{"id":35376,"date":"2021-05-11T12:52:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T16:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=35376"},"modified":"2021-05-21T09:09:52","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T13:09:52","slug":"mass-farming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/mass-farming\/","title":{"rendered":"Mass Farming and the McNugget Takeover"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What is mass farming in the poultry industry? How does the mass manufacture of the McNugget lead to mass farming?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mass farming is one side-effect of the mass production of the McNugget. Because fast food is produced in giant quantities and is the same everywhere, farming changed, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more about mass farming and how McDonald&#8217;s affects the poultry industry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Mass Farming and the Poultry Industry<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>A similar dynamic has played out in the poultry industry. <strong>The invention of the McDonald\u2019s Chicken McNugget in the early 1980\u2019s reshaped how American chickens were raised and sold.<\/strong> It transformed a bulk agricultural commodity into a branded, manufactured, and value-added product. As such, fast food companies began to take a much greater interest in how poultry farmers raised their birds, seeking ever-greater product uniformity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The idea behind the McNugget was simple: a boneless chicken finger-food no larger than the size of a human thumb. The early tests of the product were so successful that McDonald\u2019s partnered with leading chicken processor Tyson Foods to ensure an adequate supply. The Arkansas-based Tyson Foods even developed a new breed of chicken exclusively to be made into McNuggets.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The success of the McNugget made McDonald\u2019s America\u2019s second-largest purchaser of chicken (KFC, perhaps unsurprisingly, was #1). Their massive buying power (and that of the few major chicken processors from whom McDonald\u2019s buys, like Tyson) wrought major changes for the nation\u2019s chicken farmers. As with beef, consolidation and concentration became the hallmarks of the industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Today, most chicken growers aren\u2019t independent at all\u2014they\u2019re essentially contracted employers of the big chicken processors<\/strong>, on whose behalf they raise the birds. Companies like Tyson own the chickens themselves and closely supervise every aspect of how they\u2019re raised, including veterinary schedules, feeding schedules, and equipment. The growers exercise almost no independent discretion at all. What the chicken grower <em>does <\/em>provide is the labor and the major capital expenses like land, fuel, and chicken coops. They often must go deep into debt in order to make the necessary capital investment to become a Tyson contractor.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All of this is deeply distressing for American ranchers and poultry growers. These were once seen as the central icons of the American West, the epitome of American ruggedness and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/maturity-continuum-7-habits\/\">independence<\/a>. For them to be reduced to the status of hired hands for the big agribusiness firms represents more than a reduction of their livelihood\u2014it is a loss of a way of life and a destruction of one of the most powerful symbols of the American historical experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is mass farming in the poultry industry? How does the mass manufacture of the McNugget lead to mass farming? Mass farming is one side-effect of the mass production of the McNugget. Because fast food is produced in giant quantities and is the same everywhere, farming changed, too. Read more about mass farming and how McDonald&#8217;s affects the poultry industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":35385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,20,24],"tags":[287],"class_list":["post-35376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-ethics","category-society","tag-fast-food-nation","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mass Farming and the McNugget Takeover - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mass farming and the McNugget. With the rise of industrial farming, poultry is farmed in huge quantities\u2014to make products like the McNugget.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/mass-farming\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mass Farming and the McNugget Takeover\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mass farming and the McNugget. With the rise of industrial farming, poultry is farmed in huge quantities\u2014to make products like the McNugget.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/mass-farming\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-05-11T16:52:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-05-21T13:09:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/mcnugget-chicken-chicken-nugget.jpeg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Carrie Cabral\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Carrie Cabral\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/mass-farming\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/mass-farming\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Carrie Cabral\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2ababb7c63a94ff5d2190f71dc417d56\"},\"headline\":\"Mass Farming and the McNugget Takeover\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-05-11T16:52:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-05-21T13:09:52+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/mass-farming\/\"},\"wordCount\":438,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/mass-farming\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/mcnugget-chicken-chicken-nugget.jpeg\",\"keywords\":[\"Fast Food Nation\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Business\",\"Ethics\",\"Society\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/mass-farming\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/mass-farming\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/mass-farming\/\",\"name\":\"Mass Farming and the McNugget Takeover - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/mass-farming\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/mass-farming\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/mcnugget-chicken-chicken-nugget.jpeg\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-05-11T16:52:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-05-21T13:09:52+00:00\",\"description\":\"Mass farming and the McNugget. 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