Tyson Isn’t Chicken

“Now that is a beautiful belly,” Tom Hayes says, running his hand along the plastic-wrapped contours of a slab of pork about the size and shape of a Gutenberg Bible. It’s lying on a stainless steel table in a test kitchen at the Discovery Center, a laboratory for product innovation at Tyson Foods Inc. in Springdale, Ark. Hayes, who’s served as chief executive officer since December 2016, lifts and rotates the block of meat, examining the cut with loving attention. “Ever seen a pork belly, Liz?” Hayes asks his director of executive communications, Liz Coffey, who’s touring the research and development center for the first time. She has not.

“I think you should hold the pork belly,” Hayes says, his tone half-joking, half-reverent. He carries the slab with outstretched arms and lays it in Coffey’s hands, conducting what seems to be a spontaneous benediction.