Helene just pummeled America’s chicken farming capital

Hurricane Helene, the Category 4 storm that slammed the American Southeast over the weekend, has killed more than 110 people — and likely millions of chickens.

Almost half of the more than 9 billion chickens farmed for meat in the US, known as “broiler” chickens, are raised and slaughtered in the region. Georgia is the nation’s top chicken producer, processing 1.3 billion chickens annually. Over the weekend, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp told reporters that 107 poultry facilities in the state had been “damaged or totally destroyed by the storm.” 

Georgia’s Department of Agriculture didn’t respond to questions about the precise number of chickens that perished during Hurricane Helene. But given that poultry companies typically pack anywhere from 20,000 to 52,000 chickens into each barn, which can run as big as nearly twice the length of a football field, an estimated 2.14 million to 5.56 million birds are likely to have died. (The true total could be modestly different, as some birds could’ve survived damages, and some barns could’ve been temporarily empty, as companies clear them out for a few weeks between flocks.)

Some of the nation’s largest poultry companies — including Aviagen, Pilgrim’s Pride and Wayne-Sanderson Farms — suspended operations at their local facilities due to power outages in recent days. A spokesperson for Clemson University’s agriculture program told Vox that while this is a fluid situation and it is still evaluating the hurricane’s damages, 45,000 chickens died at one South Carolina poultry operation due to generator failure.

Virtually all chickens raised for meat in the US are confined in these sprawling warehouses, which bear no resemblance to the small barns of America’s agricultural past. These factory farm operations often have at least several sheds, housing hundreds of thousands of birds on one site at the same time. If enough facilities are compromised during a natural disaster like Hurricane Helene, millions of animals can perish, their last moments likely frightening and painful.

Their deaths also threaten the economic health of farmers and the poultry industry. Georgia’s agriculture commissioner, Tyler Harper, has requested immediate federal relief for the state’s agricultural sector. 

When hurricanes strike factory farms, they can also flush untold amounts of animal manure into groundwater or rivers and streams, exacerbating the challenges that governments and their residents face in the wake of pounding storms.

Hurricane Helene is the latest — but not the first — striking, high-stakes example of how our factory farming system imposes tremendous cruelty onto animals and also imperils human health. The industry has no reason to change, even after a catastrophe like this, because taxpayers cover much of the economic loss meat companies incur from natural disasters. 

How taxpayers subsidize factory farming’s risks

This is far from the first time a hurricane has torn through the Southeast’s poultry industry. It’s happened multiple times over the last quarter-century, a period in which Big Ag has only doubled down on building more, and bigger, factory farms. 

In 1999, Hurricane Floyd put much of eastern North Carolina underwater, killing an estimated 2.4 million chickens, 100,000 pigs, and half a million turkeys. North Carolina pig farms store the animals’ waste in giant manure “lagoons,” and several overflowed during Floyd, sending toxic sludge containing bacteria and viruses (including E. coli) into waterways and drinking water, according to the state’s climate office.

Chicken factory farms store manure in giant pits or as large mounds, creating a similar pollution risk as hog farms.

Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Florence in 2018 also caused devastation in North Carolina, killing millions of chickens and thousands of pigs, both of which caused damage to some manure lagoons, resulting in “fecal soup” discharge. Later the same year, Hurricane Michael destroyed over 80 chicken barns in Georgia that housed more than 2 million chickens.

Manure can seep into groundwater and contaminate private wells that many rural communities rely on for drinking water, a perennial concern heightened after major storms.   

Despite that history, the poultry and pork industries haven’t done much to mitigate the risks posed by natural disasters by, say, raising fewer animals on their farms or making major changes to how they manage the enormous amounts of manure their animals generate. That’s because US taxpayers bear much of the cost, both for the environmental cleanup and the dead chickens and pigs. 

When natural disasters hit a typical chicken farm, the meat company — which technically owns the chickens, not the farmer — receives $3 per mature bird from the US Department of Agriculture, about 75 percent of the bird’s market value. The farmer that supplies to the meatpacker receives just 33 cents per bird.

Many chicken farmers, most of whom raise birds on a contract basis for meat companies, are already toiling in precarious economic conditions. Hurricanes and other natural disasters can make it much worse.  

The federal government also reimburses economic losses from other severe weather, like heat waves and cold snaps, and disease outbreaks. Over the last two years, a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu — known as H5N1 — has resulted in the death of more than 100 million poultry birds, and the federal government has given well over $1 billion to the poultry industry, much of it going to the largest companies. 

Livestock production is both a leading driver of climate change and, as Hurricane Helene demonstrates, a victim of it. As global warming increases the frequency and intensity of natural disasters, policymakers should question the factory farming model. Instead, as a recent federal accounting of the US agricultural system shows, we’re doubling down on it, raising more and more animals on bigger and bigger farms.

“In addition to all the environmental problems associated with the factory farm model, and the public health problems that it causes, at the end of the day the extreme concentration of animals is just a fundamental vulnerability,” said Chris Hunt, deputy director of the nonprofit Socially Responsible Agriculture Project. “It’s a vulnerability to unexpected shocks to the system … The fact that poultry is not only concentrated on [factory farms], but is also concentrated geographically, is certainly problematic.”