• The top poultry producing states are Arkansas and Georgia, followed by Alabama, North Carolina, Mississippi, Texas, Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia (USDA, 1995). Missouri, South Carolina, and California also have many poultry plants (Broiler Industry).
• There are approximately 200 poultry processing plants in the United States, employing between 200,000 to 250,000 workers. (United Food and Commercial Workers Union)
• Tyson, the top poultry producing company, accounts for 23 percent of the broiler industry’s output. The next four companies (Gold Kist, Perdue, Pilgrim’s Pride, and Conagra) accounted for another 30 percent of the industry, meaning that the top 5 companies supply over half the nation’s chicken. The next five in size account for another 14 percent of output. (Broiler Industry, 1999).
• Poultry production doubled in value from 1987 to 1997 (USDA).
• On average, fourteen out of every one hundred poultry processing workers become ill or are injured due to their job each year. This is more than twice as high as the average rate of injury and illness for all industries averaged together (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1999).
• One hundred percent of poultry processing plants surveyed by the Department of Labor did not pay employees for all the hours they worked. (U.S. Department of Labor, 2000).
• Forty-four percent of poultry plants surveyed by the Department of Labor did not pay proper overtime to their chicken catchers (U.S. Department of Labor, 2000).
• Repetitive motion injuries are common for poultry processing workers, since birds are sent down the factory lines at high speeds. In 1979, the USDA line speed limit was 70 birds per minute. It is now 91 birds per minute (USDA).
• Cumulative-trauma disorders, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, are 16 times higher among poultry workers than the national average (Harper’s Magazine, August 1999).
• Poultry in the United States is produced almost exclusively produced by farmers who are under contract to large chicken processors. Seventy-one percent of these contract growers earn incomes that are below the poverty line (National Poultry Growers Association).
• Nearly 130 poultry growers in Mississippi have asked the state Legislature and the Department of Agriculture to set up a grievance board to monitor the poultry industry and interactions between contract poultry growers and poultry companies, particularly the contracts (Commercial Dispatch, Columbus, MS, 2000).
• The average poultry grower can expect to earn $8,840 annually until loans are paid off, typically in 15 years (Marva Farm Credit, 1997).
• Tyson Foods, the largest poultry producing company in the world, was named as one of the “Ten Worst Corporations of the Year” by the Corporate Crime Reporter in 1999, due to seven worker deaths, fines from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and other labor violations.
• Some health experts fear that antibiotics used in chicken feed are contributing to increasing humans’ resistance to the drugs when prescribed by their doctors. The Food and Drug Administration recently proposed a ban on the use of the antibiotic Enroflaxin in poultry production (Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance, 2000).
• In January 2000, after a two year probe, a federal grand jury in Scott County, Mississippi indicted five chicken processing plants on charges of conspiring to violate the Clean Water Act. The companies are accused of dumping poultry wastewater into a river that feeds the drinking supply for the city of Jackson (Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo, MS, February 10, 2000).
  

For More Information
or to join the movement for justice in our nation’s poultry industry:
Contact Elisabeth Solomon, Public Policy Director, at (773) 728-8400, ext. 42.