I wonder if perhaps the slump in sales is the cause of slimy carrots rather than the effect. It sounds like they were dumping carrots into the pipeline at a tremendous pace, and it sounds like every carrot farmer has added "baby carrot" tracts to their farms so they could push them out faster. What if there became a huge glut in the market for these overpriced carrots, and they ended up sitting on the shelves longer...baby carrots are freshly peeled and washed and still moist when packed, and the longer they stay wet in the refrigerator, the more slimy they become.

Slimy carrots are unappealing, thus they ended up staying on the shelves even longer and selling even slower.

I buy baby carrots, and they are not always slimy. It's about 50/50, in my experience, and it depends on where I buy them, as well. I travel full-time, so in the past year I've bought baby carrots in a couple dozen cities. It varies widely. Organic produce, including baby carrots, from Trader Joe's or Henry's or other natural foods type markets tend to be better, though not always. And produce purchased in small towns and towns far from big civilization (like in Alaska or the desert or mountains) is consistently of lower quality and not as fresh.

I don't know that "the pipeline/process" is to blame, though supply chain management might be. If they've got twice as many baby carrots as the market wants, and they let them sit on shelves for days or weeks before they hit the supermarket shelves, I can see that leading to a self-reinforcing problem.