April 28, 2014
US Smart Chicken offers organic chicken despite high costs
Smart Chicken offers birds raised without antibiotics which are more expensive than other brands, and accounts for about 75% of their business.
The higher costs are due to organic feed being about three times more expensive than regular feed.
But Tom Nicks said he''s never apologised for the higher price for Smart Chicken. It''s cost them about US$5 to US$6 a bird to bring one to market, he said.
Smart Chicken birds are raised here in the Midwest in Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska. Distribution goes as far away as Korea and England, but the "core" of the business is in the Midwest, Nicks said.
Started in 1998, the company just hit US$100 million in sales. It is based in Nebraska with a two-plant operation and about 500 employees. The company is the largest producer of organic poultry in the US producing about 50,000 chickens a day. They are also the largest buyer of organic feed in the nation.
All of the chicken the company produces is 100% grain fed, meaning they do not mix in animal by-products to cheapen the feed. For that reason, mad-cow disease isn''t an issue with their products.
Smart Chicken birds are also air-chilled rather than chilled by soaking it in water to meet USDA requirements for chilling. It takes two and a half to three hours to chill slaughtered chickens rather than a few minutes through water immersion, but the result is there is no water retention in the meat, Nicks said.
Their organic line is also USDA-certified, from the bird themselves to their feed, which must be at least three years removed from pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilisers.
The company also "treats the animals better," Nicks said. People who handle and raise the chickens can and have lost their job for kicking a chicken out of the way, he said.
They also slaughter the birds with contained atmosphere stunning, a technique that gradually knocks birds unconscious by displacing oxygen with carbon dioxide. The method is considered the most humane way to slaughter, has been copied by others in the industry.
While there is a lot of automation in the business, the one thing Smart Chicken still does by hand is to hand-cut each boneless breast. All these things cost a little, but the company ends up with a product people like but don''t know why, Nicks said.
Poultry is the future, he said. In reviewing per capita yearly consumption of meat, Nicks said beef peaked at 94.5 pounds per person in 1976 compared to 56.5 last year. Pork peaked at 60.5 pound in 1971, compared to 46.5 last year. Chicken, on the other hand, has been near or exceeding 100 pounds per person since 2002.
Chicken has been growing at the expense of beef and pork, Nicks said. "In 1984 chicken consumption in America surpassed pork. In 1992 chicken consumption surpassed beef, and it ain''t going back."