Supply chain maps | Broiler chicken
Broiler chicken supply chain
Farm Animal Transparency (FAT) maps the U.S. broiler chicken supply chain from public federal records: the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service establishment directory and demographic data, and the EPA Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database. All three maps were rebuilt from those sources on September 24, 2026.
The broiler sector is vertically integrated. Integrators own the birds, feed, hatcheries and processing plants; contract growers own the poultry houses and provide the labor. USDA’s Packers and Stockyards Division reports that the four largest processors handled 55% of broiler slaughter, by weight, in 2021, its most recent published figure. USDA’s November 2023 grower rule cited 57% for 2022, based on WATTPoultry’s rankings of ready-to-cook output.
Click any marker for the underlying record. Each map has an “About this map & sources” panel in its lower-left corner that explains what is included and what is not.
The three maps
Supply
Broiler Supply Map
All 260 USDA-inspected establishments marked as slaughtering young chickens, colored by parent company and sized by USDA slaughter-volume category (which counts all species). Tyson Foods has 31 plants, Pilgrim’s Pride/JBS 25, Wayne-Sanderson Farms 21, Perdue 11, Koch Foods 8 and Mountaire 4. The other 160 include regional companies and small kosher, halal and specialty plants.
Open Broiler Supply Map →Enforcement
Broiler Enforcement Map
EPA ECHO Clean Water Act records for broiler grow-out operations in 17 states: 113 permits coded or named as broiler farms, plus 611 Maryland and Delaware CAFO permits that record no species. The map’s state table shows a central finding. As of September 24, 2026, ECHO held no CAFO permit records for Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina or Louisiana, and only a handful for Georgia (3), Arkansas (2) and North Carolina (7). Most broiler farms use dry litter and do not discharge, so federal rules do not require them to hold a discharge permit. States regulate them under programs whose records are not in ECHO. A missing record is a gap in federal data, not evidence of compliance.
Open Broiler Enforcement Map →Plant enforcement
Broiler Plant Enforcement Map
EPA ECHO compliance tiers for 256 poultry-processing wastewater permits located within three miles of a USDA young-chicken slaughter plant; 144 of the 260 plants have at least one matched permit. Matching is by location, so a permit can belong to a related nearby operation. Plants that discharge to a city sewer system are covered by local pretreatment permits and may not appear.
Open Broiler Plant Enforcement Map →Data sources and methodology
- Plants: USDA, MPI Directory and Establishment Demographic Data, downloaded September 24, 2026. Establishments with young-chicken slaughter marked in the demographic file; locations from the USDA directory. Parent-company groupings are FAT’s, based on establishment names and DBAs. Keystone Foods plants are grouped with Tyson Foods (acquired 2018); Wayne Farms, Sanderson Farms and Harrison Poultry plants are grouped as Wayne-Sanderson Farms (Cargill and Continental Grain; Sanderson acquired 2022, Harrison 2025).
- Enforcement: EPA ECHO Clean Water Act facility data, retrieved September 24, 2026. FAT compliance tiers: red = formal enforcement action in the last five years or significant noncompliance; orange = noncompliance plus an informal action; yellow = noncompliance or an informal action; green = none reported. ECHO describes violations as alleged unless resolved.
- Concentration: USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, Packers and Stockyards Division Annual Report 2021 & 2022 (March 2024), Table 5: four largest processors’ share of broiler slaughter by weight, 53% in 2020 and 55% in 2021. The 2023–2024 report (September 2026) does not report a broiler figure. The 57% figure for 2022 is from USDA’s Transparency in Poultry Grower Contracting and Tournaments final rule (Nov. 28, 2023), which cites WATTPoultry rankings by ready-to-cook pounds, a different measure.
Related reading
These maps are reviewed each quarter; this page was last reviewed October 15, 2026. Corrections welcome: dirkadams@farmanimaltransparency.com.