We met up with Morgan Spurlock, John Buttram & Charles Morris to discuss fast food and the “chicken mafia” which control 99% of ALL chicken consumed in the United States!
This episode we met up Morgan Spurlock at his pop-up restaurant, Holy Chicken to discuss the newly released Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! Morgan is an award-winning and Academy Award-nominated writer, director, producer, playwright and president and founder of full-service New York-based production studio Warrior Poets. Joining us were poultry farmers John Buttram and Charles Morris.
Although the start of this documentary is about opening a truly transparent fast-food chicken restaurant, it became quickly apparent that this film is about the farmers, there struggle and the corruption surrounding “big-ag” in our country. 99% of the chicken consumed is the United States is produced by a monopoly of five main companies. These companies control all aspects of chicken production and essentially “own” the farmers who grow their chickens. The whistle-blowing in this documentary has resulted in John has being black-balled the the industry and no longer grows chickens. Charles is still working because he has no choice which is a struggle every day. He currently grows approximately 1.2 million chickens every 8 weeks with a 10% average die-off. Thats an average of 100,000 chickens to compost that he is also responsible for disposing of. Both John, Charles and their families are struggling to survive with a constant barrage of threats from the retaliating industry which includes lobbying group, The National Chicken Council. This film did NOT stop us from eating chicken; in fact, immediately following the episode we ate a spicy, grilled, crispy chicken sandwich which was delicious. Morgan, john & Charles DID open our eyes to the corruption in “big-ag” as well as the struggle our farmers deal with on a daily basis which is carefully and strategically hidden from the average American consumer. We will continue to stay in touch and hope to do a follow-up episode with a more positive change to the industry.
