For more than a decade, poultry farmers across the U.S. fought for financial protections from the big agriculture companies that they not only rely on but sometimes fear.
Less than a month after those protections went into effect, some members of Congress and agricultural trade groups are pushing to take them away.
They support inserting language into the U.S. House appropriations bill that would prevent the USDA from funding the Transparency in Poultry Grower Contracting Tournaments rule, said Aaron Johnson, policy co-director for the Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA.
The protections, implemented independently by the USDA this year, require that poultry companies be more transparent and less deceptive towards the people who raise their birds, said Johnson, whose North Carolina-based group advocates for farmers.
“It says, ‘USDA, we’re giving you money, but you can’t spend a single penny of that money on the Packers and Stockyards Act rule,” said Johnson of the text added to the appropriations bill. “They’re basically defunding the process.”
In a letter to congressional leaders, more than 50 poultry and livestock industry groups across the U.S. said the act’s recent additions will hurt the ranchers and farmers they represent.
The reversal could come as soon as this week, when Congress is scheduled to vote on an agriculture appropriations bill. A draft of the bill includes language that would declaw federal rules prohibiting poultry companies from deceiving farmers, said Johnson, who has reviewed the bill.
“These rules are so basement-level basic,” Johnson said. “Transparency. Not being able to deceive people or retaliate against people. How do we expect a marketplace to work with any kind of integrity or fairness without being able to enforce these basic expectations?”
Count your chickens
RAFI-USA members realized a decades-long goal on Feb. 12 when the USDA required that poultry companies be more transparent with the farmers.
The rule requires that companies, such as Tyson Farms, Perdue Farms and Pilgrim’s Pride, tell farmers in their contracts how many flocks and chicks they’ll receive each year. The information gives farmers insight into how much income they might earn.
North Carolina is home to some 4,700 lightly regulated poultry farms that raise more than a billion birds annually, a recent Charlotte Observer investigation found. Raising poultry is the state’s leading agricultural industry, but state lawmakers have cloaked the business in secrecy.
Poultry farmers typically receive five to seven flocks each year. The number of birds in a flock can vary, but a single barn can house as many as 40,000 chickens.
In years past, farmers alleged that companies sometimes slashed the numbers of birds they provided, perhaps because of economic conditions, processing plant capacity or retaliation against farmers who spoke out against the company.
Most poultry companies use a “tournament system” to pay the farmers who raise their poultry. The people who fatten their chickens most effectively are paid the most. But many farmers have complained that the system can punish them for things they can’t control, such as the quality of the chicks or feed they receive from the company.
To comply with the new rules, companies must now compensate growers even if a minimum number of flocks or birds is not reached, Johnson said.
That can provide a sense of security for poultry growers, said Rudy Howell, a Robeson County farmer who raised chickens for Perdue Farms for 25 years.
“You could get your finances straight,” Howell said. “Before, you didn’t know nothing.”
February’s USDA rule change also required that poultry companies disclose information about a flock’s breed, gender and health. They’re required to disclose the same information about the flocks sent to competing farms.
This disclosure, Johnson said, creates a paper trail for farmers who allege that the quality of chicks they’ve received was substandard, which hurts their chances at the highest payout.
Howell knows what it’s like to get sickly birds, he said. He knows what it’s like to find dead birds on a barn floor just days after delivery. And he knows the financial harm that can have on farmers.
“We’ve gotten flocks that couldn’t pay the light bill,” he said.
But language inserted into the House of Representatives’ agriculture appropriations bill would nullify the recent changes and prevent additional protections.
One of protections that the USDA is seeking would stop companies, also known as integrators, from discriminating or retaliating against farmers who speak out. Fear of retaliation is real, Howell said. It keeps farmers quiet, stopping them from complaining about reduced flocks, sickly birds or poor quality feed.
In a 2021 complaint to the U.S. Department of Labor, Howell alleged that Perdue terminated his contract unfairly. The company ended it, Howell said, after he complained that some company representatives were abusing chickens and he allowed environmental advocates onto his farm.
“They’re afraid to complain because they’re going to get a bad flock if they do,” Howell said. “They’ve seen it. They’ve lived it. You can tell if you got good birds. You can tell if you got bad birds.”
Two of the more than 50 industry groups that signed the letter to Congress in hopes nullifying the new USDA rules are North Carolina Cattlemen’s Association and Pork Council.
The rules, the letter says, “would incentivize frivolous litigation which would necessarily result in reduced opportunities to access these essential marketing channels. The entirety of the meat supply chains would be negatively affected by this outcome, but none more so than farmers and ranchers.”
Poultry is big business in NC
The Big Poultry project found that the contracts poultry farmers sign often leave them with mounting debts and little income.
Public records and interviews with interviews with more than a dozen current and former poultry farmers in North Carolina revealed:
Most poultry companies compensate farmers based on how efficiently they fatten their chickens. But the companies give farmers no control over important factors, such as the health of the chicks and the quality of the feed.
—Some poultry farmers were surprised when poultry companies required they they spend hundreds of thousands for equipment upgrades if they wanted to keep raising chickens.
—When farmers are unhappy with their poultry company, rarely can they switch to another provider. In many parts of North Carolina, there is only one poultry company that contracts with farmers.
“The integrators don’t work with these farmers,” Howell said. “They want to control them.”
