"Costco’s 100 Million Chickens Will Change the Face of Nebraska"

Civil Eats:

In order to guarantee a steady supply and maintain the price, Costco fixed its eye on Nebraska as the best place to start raising and processing its own supply of chickens, and “break free of the monopoly” held by companies such as Tyson and Pilgrim’s Pride, much like it did for sausage and hotdogs with its Kirkland plant in Tracy, California.

In June, the company broke ground on a giant new poultry processing facility

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“Here you have a retailer who will now — from cradle to grave — have complete control of the entire production system,” says John Hansen, farmer and president of the Nebraska Farmers Union. “They’ll own the birds, they’ll control all of the particulars of the birds’ genetics, the production. They’ll own the feed mill and they’ll have control of the processing plant.

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Costco clearly has its reasons for bringing the first large-scale poultry operations to Nebraska — such as relatively abundant sources of water and corn, as well as a population that is literally and physically removed from the negative experiences other farmers have had in the industry