A few of the two thousand workers at the CP Group’s chicken processing plant in Jiangsu, China, prepare broilers for the domestic market, including fast-food chains like McDonald’s, KFC, and Burger King. On a typical day they process 200,000 birds and double that number prior to Chinese holidays. Thailand-based CP Group was one of the first companies to set up shop in China when it opened for foreign investment in 1979, and today runs a multinational conglomerate of poultry, swine, and animal feed operations throughout Southeast Asia. Every part of the chicken is utilized, from chicken fat, which is used in paint, to feathers that are ground into animal feed. In China, chicken organs, feet, and heads are sold for human consumption. The company aims to be the “kitchen of the world,” but outbreaks of avian flu in China, as well as numerous food safety scares, have made some countries wary of importing Chinese poultry.
