Rotten (2018–2019): Season 1, Episode 4 - Big Bird - full transcript

[relaxed country music]

[chickens clucking]

[narrator] There are no wild chickens.

[man] These birds
do not feed themselves.

They do not move to fresh pasture
or clean out the poultry house.

The farmer has to do that.

[narrator] At the dawn
of the 20th century,

this animal did not exist.

Today, worldwide, we each eat
27 pounds of chicken a year.

There needs to be a lot more meat grown.

We need to double our yields
by the year 2050.



[narrator] Chicken's astonishing growth
has been propelled and satisfied

by a business that creates lives,
and harvests them,

at breathtaking speed and volume.

They really have created
some financial power.

[narrator] But now
the massive scale of production

has exposed those in the chicken business

to dangers large and small.

There's a lot of corruption in Brazil.

Brazil can destabilize
the supply-demand relation, globally.

[narrator] The volume of the chicken
industry has made it vulnerable

to catastrophe.

And the victims include farmers...

Opened the house up,
it was just a disaster.

[narrator] ...corporations...



You cannot be against identifying a crime.

[narrator] ...and even nations.

For a long time we've had the chicken
being run by the wolf.

And we've had enough of that.

[tense orchestral music]

[crickets chirping]

[birdsong]

[soft strings music]

[Sonny] My name is Sonny.

I am originally from Vietnam.

I came to the US

in October 1994.

I planned to stay here
just for a few years,

to operate the farm, raising the chicken,

and then go back to school.

But there is more work
and more work at the farm,

and nobody can take my position.

[narrator] If you've ever eaten chicken,
it probably lived most of its life

in a building just like this one.

All of these birds, where you are
standing here to the front door,

is 250 feet...

is only half of one house.

There will be another half
on the back over there.

And I have to take care
of 16 houses like this.

[narrator] Sonny Nguyen raises
nearly 20,000 birds at a time

in each of his houses.

[Sonny] It's hard to raise the chicken.

It's like babysitting the chicken.

I care for the chicken more
than I care for my children.

The more you know it,
the more you're in love with it.

You know, you have a passion for it.

My baby!

[narrator] But strictly speaking,
Sonny is not a farmer at all.

He's a grower.

From the day they are born

until they are slaughtered,
packaged, and shipped,

the chickens belong
to the poultry company.

I let you go, OK?

Sorry I had to pick you up.

[man] We provide the housing, the labor,

and electrical.

They furnish the feed, the birds,
and medication.

[Sonny] We set up the houses.
It's 92 degrees.

We will see how comfortable they are
to adjust the heater.

[clucking]

They're just seven weeks old now.

They will be in here for two more weeks.

[narrator] Birds raised for meat
are known universally as broilers,

and have been meticulously bred
for a century to grow fat, fast.

The day after they hatch,

the poultry company
drops them off with the grower.

These birds can reach
slaughter weight in 42 days--

just six weeks.

Bill and Sonny raise their flocks
for 57 days.

The first ten days and the last ten days
are most probably the crucial times.

For 21 days, they're on their own.

Fans on,

and keep the ventilation right,

and they grow.

[narrator] On average, the chickens are
expected to gain two ounces a day.

This is the grower's entire job:

maintaining ideal conditions
for the birds to gain weight.

[Sonny] If it's too hot,
we open the tunnel door

so that more fresh air coming in.

Or we turn the cool cell on,

so that the bird can have, can be cooler,

so that they have less stress,
because when stressed, they die.

These birds are pretty sensitive.

They are in a very sealed environment
for as long as they are there.

And temperature, water, air,

is very important to their survival.

[narrator] If the grower
does their job right,

then every bit of the bird can be
a money-maker for the chicken company.

I just want to catch one chicken
and show you how important it is,

on the dry floor, with the foot,

because the chicken company,
they want the foot to be dry.

You see?

[narrator] The feet,
once considered a useless byproduct,

are now exported to Asia,
where they're a popular bar snack.

