I used to work for Costco at $25 per Hour. Ive moved on to better things but they were the best retail job i ever had.

"The biggest companies illegally conspire to fix prices" A chicken cartel??

I'd pay $6 for a rotisserie chicken if it meant the farmers made out better. God bless all of our farmers. I thank them every time I eat.

costco really is one of the few businesses with integrity

IKEA sells chickens you have to assemble at home, lol

Everyone complaining about how Costco should make their chicken oragnic free range probably don't even buy organic free range and just buy what's cheapest.... You know, because you go to whole foods for organic food. You go to Costco to save money...

That vertical integration model is actually a nightmare. I applaud Costco for breaking away from Tyson, however having farmers own all the expensive equipment, but not the chickens, is essentially replicating the horrible business practices of Tyson.

I’d be willing to pay a little more than 5 dollars a chicken if it meant better practices

Vertically integrated agriculture isn't a farming method, it's a business method. It only indicates the ownership, not HOW the chickens are actually farmed. It's this kind of inattention to definition that makes me not watch videos from a channel

I worked for an "organic, free range chicken" producer. The feed was not organic and there was no free range. To get the job I had to sign non-disclosure agreements and NEVER speak to the press. There were 2 employees to raise 500, 000 chickens. From hatching to slaughter it was 42 days. Those chickens in Costco are perhaps 35 days and are quite small compared to those of 42 days. The farmer himself is a serf to the mega chicken slaughter house. With 9 batches or 4.5 million chickens a year and 2 employees, he was earning $18,000 a year. I was earning double what the owner was earning. Sooner or later the farmers go bankrupt and the mega slaughter house buys the farm pennies on the dollar and mysteriously turns a good profit. The mega slaughterhouse treated us and the farmer like trash. Most everybody hated their jobs and high turnover is considered normal. Very few outside of agriculture understand that the industry of agriculture is hopelessly corrupt. In ag universities we are taught about soils, chemicals, bugs, parasites, Irrigation engineering, mechanics and marketing, but not a word, not a peep regarding the food cartel and the corruption that has been eroding the family farmer away for the last 2 generations. This is why few children of farmers, choose to stay in farming. The food cartel is a problem far worse than plagues of locusts or droughts. Unless Costco has their own feed producers and feed mills, the food cartel will break them sooner or later. They could possibly stop selling Costco other commodities to force them to kneel.

Chick-fil-A is also going to break away from these chicken companies.

Come on Costco, this the perfect opportunity to do the right thing! Raise those chickens ethically and clean! Do it!!!

It works though. Every time I decide to get a chicken from them for dinner, I come out of the store with a bunch of other crap lol. :/

Costco is what capitalism and corporations were meant to be

1:35 this process exploits the family farmer. “You own everything that costs money, we own everything that makes money” - john oliver on chicken farming

If you cant have free range chickens I suggest CHICKEN VR goggles that create the illusion of free range

Costco has a good name when it comes to how they treat their employees

Costco is great, it allowed me to take my family a vacation to LEgoland with a discount price :)

Wow Costco pays 3 chickens a hour😁

A reminder that animal agriculture accounts for the vast majority of anti biotic consumption, and is the leading cause of global antibiotic resistance

I’m not some Whole Food hipster but I’ll admit factory farming (at least in its current state) is evil, hopefully Costco will truly care for the well being of the farmers and workers, environment, and chickens too

Atleast Costco is trying to make things little bit better not the best but step in the right direction.

I want 5 dollar chicken. Take care of Nebraska’s ecosystems and be fair to the workers but make it happen Costco!

Poor chickens.. To live a 45 day sad life to be sold for $5.

Good for Costco,the chinese already bought the biggest pork prosscesing plant in the US, "Smithfield",we need to prevent more chinese takeover of the US food chain

02:07 Vegan nightmare

I worked at Costco and skewered and cooked chickens all day and I gotta say it was hard work, although I wouldn’t eat the chicken I’ve made hundreds of times but I can assure you they are very strict when it comes to keeping them clean and safe.

I love all the Keto stuff Costco has now. Its fantastic. They really are more good than anyone else right now.

I thought this was suppose to be only 13 seconds long

Finally explained! I could never understand how a whole cooked Costco chicken was $5.00 and a whole raw Perdue same size was $8.00+. Great bargain.... I pick one up every time I’m at the store.

It reminds me of a well known chicken chain Los pollos hermanos

We use to keep chickens for eggs but they were pets first. It hurt my heart to see them casually tossing baby chicks and seeing how sad those chickens looks cramped up with nobody to give them hugs. I miss hugging my baby chickens.

As a longtime fan of Costco, I hope they do this ethically. They've always been a socially responsible company, which is why I shop there, but this venture could go south real fast. It's hard to see any feasible way to ethically produce the amount of chicken Americans consume.

Gob: "monopolies are illegal" Rich people: "let us introduce ourselves and our green friends"

I appreciate the in-depth coverage that also points out that while Costco may me doing some things right, there are some flaws to their plan. Would have been nice to hear more from the group at the end that opposes Costco's plan and vertical integration agriculture to better understand their reasoning and thoughts.

