We are a land run by
corporations. Our politicians are just talking heads for the rich corporate
type that buy their votes in Congress and now I learn that our food companies
are robbing our farmers and holding them hostage by corporate rules in their
shady deals that are loosely regulated by our government agencies. When will
people just do what is right to other people and forget about the ultimate
profit?
Americans love to eat chicken. It
has always been plentiful, easy to cook and reasonably priced in the
supermarket. With the high price of beef lately our consumption of chicken has
doubled. In the last 25 years the chicken industry has doubled its production and
the head count went from 80 million chickens per week to now about 160 million
chickens per week consumed. We have heard the stories of the poor living conditions
that chickens have to endure before they are ultimately sent to slaughter anyway
but that is not because of greedy farmers. It is the farmer that is just a puppet
for the greedy corporate companies who do whatever the hell they want for the
ultimate profit for themselves.
Poultry companies have you
believing that chicken farmers are prosperous businessmen but that is so
untrue. In fact, many farmers are in ill health and are struggling with their
bills daily. Many studies have shown
that farmers whose sole source of income was chicken farming were below or near
the poverty line in income. How could the people who make the meat we eat
barely be making a living of their own? This is all thanks to a system called
contract farming. The companies bring baby chicks to an independent farm and
pick them up about a month later when they are fully grown. 97% per cent of our
chickens are raised this way. The
companies also own the feed for the chickens. The farmer owns the properties,
the equipment and the labor. Everything
around the business is owned by the farmer.
So, you, the farmer, own the
property and the equipment and we the corporations own the chickens. That
crappy deal essentially means that the farmer owns everything that costs money
and the corporations own everything that makes money. The chickens go to market for cash. The equipment
just gets old and needs to be replaced at the farmers cost. Farmers go into a
great deal of debt just to build the chicken houses and things built to the
corporate specifications. From the moment you sign that contract, the chicken
companies have a lot of leverage over you. The farmers don’t even want to raise
chickens the way the companies want them to. As it is the entire industry is
dominated by only 4 companies. They are Pilgrims, Sanderson Farms, Tyson and
Perdue.
These companies instruct the
farmers NOT to give the chickens any natural sunlight or even let them roam
freely in the grass because that will waste time. They only want the chickens
to be able to sit or stand eat and drink for optimal plumpness and less
muscles. The farmers want to get rid of the walls and to at least let in fresh
air and sunlight that is better for their health too. As fast as the farmers
can pay down their debt, the companies have permission to pile more debt on by
demanding that they make expensive upgrades to the equipment. According to
Christopher Leonard the author of the book called The Meat Racket, The company can take say 100 farmers in an area, ranks
them among one another, those at the top will get a bonus and those at the
bottom will get a financial reduction. So now the farmers are competing against
each other. Those who can somehow produce fatter chickens using less feed get
rewarded.
Why should a farmer get paid
almost nothing for something they can’t control? Being labeled a bad grower is
causing suicides among poor farmers. If the farmers complain the companies will
cut back on the amount of chicks they provide and on the quality of the chicks
so it is impossible to get a good rating. A few years ago Obama tried to
address these problems with new regulations but farmers were afraid to show up.
Since then rules have been written to protect the farmer but they have not been
enforced because a rider has been slipped into the Agriculture Appropriations
Bill that states,” none of the funds made available by this or any other Act
may be used to write, prepare, or publish a final rule.” So this forbids the USDA to enforce the rules.
A representative last year attempted
to pass an Amendment to simply give farmers protection to speak out without retaliation.
She asked for equal standing in the courts and for farmers and companies to
have equal standing in exercising their right to free speech. Immediately after
they voted and shut her down. It makes a real depressing ending to this story.
So what can you do? You know that you will not stop eating chicken but what you
can do is look closely at your elected officials and find out if they are
getting big contributions to their campaigns from the chicken companies. Those politicians
have been bought and sold and packaged to be against our poor farmers.
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