• The seasonal spike in demand at Thanksgiving and Christmas leaves us with a huge surplus every year in January. The Toms demanded during the holidays have "sisters," and these hens mature in January when our refrigerators are still full of leftovers.
• If only we could grow turkeys having two breasts, a wing and half a leg! The fact is that we have to find the best way to utilize the entire animal. If we must dispose of dark meat through commodity markets, then we need to understand how doing so affects the true value of our premium, further processed products.

The typical use of accounting cost methods, often misinforms, and usually leads us into poor decisions. We've reasoned that by pushing our product mix toward those items having a greater "margin" that we'll realize a greater overall profit. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't really work. It assumes too much.

We normally update our cost information on an annual or long term basis, so it doesn't reflect changes in market prices. Since costs are expressed on a per unit basis, they fail to recognize the impact that product mix has on the supply mix. Rather, they assume that meat can always be supplied at the same cost for any level of product volume.

Cost also fails to deal with our manufacturing constraints. Since many products share common manufacturing lines, there is a physical limit as to how much can be produced. Consequently, it is erroneous to assume that volume doesn't matter and that cost will always be the same. Of course no one expects that this is true, but we've relied on cost because there hasn't been anything better. 

We develop systems that stay current with market prices, and values products from the standpoint that each must compete for limited meat materials and plant resources.