The National Chicken Council, yes, boys and girls, there is such a thing, posted a response to FOOD, INC. on their web site this past Friday. (Thanks to @civileater for pointing this out on Twitter.) Problem is, Big Chicken rebuts claims that FOOD, INC. does NOT make while remaining silent on issues the film raises. I wonder, did they see the same movie I did??? Did they see the movie at all???

I happen to agree with many of Big Chicken's meta points, namely that the positions advocated by the local/organic/sustainble (LOS) movement, if writ large, would cause food to become unaffordable for the masses and that the LOS crowd needs to admit that what underpins much of their ethos is aesthetics, not facts.

But, if Big Chicken and the rest of Big Ag want the LOS gang to be forthright in their advocacy, the corporate types need to follow those rules as well. To date, FOOD, INC. has proven to be more balanced than have the responses of the film's opponents. (N.B.: A comment I left on Julie Murphee's site taking her to task for issues similar to those I raise in this post has been removed, yet another example of how Big Ag and its allies don't want honest debate.)

Big Chicken's strawman begins by saying:

Food, Inc., [sic] is a one-sided, negative, and misleading film about the way food is produced and sold in the United States. It is a documentary about the American food system the way Raiders of the Lost Ark was a documentary about archaeology.

Cute line but how can you compare a fictional movie to a documentary that intersperses filmed interviews and footage of food processing in action? And, how is a director supposed to make a film that tells both sides of the story if one side refuses to participate. As I mentioned in my Robert Kenner interview post, 40 to 50 food companies, in addition to the ones noted in the film, declined to be interviewed for FOOD, INC. My impression is that, despite an obvious agenda, Kenner attempted to be fair. Big Chicken and its ilk have only themselves to blame if they didn't get to tell their side of the tale.

Looking more specifically at chicken ranching, Big Chicken says:

Certain animal health products – some of them antibiotics, others not – are sometimes used in raising broilers. ... Concern has sometimes been expressed over the possibility of “antibiotic resistance,” which theoretically could occur if animals are treated with antibiotics, which eliminate some but not all bacteria; the bacteria might then survive the processing of the birds and remain on food products, which are then not properly cooked before being consumed by humans.

Big Chicken's missing the point, perhaps deliberately. The worry isn't what they say, it's that antibiotic-resistant disease will pass from chickens to humans who have contact with them or their waste during growing and processing. Likely to happen? I don't know. Viruses, for sure, travel from fowl to humans, as evidenced by flu and not just avian flu. Bacterial disease, unclear to me, but Big Chicken should address the point the LOS crowd raises, not a made up one.

Then Big Chicken says something that really frosts my cojones:

Broilers (young meat chickens) are not raised in cages. They are raised in large, open structures known as growout houses.

Guess what, if you saw the movie, you'd know that this is exactly the same thing the film says! FOOD, INC. shows not one but two different types of growout houses!!! Did anyone at Big Chicken actually see FOOD, INC.??? Or, are you counting on readers of your screed not seeing it so you can dupe them into thinking that the film presented a false portrait of how chickens are raised??? And, if these growout houses provide such a great environment for the chickens, why did one of the Big Chicken companies put pressure on a grower shown in the film to not allow cameras inside his growout houses. Buy a clue, when you hide things, it makes it look like you've got something to hide!!!

Big Chicken then goes on to inform us:

The broiler chicken business is highly competitive, with relatively low prices for the products at retail and increasing costs of production due to factors such as the ethanol industry’s competing demand for corn, which is the principal component of chicken feed (the largest part of the cost of raising a chicken). As a result, raising chickens is not considered a lucrative business, but it can be a relatively steady one. This is because the integrated chicken company takes the bulk of the market risk while maintaining payments to its contract growers at a relatively stable level.

Remember that comment about risk — we'll get to it in a moment.

Proceeding, Big Chicken quotes a University of Georgia researcher:

While poultry contracts offer benefits to growers such as reduced market risk, reduction of production responsibilities, lower operating capital, and relatively predictable incomes, broiler production operations require substantial investments for growers. Because poultry houses represent long term investments (30 years or more), individuals need to understand the long term business potential of these commitments before building.

Translation: reducing market risk requires assumption of long-term financial risk.

Big Chicken continues with the Bulldog Ph.D.:

[T]he cost of building a modern, four-house contract broiler production unit with tunnel ventilation, solid walls and cool pads, from scratch would be $700,000, or $8.75 per square foot. If 100 percent of the cost was financed at 8.5 percent for 15 years, the annual cost would be $82,718.

The grower would expect gross income of $170,170 based on payments from the integrator of 5.25 cents per pound plus a small fuel payment. After paying the mortgage and expenses such as utilities, the grower would have about $30,000 net cash income. The cash income would increase significantly when the mortgage is paid off. As noted, the $30,000 would be a supplement to the family’s income and not the principal income itself.

Now, it doesn't take a Harvard MBA to know that a business where EBITDA is $113,000 and IA is $83,000 (note that this is cash amoritization of a loan, not non-cash amoritization of goodwill) is a highly risky business from a financial point of view. Again, the growers may receive the benefit of lower market risk by contracting with Big Chicken but at the cost of assuming huge financial risk.

While Big Chicken wants us to believe that FOOD, INC. is biased, the NCC's numbers aren't much different from the FOOD, INC. numbers. FOOD, INC. says that the average grower with two poultry houses has about $500,000 in loans outstanding and make an average of $18,000 a year. On a per growhouse basis this is $250,000 (FOOD, INC.) vs. $175,000 (Big Chicken) in loans and $9,000 (FOOD, INC.) vs. $7,500 (Big Chicken) in annual income. Somewhat different, for sure, but even if we take the Big Chicken numbers as gold, FOOD, INC. is not that far off and actually paints the net income situation as BETTER for growers (on a per growout house basis) than Big Chicken. So much for FOOD, INC. being one-sided and negative.

One big hole in the National Chicken Council rebuttal is that it neglects to address this issue of illegal aliens working in Big Chicken and other Big Ag. This is a major theme of FOOD, INC. It would be nice to see the industry respond in a forthright fashion. Right now, their silence is deafening.

Once again, go to see FOOD, INC. It opens in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles on June 12 (this Friday as I write this). Do it with an open mind. That means acknowledging that the filmmaker may have a point AND that the film may be wrong about those it criticizes. This is the start of a debate, not the end of one. It would be nice if Big Chicken and the rest of Big Ag would participate in an open and honest fashion.