On January 5, 2018, a 6-episode docuseries was released on Netflix by the name of Rotten. This Netflix-original docuseries looks deeper into the food industry as it faces new challenges throughout the years.

The third episode is titled “Big Bird,” and dives into the poultry-raising industry, a very popular topic of environmental documentaries recently. However, this episode follows a particular crime that occurred in Clarendon County, South Carolina – only a two hour drive from my home county of Horry County. In this area in 2015, over a period of 5 weeks, 16 grow houses were hit by a person who was either turning the temperature of the houses up and suffocating the chickens, or turning the temperature down and freezing them to death. One farmer, Sonny Nguyen of Brewer Farms, lost 40,000 birds and around $50,000; another, Bill Coker of W.L. Coker Farms, lost $140,000 birds and around $120,000. Across all of the farms, over a million dollars was estimated to have been lost.

These chicken growers who had been hit were all growers contracted under one company, Pilgrim’s Pride. The growers and Pilgrim’s Pride had a contract that gave Pilgrim’s Pride the authority to control every step of the chicken growing process. While the chicken growing process is the most expensive part, it is also the part that gets the least pay. The growers use almost all of their income on paying to grow more chickens.

“Big Bird” by Netflix IS LICENSED UNDER CC BY 4.0.

The suspect behind the attacks was believed to be James Lowery. A chicken grower who had just been let go by Pilgrim’s Pride, Lowery had motive to want to sabotage the company. The big company is where I will put my focus on.

In 2006, Pilgrim’s Pride was growing rapidly and announced they would be buying another chicken growing company, Gold Kist. Through this merger, Pilgrim’s Pride acquired 2,300 more contractors. However, during the recession in 2007, Pilgrim’s Pride crashed and practically went bankrupt. A Brazilian company, JBS, bought them out and saved them.

However, just ten years later, JBS lost their reign as one of the largest companies in the world. Since 2007, they had paid tens of millions of dollars in bribes to government officials in exchange for funding to purchase companies such as Pilgrim’s Pride. The CEOs of the company were arrested for insider trading and resigned. Their rise to success later became their downfall. JBS was an example to many of how big corporations can seem so successful, but eventually plummet.

In a PR context, the whole of the process of chicken farming will eventually be fatal for these companies. Anyone who goes online knows that the vegan and vegetarian movements are growing. People want more sustainable and humane practices being used on their food. At the end of the episode, Nathan Boggs shows that he has found a way to do small scale farming and give the chickens a better quality of life. His chicken sells for a more expensive price, but people appreciate the efforts. Perdue, a large chicken company, even recently announced their efforts to raise their birds more humanely. This is what consumers want to see these days.

For more information about the process of chicken farming, JBS, and the 2015 chicken attacks, watch Rotten‘s third episode on Netflix here.