“Prep the birds for sale” lol we know what that means

This was actually a well thought out and engaging video. I am surprised. Good job CNBC 👍

I have been a Costco customer since approx. 1986. They have always been MORE THAN FAIR in our dealings. I have friends/relative working for Costco and they are treated very well, they tell me. I have observed Costco to be very "environmentally friendly " and fair to their suppliers. I TRUST Costco to do the right thing, in this venture.

5 dollar chicken is cheap? I must've been a cheap ass my whole life then since that's how much they've always cost around me

In Central America, some years ago, Walmart managed their own farms + cattle and slaughterhouses, not sure if they were looking to integrate their supply chain (beef), or they ended up in that situation after buying out a couple of major local retailers.

Was in Costco The roasted Chichen ran out, must have been 50 people waiting in line 🍗.....LOL

Mmm... heading to Costco now for a chicken. Dinner tonight, chicken salad tomorrow, and soup this weekend...

Costco is a great company to work for. It provided me my first house and brand new car along with motorcycles etc. And I live in California. Yeah you have to work hard but the pay is very good. As for the chickens it makes more sense to raise your own as the company sells tons and tons of chicken. Even the organic chicken sells out often. Great move for Costco. I suppose foster farms wont be very happy.

31k USD for packing chickens :o.... in the UK you'd be lucky to get 20k USD!!

Perdue: "Just give up on people after they fail once. It's how we treat our own employees anyways!"

This sounds like a fowl idea....

I just ate one of these and had a stomach ache for 3 days. Literally the ONLY Costco product I’ll never buy again. I love Costco.

They did the same thing in Texas with the egg market! Shut down many farm Forced them into bankruptcy!

I have never shopped at Costco but I'm going to start now.

Do *_NOT_* insult my Costco.

There is a chicken factory in my town, and there's literly a big field right next to the factory. The field has been empty for YEARS, and yet those chickens still suffer inside those "farms".

since this was made several years ago, anyone have an updated link to any report on how well or how bad they are doing now at end of 2019/beginning of 2020?

As a small scale Chicken Farmer we are going to fight these large Corporations and bring our food raising back to our regions.

Guys I have farm chickens for 16 years and don't be fooled. The reason they can produce cheap chickens is that they pay the farmer little to no money to do it . Let Costco own the farm and grow the chicken and see what happens to the price. This is the new face of slavery

I’m happy for the people who raise chickens. Because they only basically have two companies they can deal with. Hopefully Costco will treat them better.

Even if Costco's farming practices end up barely different from Tysons etc, the move will still increase competition. Costco sells cheaper chickens. It'll force others to bring their price down now that they aren't the only suppliers. As the video mentioned, it seems like the other companies are colluding to artificially inflate prices

Best roasted chicken you can buy off the shelf

That graph is from the National Chicken Council. The NCC's page currently has a chart of the broiler prices, which matches the graph in this video. But underneath it says "Wholesale and retail broiler price are composite prices of parts from 1990 forward." No idea what it means. But I've been buying raw chicken in stores for about 7 years, and I've always been able to find $2.00/pound. Chicken prices have been stable for a while.

As a chicken farmer. This is how all large producers work Costco not doing anything original:( We have family farm

I work at a beef packing plant for Costco the one in Illinois not California and we all make 15 and hour too

Everyone comments about how badly chickens are raised. No one pledges to quit eating chicken. I'm cutting down.

-What are you eating? -Costco material

Legit tho if I ever started working at a chicken farm I would grab a bunch of chicks everyday and hide them in my house xD

$6 Chickens at Costco would still sell exactly the same

At 2:20 "the meat would be tough and unpalatable" that's why older ones i talk to complain about how chicken meat had a nice texture and is too mushy nowadays.

I'm just curious, in the 1990's Hormel was paying more where ? What state?

God, you guys are on point. Keep up the good interesting work

"Prep the birds for sale"? 🤣

Never let company dictate your farm because that when you will lose. Farmer need to set up their own co-op. Their own logistics chain,centralise management,warehouse,processing plant n etc with farmer as the stock holder n in control.

5:28 broke my heart 💔

I prefer small-farm organic chicken even if I have to pay more for it, so I do. On the balance, Costco isn't adding more evil to the chicken world; they're just taking more of the profits of that world for themselves, which is the beauty of a free market. I'm too ignorant to speak to the environmental hazards this poses to Nebraska. However, based on what I know about Tyson, and Purdue, Costco would be an improvement. At least Costco answers to and deals directly with their end customers. Perhaps (perhaps) that will make them feel more accountable. One can hope.

"Costco sells about 60 million of them every year" "this operation will provide costco with 40% of its yearly chicken needs, about 100 million" how tf does these numbers work?

Nobody: Chicken farm employee chucking handfuls of baby chicks.

6:52 Does anyone know where this picture was taken?

In my country average cost of chicken meat ranges from 1.5USD to 2.5 USD /KG ,but it's highly variable according to demand and supply.

