MODERN-DAY SERFS - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 115

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MODERN-DAY SERFS
Corporation: an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility .
—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Most Americans have no idea that the chicken they eat is raised by a farm family that makes an average of
$15,000 a year—that is, if none of their back-breaking labor is counted. Contrast this with the amount of
profit made by KFC or a company like Tyson Foods.
According to Mike Weaver, a contract grower who is the president of the Contract Poultry Growers As-
sociation of the Virginias, when a consumer buys “a twelve-piece bucket of chicken at KFC or other chains,
it costs around $26.99 [price depends on the store location] or thereabouts. Of that $26.99, the integrator
[poultry company] receives around $3 to $5 depending on the price of chicken when it was bought. KFC
gets around $21, and the grower who spent at least six weeks raising that chicken gets 25 cents!” 1
Weaver says that the industry doesn't like the growers to talk to one another, but “they don't intimidate
me.” He has been growing poultry for ten years, beginning with turkey after he retired as a special agent
with the Fish and Wildlife Service's Office of Law Enforcement. After three years, he switched to broilers
just before Pilgrim's Pride merged with JBS. He charges that the industry lies to people and will not listen
to grievances.
This unfair relationship exists because the food industry has amassed tremendous political and economic
power through the massive consolidation that has transpired since antitrust regulation was eviscerated by the
Reagan administration. This is especially true in the poultry industry. Over the past twenty-five years, as lar-
ger companies acquired smaller, regional processors and cooperatives, the industry has become increasingly
concentrated. In the past decade, the five largest poultry producers—Tyson Foods, JBS/Pilgrim's Pride, Per-
due, Sanderson Farms, and Koch Foods—now sell 70 percent of all chicken consumed in the United States. 2