Most of the chicken and pork consumed in the U.S. comes from contract growing. Whether you are a farmer, advocate, or eater, you’ll want to know the truth about contract growing.

What is Contract Growing?
Production contracts are increasingly common in the agricultural business. Rather than market and sell their own products, farmers often sign contracts that commit them to raise and deliver products for one specific company. In the livestock and poultry sectors, production contracts mean that companies own the animals all along the supply chain but contract out the job of raising these animals to individual farmers. Farmers take on the debt burden of constructing housing and maintaining facilities for raising the animals.

Contract Growing and Corporate Concentration in Poultry
Currently, only a handful of corporations control our food from farm to fork. Over the past 50 years, fewer multinational agribusiness corporations have come to control more of our food system, shutting out local and family farmers in the process. With unchecked power, companies have standardized exploitative practices in their contracts that are harmful to farmers, rural communities, the animals themselves, and the environment.

• Below are the 10 largest poultry companies in the United States and where they are headquartered, listed by weekly turnover in pounds.
  1. 1. Tyson Foods, Arkansas – 200,470,000
     2. Pilgrim’s Pride Corp, Colorado (owned by JBS, Brazil) – 160,940,000
     3. Sanderson Farms Inc,...

Read Full Story: https://foodwhistleblower.org/unchecked-corporate-power-and-exploitation-the-...