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Mother
Jones Magazine April 7,
2014
Read the whole story here:
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/04/cargills-chicken-factories-china-workers-live-farm-and-cant-leave
In
Cargill's Chicken Factories in
China, Workers "Live on the Farm"
and "Can't
Leave"
By Tom
Philpott
In a
wide-ranging interview with the
India-based Economic Times,
Cargill CEO David MacLennan talks
about how the globe-spanning
agribusiness giant managed to
turn the 2008 economic crisis
into a "record year of
profits"—a remarkable
performance, given that that
year's food-price spikes pushed
115 million people into hunger,
as the UN's Food and Agriculture
Organization estimated. And then
MacLennan drops this nugget on
his company's poultry operations
in China:
"So we are
building a facility in Shuzou,
Nanjing, which will have 45 farms
and it's a chicken facility that
will process 1.2 million chicken
every week. That's 60 million
chicken a year. We have a
hatchery, where we hatch the eggs
and one-day old chicks, DOCs, get
transported to the farms. The
employees live on the farm. They
can't leave because then you
increase the risk of disease. So
you grow the chicken for 44 days.
The chicken goes to the plants,
get processed, might be for KFC
and McDonald's, might be for
retail. They can count on us
because they know where every one
of their chicken came from. It
came from us because we're fully
integrated as opposed to other
companies." [Emphasis
added.]
I should
note that US meat giant Tyson,
too, is rolling out fully
integrated and vast chicken
facilities in China. But wait,
back up: like employees at
Foxconn, the company that
manufactures Apple products,
Cargill's poultry workers will
live on-site. But rather than
reside amid the production of
iPhones and
whatnot—apparently, not the
most pleasant place to call
home—Cargill's workers will
live amid the growth and
slaughter of 1.2 million chickens
per week—and all the blood,
guts, and vast stores of
chickenshit that
implies.
MacLennan
doesn't mention whether the
live-in requirement the company
imposes on its Chinese workers
also applies in its poultry
operations in other developing
countries. But he does boast that
the company runs "very big"
chicken operations n Nicaragua
and Costa Rica, adding that it
plans to "develop
fully-integrated poultry
breeding, hatching, growth and
processing" in other countries
around the world.
I am
reaching out to Cargill to hear
more about this innovative
chicken factory/worker-housing
mashup in China. Kind of gives
new meaning to the industry habit
of calling its large
livestock-raising facilities
"confinements."
Update:
Cargill's assistant vice
president for corporate
responsibility has responded:
"We can
understand how that might have
been confusing. The workers at
our chicken plant in China come
and go as they please. What our
CEO was talking about was a few
specialized jobs at the farm
where the chickens are raised. In
a chicken barn, two or three
people go into the barn with the
chicks when they’re a day
old and stay with them as they
grow for 45 days. This is to
prevent germs from getting into
the barn. The workers have their
own quarters, with kitchens and
television, etc. When the chicks
have grown, the workers leave for
about three weeks." -Mark Murphy,
Asst. Vice President for
Corporate Responsibility,
Cargill
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