At the end of the flock,
the catch crews come pick them up.

The chicken company is going
to send crews over here.

And they are going to catch
all of these chickens,

over to the plant,
and bring over to the plant.

[narrator] "The chicken company"
means Pilgrim's Pride.

Nearly every grower in Clarendon County
raises their birds for Pilgrim's.

Pilgrim's Pride
and its three major competitors

dominate the US chicken business.

They're known as "integrators"

because they own and control
every facet of production,

from hatching to feed to slaughter.

The integrators have refined
every element of modern bird production

to maximize profits.

They leave the expensive business
of raising the birds to the growers.

The least paying part
in vertical integration

would be the growing process.

That's why the companies
really don't want any part of that.

They would prefer it be farmed out.

So why wouldn't you?

If you can get someone to borrow...

$1,250,000, to build
a four-house poultry farm

and grow your chickens,

and you can tell them what to do,

you give the orders...

It's like you owning your own farm,
but someone else is paying for it.

So many expenses that we never thought
when we entered the chicken business.

When we entered it from the beginning,

people just told us how much income
you make in a year, the gross income.

But they never told us
how much money you spend.

[blues music]

[Sonny] Eight houses
will be enough for a living,

but while I'm young,
why not work a little bit harder, harder,

and... have a better future?

These people are going to work
day and night,

as hard as they possibly can
to make everything work.

Where an employee is going to work
eight hours and he's going home,

a grower cannot afford to do that

when he has everything tied up
in what he's doing, in his livelihood.

The chicken is our bank,

so we have to take care of them well.

[narrator] The contract is ruthless
in its favoring of the chicken company.

[Reid Phifer] There's nothing in there

for the farmer, for the grower.

They're telling you what they want,
how they want it done,

and this is what they are offering.

"If you want to grow chickens for us,
you sign it.

If you don't, you don't sign it."

[narrator] Growers are paid
based on the weight of the birds.

At your supermarket butcher,

the parts from a single chicken
will run you more than seven dollars.

To raise that bird,
the grower was paid about 36 cents.

If you could pay a grower
one penny more per pound,

I said just a penny more per pound,

would make a tremendous difference
to that grower.

[narrator] Chicken is different
from beef and pork.

Most farmers raising those animals
maintain complete control of the process.

In return, they accept the risk of
a sales price that varies with the market.

Bill Coker used to be in that game.

Growing pigs like we were growing them,
it was up and down,

just like the commodity market.

But we know what we got in chickens.
It ain't like farming.

I like growing chickens.

I think there is
a little bit more stability.

[Sonny] All the money
that we have at the end,

we just pay back to the bank,

pay for the gas, pay for electricity,

for the laborers.

At the end, you know,
it's not much left over.

It's not much left over.

But I'm happy with what I'm doing here.

I love my job.

[narrator] Chicken is far and away
the most widely eaten meat in America,

and the US exports
more than 3 million tons of it a year.

Mexico alone imports well over a billion
pounds of American chicken every year.

Market watchers expect chicken
to be the most-eaten meat in the world

by the end of 2020.

To feed this growing demand,

chicken companies have turned the raising
of birds into a virtual assembly line.

Every ten weeks or so,
a new batch of baby chicks arrives,

and the growing starts again.

Five to six grow-outs per year.

Almost 20,000 birds per house.

Over 100,000 chicken houses.

Nearly 9 billion chickens a year
in the US.

Fifty-eight billion worldwide.

[crickets chirping]

[narrator] In 2015, the extraordinary
proportions of chicken output

became the perfect conditions
for an extraordinary crime.

One that could only have happened
in an integrated poultry world.

I've never seen a case like this
on my desk.

[somber music]

I might forget my birthday, but I will not
forget February 17th, 2015.

It was three or four days
before they would come pick them up.

It was one of the better-looking flocks
that we had,

because it was cool and...

and... and...

and the survival rate was good.

I checked the birds
at about 11:30 p.m., quarter to 12.

