Investigate Midwest (https://investigatemidwest.org/tag/poultry/)
You might say price fixing is part of Big Chicken's DNA. And perhaps the number one poster child for price collusion has been the second largest U.S. chicken company by sales volume: Pilgrim's Pride Corporation.
There had been about 8 deaths a year on average across the poultry industry — until this year.
While poultry processors have seen large profits, poultry growers — the farmers that care for the chickens while they’re maturing — have not shared in the wealth, current and former growers said.
Four restaurant chains have sued the country’s biggest poultry companies, including Tyson Foods and Pilgrim’s Pride, saying they conspired to inflate prices, manipulated price indices and restrained production.
The dismal outlook for Wisconsin dairy farmers has worsened as they’re being warned that milk prices will continue falling, and more milk dumping could be necessary, if the federal government doesn’t start buying dairy products to offset COVID-19’s effect on the economy.
Neighbors could no longer formally complain about the smell of a chicken house, noise of a tractor or any other alleged nuisance on farms in Georgia that have been operating for at least a year under a bill proposed in the state House. Legislators are looking to balance the needs of the state’s top industry with the concerns of property owners who may be negatively affected by living near a farm. Under House Bill 545, property owners would lose the right to bring a nuisance suit, or a legal complaint about noise, odor or a similar issue, against an agricultural operation if the agricultural business has been operating for at least a year.
Sonja Solomonson is in the minority of farmers who produce chicken and other poultry. She lives on a small farm with a small flock, while her competitors raise thousands of birds, contracted with one of the major agribusiness companies.
Five companies — Tyson Foods, Pilgrim’s Pride, Sanderson Farms, Perdue Farms and Koch Foods — produce 61% of the chickens Americans eat, about nine billion per year, which doesn’t leave much room for alternative methods of farming birds.
Since 2010, poultry growers have taken out more than 3,000 loans backed by the SBA, totaling $2.9 billion, according to analysis of Small Business Administration loan data by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. In March, the Inspector General released a report looking into the relationship between poultry integrators and growers. It said the rules big poultry companies placed on chicken farmers means they are not independent small businesses, calling into question their eligibility for Small Business Loans. Now, the SBA is considering revising
The injury rate in the poultry processing industry is already higher than many other industries. Yet the rate would be higher still if not for faulty data collection methods and widespread underreporting problems across the meat and poultry processing industry, according to a 2016 Government Accountability Office report.
The number of new concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have increased across the U.S. over the past six years - bringing the total operations just under 20,000, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. From 2011 to 2017, the United States saw more than 1,400 new large-scale concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) established. That’s up 7.6 percent. Here's a look at the issue in maps and charts.