S. cattle herd size is the smallest it’s been since the 1950s.
When Tyson Foods announced it would close a beef processing facility in Lexington, Nebraska, and scale back to one shift at a facility in Amarillo, Texas, the company said the move was necessary to “right size” its beef business.
In total, the closure and cutbacks will eliminate about 7% to 9% of total beef processing capacity nationwide.
But David Anderson, a livestock economist at Texas A&M university, doesn’t anticipate that it will have large impacts on the prices producers get for their cattle or how much consumers pay for beef at the grocery store.
“Typically, when a plant closes, what we expect is lower cattle prices and higher beef prices, because we’ve lost this capacity,” he said. “But at the same time, we’ve got so much excess capacity already that that may not happen. It’s not like the closing has created a constraint on packing.”
https://www.kcur.org/environment-agriculture/2025-12-16/tyson-closing-beef-processing-plant