SIC 2015 Poultry Slaughtering and Processing
SIC 2015
This industry includes establishments primarily engaged in slaughtering, dressing, packing, freezing, and canning poultry, rabbits, and other small game, or in manufacturing products from such meats, for their own account or on a contract basis for the trade. This industry also includes the drying, freezing, and breaking of eggs.
311615
Poultry Processing
311999
All Other Miscellaneous Food Processing
The U.S. poultry business evolved in the mid-1930s into a vertically integrated industry in which a few top companies accounted for most of the country's broiler chicken and turkey production. Vertical integration combined the previously independent and fragmented operations of feed mills, hatcheries, farms, slaughterers, and processors into giant conglomerates that managed all stages of production. The poultry industry is composed of approximately 95 percent of the animals slaughtered for food annually in the United States.
The five primary product categories handled within the poultry processing industry are chicken, turkeys, ducks, geese, and egg products. Available chicken types included young broilers/fryers weighing an average of three pounds; specially grown, six to eight pound young roasters; capons, surgically desexed male birds weighing more than nine pounds; heavy hens, often called stewing hens, that are over a year old and weigh four to six pounds; and Rock Cornish or Cornish game hens, young chickens weighing about one or two pounds. About 18 percent of ready-to-cook chickens are sold as whole birds and the rest are sold as broiler parts or boneless chicken breasts or thighs.
Broilers, which are chickens raised specifically for table consumption, represent the largest component of the industry, with Americans consuming approximately 86.3 pounds per capita in 2005. It is anticipated that the amount of broilers produced per year will continue to rise. Broiler production was concentrated in 17 Southeastern states on the eastern seaboard and Gulf of Mexico. This so-called "broiler belt" was the source of 90 percent of production. Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi were the top four producers of broilers. No such regional concentration existed in the turkey sector. The top four turkey producing states were North Carolina, Minnesota, Virginia, and Arkansas.
According to the U.S. 2002 Census of Manufactures, there are 536 establishments in the poultry and egg processing business. Additionally, many red meat processing plants also slaughter poultry. Most broilers (99 percent) are produced under contractual arrangements in which the broiler company provides a grower with day-old chicks, and the grower then raises the birds in the carefully controlled environment of the grow-out house. Protected from disease and predators in an enclosed system, the birds are fed mostly a diet of vitamin- and mineral-fortified corn and soybean meal during the six-and-a-half week period it takes to bring them to market weight of about four pounds. Prior to being sent to the processing plant, the birds are tested for traces of pesticides, toxins, or antibiotics in the ongoing United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) residue monitoring program. In 1935 it took approximately 16 weeks for a 3.5 to 4.5 pound broiler to be fully produced. By 2000, advanced technology had reduced that time to six or seven weeks.
Annual per capita consumption of turkey stabilized between 1997 and 2004 at about 17.5 pounds per person. The methods used in breeding, raising, slaughtering, and processing turkeys are almost identical with those used for chicken. Turkey hens reach maturity at about 16 weeks, with a market weight of 16 to 18 pounds. Toms take 19 weeks to reach their market weight of 28 to 30 pounds. Most turkeys are sold whole, either fresh or frozen. The United States continued to have the top turkey-consumption country in 2004 in pounds per capita, followed by France and Italy.
Tthe White Pekin duck remains the most popular duck breed for mass production. Annual production is about 21 million ducks, which are generally packaged and sold whole and frozen. Duck feathers and down used by bedding manufacturers are valuable by-products. The total population of geese in the United States rarely exceeds five million, and most are raised in Minnesota and Iowa.
Per capita consumption of eggs was roughly 253 pounds in 2004. The top five egg-producing states in 2004 were Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and California. Within the total industry, eggs account for 18 percent of the value of production and sales.
Rabbit meat is not recognized by the USDA as an "agricultural livestock" product (i.e., intended for human consumption) and remains regulated under provisions for "wild game."
Beginning in the early 1930s, the poultry industry was dominated by many small growers and processors. Poultry processing was one of the nation's first agribusinesses, characterized by many small farms. In the early days, raising meat and poultry was secondary...
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