Is there a follow up to this story?

Why does it concern me that small businesses are dying and big businesses are forming monopolies? (Like Unilever)

Yep you can buy a 5 dollar roasted chicken in my 3rd world southeast asian country. And it's a whole roasted chicken! They also come with free gravy!

more people should see this, and we need more "real, goog quality news" like this! this is what news report supposed to be

I also am a chicken farmer and a former field man for a poultry company. I can tell you a lot of this story is BS. I do not live in poverty and in fact make a comfortable living with 3 house/barns. My wife and I have other jobs other then chickens as do most "farmers" that also grow corn soybeans etc. Anyone that does not work off the farm full time would have more houses. I would estimate I spend about 3-4 hrs per day in my houses. Sometimes more and sometimes less. As a former field man who regularly visited theses growers weekly the ones that I saw struggling financially were the ones who didn't have enough birds to justify staying one the farm and not working off and were using most of the money from the operation to live off of instead of saving and planning to replace equipment that will eventually wear out. There are 6 poultry companies in our area that I can grow for and I agree competition is good and helps make the companies treat the growers with more respect. I can also tell you these companies want growers and will bend over backwards to keep good growers who regularly grow good healthy birds. Most of this is market driven. I find it hard to believe that a Costco will elect to lose millions of dollars on chickens just to get costumers in the door. With the number of chickens they buy they can negotiate a better price then a smaller buyer. At the very least I think they would break even. As for pollution the manure/litter my farm generates is sold to area farms who know it is a good source of fertilizer. They get soil tests taken yearly and try to put on only what they need. Our state has a nutrient management Dept. that can monitor the generation and application rates. Most farmers are not wasting this litter. It is too valuable. For those that feel we mistreat the chickens remember the more comfortable I keep my birds the more efficient they grow which translates to more money in my pocket. Finally we don't feed growth hormones to make them grow faster. Most of the growth comes from genetics. If you have a tall man who marries a tall woman they are going to have tall kids. My chicks are given a low dose of antibiotics in the hatchery and are only given them in my houses if they become sick from a certain illness, which is very seldom. I feel this video is trying to spread misinformation about an industry that, like many others, has it's challenges but is doing a very good job of addressing some of those problems.

What is learned from this video : (1) Costco does really look its customers and business partner. (2) You can't make everyone happy.

She said that Vertical Integration was relatively new. Bull. A&P did it a century ago, bringing food cost down from 45% to 25% for the average family.

COSCO should also plan to build a manure digester on each farm and a centralized waste incinerator. The farms would be energy independent and the waste from each farm would be reduced by ratio of 1000 to 1. They would also capture the phosphorous which can be sold for $88 per ton.

Oligarchs win, a small business loses. They control what, how, you do, they now own you, but you are in debt, nothing you can do. This is not free market capitalism. That "Big is Better" just gives the oligarchs control of the marketplace.

Wow, I had no idea that chicken meat was so much in demand!!!!

Sam's Club sells $5 rotisserie chicken too! Never knew it's a loss-making deal for them.

3:43 I don't mind slaughtering animals myself but there was something so grotesque about seeing that wall with caked on blood. I wonder how often they cleaned it.

I will still only buy my eggs and chickens from my local farmer, where I can See the chickens run around outside all day when I visit the farm.

And, just why do you keep mentioning Perdue when it's #4 even by the pie chart you show??

Same method Magnolia does business in the Philippines. Company provides chicks, feed and vets, and in the end, the same company buys it back. Minus feed and vet cost. But..they can only sell them to the same company.

Love the vertical integration Costco

$5?!? Where?! My local Costco sells them for $8 lol

I don't even know what "organic" means anymore. Does it even equate to a better product or is it just a selling point. The sad truth is most consumers don't have a clue if buying from Whole Foods is really better or not. You can put labels on anything and claim it's better for you. Trendy, expensive shopping markets like Whole Foods or Trader Joe's don't have any more proof than Costco that they sell better products.

Not only USA. I have the same deal with my farms with large company in EU. We are just slaves to them. But there is nothing to do, going alone is guaranteed bankruptcy. I raise 250 000 chicken a year and barely make my ends meet. Props to making this documentary it is spot on.

The way they're explaining it sounds impressive and all, but that's almost identical to the way ALL poultry farming (chicken and turkey) is done in the U.S. The only change here would be that Costco will own both ends of the operation, so they don't need to buy their chicken at higher prices from an outside source. It's hardly some big revolutionary business model. If you were running a butcher-shop and happened to also own a farm on which you raised all your own products, then OBVIOUSLY you're going to be making more money than a shop who bought their meat elsewhere.

That is good model of business, as long as Farmers make profit instead living on the edge..

There is no chance that a 5 dollar chicken is humanly raised.

I worked in the poultry industry. I worked on the live production side amid things, so I know all about the contract. And Costco contracts are the same as the big four companies

Really the same reason any company vertically integrates. To cut out the middle man for higher profit margins.

6:55 nice tractor stock footage from Germany 👌