HORACE MCQUEEN: More Chickens Coming Our Way!
Sanderson Farms, headquartered in Georgia, has announced tentative plans to build a massive poultry complex north of Tyler.
Cost of the new enterprise will be an estimated $200 million dollars. The eighty or so farmers raising birds under contract for Sanderson are expected to spend another $135 million on poultry production facilities.
The feed mill location is planned to be on Highway 80 west of Mineola. The hatchery and processing plants will be built near Winona and Lindale in Smith County. According to Sanderson officials, the plant will process 1,250,000 broilers a week — and annual output will be 375 million pounds of poultry. At full capacity, employment is expected to be about 1,700 not counting those on the farms raising birds. Pay at the processing plants is good — but not a preferred job for many folks.
County and city leaders in the areas affected by the proposed new construction seem to be running over themselves offering all sorts of tax abatements and other “treats” to get Sanderson on board. All the while many other long time businesses in Texas are having a hard time paying their bills. Several of them — Macy’s, Sears, J.C. Penney’s, Gander Mountain and many more have announced store closings across the state. Maybe our economic development gurus need to spend more time, and money, to help struggling local businesses. After all, they were here first!
Sometimes we get more than we bargained for when a new business comes into our communities. Sanderson Farms has brought lots of new jobs to the Waco and Palestine vicinities where they have built new poultry plants — just like the one they plan to build north of Tyler. Hopefully the folks in charge of the planned Tyler area facilities will do a better job of planning than they did at some of their other locations.
Sanderson has contracted with some new growers who haven’t a clue about getting along with their neighbors. The smell from several of the poultry houses can be breathtaking when the wind is right — or wrong! Plus Sanderson seems to have no interest in making sure that new growers are located on roads that can bear the weight of the heavy feed trucks—and trucks bringing out birds going to the processing plant. Sanderson Farms needs to learn that to be a good neighbor you have to be one!
