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Chicken (broilers)
The chain
From born to plate
The core spine runs left to right. On the left are the inputs poured in; on the right, the levers people use to limit harm. Toggle layers to simplify the picture.
Inputs ↓ in
Ways to limit ←
Attrition
Of 1,000 hatched, how many are eaten?
A chicken-based walk down the funnel. Watch the caveat: the biggest leak is not on the farm, it is on the plate. Each stage uses a different denominator, so hover the labels for the honest footnotes.
Bars are illustrative counts per 1,000 birds. On-farm mortality, condemnation and DOA are shares of birds; retail and plate losses are shares of the food supply by weight, so they cannot be added as if they were the same 1,000 birds. Tap any label for the caveat.
Precarious parts
Where the system is brittle
Concentrated, tightly coupled systems fail together. These are the pressure points where one shock ripples across the whole chain.
Fertilizer & natural gas
Nitrogen fertilizer is 75-90% natural gas by cost; farmer-paid ammonia nearly quadrupled from ~$487 to ~$1,500/ton (2020-2022).218
War in Ukraine
Russia supplies ~23% of global ammonia exports; the fertilizer price index hit an all-time high of 1,270 in March 2022.2322
Genetics duopoly
Two firms (Aviagen, Cobb) hold 70-90% of broiler genetics worldwide: a single narrow gene pool for the world's most-eaten meat.25
Avian influenza
H5N1 has killed roughly 188 million US birds since Feb 2022, and spilled into 800+ dairy herds in 2024.5561
African swine fever
ASF killed or culled ~225 million pigs in China (2018-19), halving the herd; losses near $141B.57
Who runs it, who checks it, who reforms it
The players
A concentrated field: a handful of firms slaughter most animals, a few regulators set the floor, and a growing set of organizations push the ceiling higher. Badges mark public, private, or cooperative ownership.
Big Four beef packers
Oligopoly
JBS, Cargill, Tyson, National Beef control ~80-85% of US fed-cattle slaughter, up from ~25% in 1977.2829
Top-4 chicken integrators
Oligopoly
Tyson ~25%, Pilgrim's ~20%, Wayne-Sanderson ~8%, Perdue ~7%: about 60% of the US market.79
Broiler genetics duopoly
Near-monopoly input
Aviagen (~44%) plus Cobb-Vantress: 70-90% of the world's broiler breeding stock.2
JBS public
World's largest meat company
2024 net revenue $77.2B; listed on the NYSE in June 2025 near a $30B valuation.30
Tyson Foods public
Largest US meat company
FY2024 revenue $53.3B; ~20% of US beef, pork and chicken.33
Smithfield / WH Group public
Largest US pork producer
Chinese-owned since a $4.7B 2013 deal; WH Group ~$32.5B revenue.34
EW Group private
Genetics holding (DE)
~€5.5B revenue, 300+ subsidiaries; owns Aviagen, Hy-Line, Lohmann.35
Danish Crown co-op
Europe's largest pork processor
Farmer-owned cooperative; €9.09B revenue in 2023/24.41
MBRF (BRF + Marfrig) public
Brazilian giant
Sadia and Perdigão brands merged into MBRF in 2025; record R$164B revenue.42
USDA / FSIS regulator
US food-safety inspection
Inspects every US bird; post-mortem condemnation ~0.56%, ante-mortem ~0.23%.8
EU CAP policy/budget
Common Agricultural Policy
€387B for 2021-27; ~82% of subsidies support animal-based foods.3669
US Supreme Court courts
Prop 12 (2023)
Upheld California's farm-animal confinement law 5-4 in NPPC v. Ross.32
The Humane League
Corporate campaigns
Open Philanthropy has granted $60M+ since 2016, largely for cage-free wins.37
Cage-free movement
Corporate reform
3,000+ pledges; if kept, ~500 million hens/yr spared from battery cages.38
End the Cage Age
EU citizens' initiative
1.4 million validated signatures; a 2027 cage phase-out pledged but delayed.39
Good Food Institute
Alternative proteins
~$16M budget, 150+ staff; promotes plant-based and cultivated meat.40
Demand
Where the meat is eaten
Per-capita meat supply, 2023, carcass weight, excluding fish (FAO via Our World in Data).43 The United States sits near the top; the world average is about a third of it, and India near a tenth.
Two dials, no fake precision
Meat demand is moderately inelastic: price moves consumption, but less than one-for-one. These sliders use published own-price elasticities (beef -0.75, pork -0.72, poultry -0.68).48 They illustrate direction and rough size, not a forecast.
Marketing as an input to confidence
Compelled "checkoff" assessments and lobbying flow into consumer confidence at the plate end, the same way feed flows in at the farm end.
"Beef. It's What's For Dinner." and similar brand campaigns are funded by these assessments, sustaining demand at the plate.50
Follow the money
Who profits, who pays
Of every dollar spent on US food, the farm gets a shrinking slice; most goes to processing, transport and retail. Growers take on the debt while integrators own the animals.
The US food dollar, 2023
Farm establishments received 15.9 cents of each food dollar; the rest went to processing, transport, retail and food service.80
Farm share of retail meat
US farmers received ~41% of the retail price of Choice beef and ~26% for pork (May 2022).71
The grower's cut
Median contract broiler grower was paid 6.79¢ per live-weight pound in 2020, with wide "tournament" spread (4.29¢ to 9.64¢).70
Packer margins spike
During the pandemic the four dominant meat processors' net income rose about 500% as beef prices climbed 35%+; margins are cyclical, not always high.7677
Hidden-cost figures cover the entire food system, not animal agriculture alone. They are shown for scale, not as an animal-ag-only total.
Sources
Bibliography
Every figure above links here. Where our research flagged a claim as needing correction, we used the corrected value and the better source. Refuted or unverifiable claims were left off.