Everything was running fine.

So I said, "Well,
everything's gonna be alright."

But, I mean, you don't know.

[Sonny] I left the farm around midnight.

In the morning, around eight o'clock
on February 17th,

my employee calling me,
and with a loud voice,

"Sonny, the chicken died!"

And...

I was... my heart was almost stopped.

I just ran to the car, and ran over there.

[Reid] It looked like...

a...

a big white cloud of smoke.

A little like the house was on fire,
but it was white smoke.

I opened the computer room door,

and the smoke with the steam

just...

blew into my face.

And I fell down on the floor.

I almost passed out,
and I cried like a baby.

I know that...

I lost... everything in that year.

I open it up again,

and see the chicken, all the chicken
laid down on the floor.

That was devastating.

Open the house up to see all those birds.

Looked like a white sheet on the ground.

That's our livelihood.

We take care of those birds...
I mean, it's seven days a week.

[Sonny] When you be with somebody long,
you're in love with that person.

I love to raise chicken,

and...

I don't want them to die.

Not even one of them to die.

So when they die, it just hurt.

[narrator] Bill and Sonny's flocks
didn't die by accident.

Whoever did it had cut the heat wide open,
and cut all my fans off.

So I didn't have no ventilation.

The temperature was 122 F.

And it happened around
1:30, two o'clock in the morning,

when the temperature was raising.

[somber music]

One of these switches
in every one of these houses.

And this switch here controls four houses.

So he come in here and cut that cell off,
he cut the power off to the alarm.

You flip it on,

it just runs all the time,

so it makes the temperature
in the house rise.

What he done
is actually suffocated the birds.

[Sonny] The chicken have
no air to breathe.

And it's too hot for them to survive.

So all of them died.

[narrator] Sonny Nguyen
lost about 40,000 birds.

Bill Coker lost more than 140,000.

[Bill]
For somebody to come in there and do that,

it was just...

It's just unbelievable.

This person must know
so well about my farm,

in order to do this.

[ominous music]

Nobody in my staff,
with the Sheriff's Office,

had ever seen anything like this.

The smell of the dead birds...

You could just simply tell that...

it wasn't a...

pleasant thing for the birds.

[narrator] Bill's farm
is just nine miles from Sonny's,

and the attacks occurred
only a week apart.

They were not the only victims.

We had about seven different growers

affected in Clarendon County,

and one grower that was hit
here in Sumter County.

You're talking about a total loss
of 320,000 birds.

It was serious business
as far as we were concerned.

[narrator] Over a span of five weeks,
at least 16 grow houses were hit.

In each case, the thermostat
was used as a weapon.

Some birds roasted to death.
Others froze.

So heat won't affect a small bird
like it will a big bird.

The big birds,

you suffocate them,
or get them over-heated

and they'll die.

Small birds,

you have to cool them down
to cause the mortality.

So that's what happened.

[narrator] The killer knew their poultry.

[soft music]

I could not sleep.

Every night I have to stay at the farm
with my gun on in my car.

He could have kept on doing it
and never got caught.

If I owned a chicken farm, I'd be scared.

It is clear that these farms
were the most isolated,

and the most vulnerable.

[Sonny] I don't know
who I can share with, you know.

So I just hold it inside,

and bear with it, and deal with it myself.

[Ernest] There were no footprints,

there were no fingerprints,
there was no videotape.

We didn't have those kinds of things.

Whoever was doing it had to know
how the operation worked.

He wasn't a fly-by-night fella.

We thought it's maybe
some service person,

who knew well about the chicken farm.

It might have been somebody
working for one of the farmers,

and had been terminated,

and, um...

and was doing this in revenge.

I never hurt anybody, you know.

And, I have a good heart,

and I try to help other people, you know.

Especially other farmers.

So I would never think

that somebody would
take revenge on me at all.

[Randy Garrett]
As more farmers were attacked,

then we knew, "Wait a minute,
this wasn't just one employee."

