Big Chicken, Indebted Farmers

The US chicken industry is dominated by just a few very large, vertically integrated companies. They directly control every stage of chicken production from hatching to distribution, except that they outsource the riskiest stage--raising the birds from chick to mature bird--to independent farmers. In this episode, guest Patti Anderson of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future describes this system, explains how it traps many farmers in debt, and tells us about the most recent effort to make the system more just for farmers.

After that: the farmer questionnaire!

Some links related to the chicken conversation and the proposed rule changes:

Patti suggests this blog post for a summary of the rule changes

A recent op-ed in Civil Eats about the tournament system

Here's an official summary of the proposed rule-changes