Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The catch in all of this is that the company provides the necessary inputs: the day-old chicks and drug-laced
feed. However, the companies often rank growers that have been given chicks from different hatcheries or
feed from different feedmills, creating an unfair situation. Even though the company is responsible for the
quality of the chicks and feed, the company ranks growers as if it is a straight-up fair competition.
Hamilton explains: “The difference between a top ranking and a bottom ranking can mean many thou-
sands of dollars to a grower for a seven-to-nine-week flock. The irony is that while the company portrays
this system as a competition, there is really only one winner, and that is the company.” 13
According to Hamilton, “Some growers have seen through that smoke screen to understand that only
through working together will they gain the leverage to demand better contracts.” He says that the ranking
system has often been used as a tool to retaliate against growers who speak out against contract abuses.
Hamilton told a U.S. Senate subcommittee that he himself experienced this drop in ranking when he be-
came active in the Alabama Poultry Growers Association.
I saw my ranking fall and was put on a probation-like program. I had sick birds, through no control of my own.
. . . In a more extreme example, a breeder-hen grower in Georgia, Chris Burger, was the victim of severe retali-
ation by his poultry company when he tried to organize a breeder-hen grower group in his area. The company
deliberately targeted him and delivered chickens with cholera to his farm. He was able to sue, and years later he
won his case after it was proven that the company deliberately targeted him with the bad birds because of his
organizing efforts. But his victory in court paled in comparison to the loss of his farm and the loss of his family
to divorce related to the stress of those years. 14
Valerie Ruddle, a poultry grower for JBS/Pilgrim's Pride in West Virginia, has experienced the full
range of integrator abuses, including retaliation. Usually poultry growers are too fearful of losing their
property to speak out. But no one is going to keep Valerie Ruddle from speaking the truth about the in-
dustry. She says that growers are really afraid, but she will not be intimidated. She once challenged an
executive at Pilgrim's Pride: “You've already hurt me financially as much as you can. You've done it all.
There's nothing else you can do.” 15
Ruddle grew up in the Washington, D.C., metro area and “never in a million years” thought she would
raise poultry. But in 2003, her elderly in-laws, who raised turkeys for Cargill, were forced to either upgrade
the facility, taking on decades more of debt, or face being dropped as a grower. 16
Ultimately, they were
shut down, and after two years of no income they faced foreclosure on the property.
Valerie and her husband, Russell, could not stand by and watch their family lose the farm, so they de-
cided to take over the poultry operation. However, they knew that Cargill's upgrade requirement was un-
reasonable, because the turkey facility was in good shape, so they decided to grow chickens for Russell's
employer, Pilgrim's Pride, now owned by JBS.
Although the Ruddles had a healthy savings account, and both had good jobs (Valerie at the local pro-
pane company and her husband as an electrician at the Pilgrim's Pride processing plant), they had never
planned to go into debt for $812,000 by assuming the mortgage on the 147-acre farm and to build new
warehouses and other equipment for growing chickens. They were not allowed to use the existing turkey
warehouses but had to invest in new structures built to Pilgrim's Pride's specifications.
Based on the cash flow and profit estimates of Pilgrim's Pride, the Ruddles' business investment should
have paid off. But it did not. The debt on the farm and chicken operation depleted the Ruddles' savings;
without their off-farm income, they would be bankrupt. Their economic situation really worsened after
Pilgrim's Pride declared bankruptcy in 2008 (it was acquired by JBS in 2009). The company was run so
inefficiently that it cut costs in ways that hurt its bottom line and negatively affected growers.
For instance, the company fired some of the chicken catchers—the people who literally enter the ware-
house when the chickens are mature and catch and load them in trucks. This cost the Ruddles money, be-
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