It didn't seem to be one employee
who was getting revenge over the employer.

Somebody had a bigger motive.

It wasn't somebody
just had a beef with me.

They had a beef with the company.

There was a kind of audit
of the poultry industry in those counties

to see if they could determine
if there's somebody that might be upset,

somebody that might have a reason

for being willing
to go out and kill these birds.

[narrator]
And there were still the corpses.

Each grower had tens of thousands
of rotting birds to dispose of.

[Bill Coker] It was just devastating.

Cleaning them up was the problem.

Disposing of those birds was...

was... a task.

The thing is how to deal
with the dead chicken.

The only thing we focused:
how to deal with the dead chicken.

We loaded them on those trucks,
and took the backhoes and the bulldozers

and dug holes in a burial site,
a mass burial site.

[narrator] But on Sonny's land,
the water table was too high.

Health officials feared the decomposing
chickens might get into the water supply.

We are not allowed

to move all the dead chicken
outside the house.

We have to bury the chicken
inside the house, in those two houses.

We lay one layer, two layer,

two lines of dead chicken.

We would spray water on top of the pile

so that we can activate the bacteria.

So they can decompose quicker,

but it takes a long time.

[narrator] In a region where
chicken growing is a common line of work,

these mass killings
were a major economic crime,

with two victims.

These birds never made it to market,

so the corporations
were never able to sell them,

and the growers weren't paid for raising
chickens that never made it to market.

It was the farmers.
They're the ones that lost big time.

Over a million dollars in damage
was sustained by the growers.

I would hate to be in their shoes,

facing what they did, financially.

It's just enormous.

[Sonny] We lost the income
for those two houses.

It is maybe around $10,000 per house.

Clean-up and all,
I think it was around $120,000.

Loss.

[narrator] Even worse,
the losses to the growers continued,

with the birds that did survive.

Sonny's payment for what was left
of his flock was determined, as always,

by what's known as the tournament system:

an industry payment structure that pits
each local farmer against all the others.

[Sonny] We compete.

Who will raise the chicken,
bigger chicken, with less feed.

[narrator] The poultry company tracks
not only the weight of the birds,

but the exact amount of feed
they were given over their lifetimes.

It's called "feed conversion,"

and the farmer who uses the least feed,
pound for pound, gets a bonus.

You can have someone

that raises a pound lighter chicken
than you do,

yet he has a much lower feed conversion.

So, with it being a front-loaded
feed conversion contract,

he will rake the bigger part
of the money off the table

because he will be on the top
of that grow-out for the week.

[narrator] The thing is, all the variables
that affect the birds' weight gain,

the feed, the genetic quality
of the chicks, and the medications,

are provided by the poultry company.

The person on the bottom
just may have been unfortunate

and got chickens that did not do well.

From no fault of his own.

[narrator] The ugliest part of all

is that the bonuses
are subtracted from those farmers

whose feed conversion is below average.

The winner's bonus comes from
the grower at the bottom of the pack,

who will make far less
than his contracted 5.75 cents per pound.

It can be thousands of dollars.

If one farmer does real well,
then that punishes the others.

It's competitive.

I mean,
I wish there was a different way to do it,

but that's the way
the chicken business is.

[Sonny] When I received the settlement...

the company had put in two dead houses
into my performance.

[narrator] Applying
strict tournament rules to the growers

who had lost thousands of birds
to the mass killings

meant they were paid less per pound
for the chickens that did survive.

So I was... dead last in that week.

I was on the bottom with the performance,

because of the loss.

So, I didn't get anything out of that.

[Sonny] I lost more than 50,000.

After the bank take the money,

I had been left
with $12,961.61 after that.

But that's not even
a portion of the gas bill.

That's not a fair thing, but...

[narrator] Eventually,
Pilgrim's offset the growers' loss

with less than half their normal payments.

[Sonny] We have some compensations

from the chicken company to help,

but...

not that much.

Pilgrim's is a big company.
They can stand a little loss.

But us farmers can't.

I mean, we work on
such a small margin anymore,

that the loss...

is hard to recover.

We're still trying to dig out the hole.

[narrator] The tournament system
is a masterpiece

of ruthless industrial efficiency.

An incentive model that keeps cheap,
fat chickens on the market shelves

while the lowest-ranking growers
duke it out for a sustainable income.

In the weeks after the chicken killings,

Sheriff Garrett met with victims
in search of any clues.

That's when Bill Coker
recalled an unfamiliar face

at the corner store
on the day of the attack.

He was eating lunch,
and picking up information.

[narrator] Like Bill, this man
was a grower for Pilgrim's Pride.

His name was James Lowery.

[Bill] He was a chicken grower.

And...

at some point in time
I had to compete against him, I imagine.

He was asking about chicken houses
and ages and stuff like that.

[narrator] Rumor had it
Lowery was no longer in the game.

At that time he wasn't raising chickens.

He had lost his contract...

with Pilgrim's.

They said he wasn't taking care of them.

I don't know
what Pilgrim's had against him.

He just wasn't running the farm
like he should.

They have a procedure
and rules you have to follow,

and he wasn't doing that.

If you don't do your job,
then they write you up.

[Ernest] They did have inspections

and did have written communication
with the suspect,

in the weeks before
the birds started dying.

The birds weren't being
properly cared for, by their rules.

And he knew what the rules were.

[narrator] So Pilgrim's ended
Lowery's contract, and his income.

There was a motive
to get back at Pilgrim's.

[narrator] Without the steady income
from regular grow-outs,

any farmer would have been left
with massive debt.

You got some farmers
that are on the edge of breaking,

and it wouldn't take much
to push them over the edge.

[narrator]
Regardless of a possible motive,

law enforcement needed hard evidence.

We wanted to gather evidence
that could put him at the scene.

[narrator] They traced Lowery's steps,
including checking his phone records.

[Ernest Finney] His cell phone was
in the location of these chicken farms

on the nights that the birds were killed.

Every night
there was a chicken house killing,

there was a cell phone pattern
that went along with it.

Every night that we had an attack

on a chicken farm,

he was in the area.

And he had all the motive in the world
to commit this crime.

For us in law enforcement,
it doesn't get better than that.

[Randy Garrett] We charged Jimmy Lowery
with eight counts of burglary.

And then also eight counts
of destroying the animals.

[narrator] If the allegations were true,
Lowery had committed a singular crime:

serial mass chicken slaughter,

by exploiting the unique scale
of the chicken business.

From the very start, size mattered.

In 1923, an enterprising Delaware farmer
named Cecile Steele

accidentally received
500 egg-laying chickens.

So she raised them for meat.

Three years later, she was growing
broilers 10,000 at a time.

John Tyson perfected
the integration of the business,

and his competitors followed suit.

Since the 1950s,
the number of birds grown in the US

has risen by 1400%,

while the number of growers
has plummeted by 98%.

Chicken is now controlled
by a few corporate giants.

Pilgrim's Pride began
as a Texas feed store,

selling chicks to its customers.

The company grew and consolidated
throughout the '80s and '90s

until it was breathing down Tyson's neck
for the number-one poultry spot.

[western music playing]

What's for supper?

Chicken.

[narrator] Like others in the industry,
founder Bo Pilgrim

masked his colossal ambitions
with a folksy public persona.

I'm dedicated to better chicken.

[narrator] By the close
of the 20th century,

Pilgrim's was grossing
two billion dollars a year.

But the constant quest for growth
left Pilgrim's Pride at risk.

Bo Pilgrim
always wanted to be the largest.

He wanted to be bigger than Tyson,

and he was, for a short period of time.

[narrator] In December 2006,

Bo Pilgrim spent over a billion dollars
to buy Gold Kist farms,

instantly adding 2,300 contract growers

to the thousands
already raising his chickens.

And Bo Pilgrim could puff his chest out
and say, "I'm the biggest."

[narrator] But Pilgrim's Pride
had grown too big, too fast.

When the recession hit in 2007,
Pilgrim's Pride crashed.

It actually put them into bankruptcy.

[narrator] Pilgrim's Pride began shutting
down plants and selling off assets.

And then came news
that shocked the meat industry.

Pilgrim's Pride was being bought by JBS,

a company most Americans
had never heard of.

Nearly 20% of US chickens
would now be owned

by a company in Brazil.

[ominous percussive music]

[in Portuguese] Brazil is the world's
largest producer of animal protein.

The biggest meat-processing companies
in the world are here in Brazil.

[narrator] Brazil is butcher to the world.

Three of the top ten meat-packers
on the planet are based here.

And the largest of them all

is JBS.

The company verges on world domination.

We're talking about
50 billion US dollars in revenue.

Like, with presence
in five different continents.

[narrator] JBS stands for
Jose Batista Sobrinho,

the company's founder.

Batista began the company in the 1950s

as a simple butcher shop,

and, through expansion,
turned it into a major corporation.

In the new millennium, his sons Wesley
and Joesley made JBS into a giant.

They were very competent, I guess.

They obtained the finance to merge,

finance to buy...

and then it started buying other abattoirs

and then it became JBS.

[narrator] As the company expanded,

the Batista brothers
became titans of the meat industry,

and prominent "Brazillionaires."

But the Batistas had made their fortune
slaughtering cattle.

Taking over Pilgrim's Pride was their
opening move towards global domination

of a booming business: chicken.

They didn't know what a chicken
looked like, but they bought

what, at that time,
was the largest poultry production company

in this country.

[narrator] JBS paid the equivalent
of $2.8 billion

for control of Pilgrim's Pride,

and they pulled it off
with loans from Brazil itself.

[in Portuguese] Official support
for JBS came from BNDES,

which is Brazil's
national development bank.

And BNDES is public money, it's taxpayer
money, which is going to these companies.

And it was a lot of money.

[ominous music]

[Pedro] Consolidation is a fact,
like globalization,

but governments should...

work against it.

Here, the Brazilian government acted
the other way around.

They financed consolidation.

[narrator] With government loans,

Wesley and Joesley Batista pursued
the same business model Bo Pilgrim had:

explosive, relentless growth.

They started acquiring stuff here
in Brazil, and globally, and worldwide.

[in Portuguese] We went there

and bought the American, Australian,
and European companies.

And now we're leaders there. Why can't
Brazilians be leaders? We can.

[in Portuguese] And the big move by them
to really become a monstrous company...

with the huge revenue that they have

was the acquisition of Pilgrim's.

[narrator] JBS was suddenly
in the chicken business in a very big way,

raising and slaughtering
two billion birds a year.

And they didn't stop there.

After Pilgrim's Pride,
JBS acquired chicken companies

in Brazil and around the globe.

They are now the largest
poultry producers in the world.

We are running around 12 million birds
per day.

[narrator] As it moved
into the poultry business,

JBS enthusiastically embraced the
opaque practices of ruthless efficiency

perfected by America's chicken giants.

JBS chicken growers in Brazil, much like
their counterparts in South Carolina,

retain little control over the process.

[in Portuguese] Starting in 2012, JBS
purchased the three different facilities,

and all of us became JBS contract farmers.

There is no other company that serves us,
that we can produce for.

[in Portuguese] The producers don't know
how much they are going to earn.

Or they have a table, a pay table
that they don't really understand.

[chirping]

[André] We know
we earn less than we should

to maintain the structure,
to keep working.

[man, in Portuguese] The relationship
between producers and JBS...

it's a very difficult relationship.

Producers are scared of speaking out.

I'm producing chicken for them.

I consider myself to be a good producer.

I always deliver above the average...

but the partnership is restricted
to what's on paper.

Nothing more. I don't have any benefits.

All the investments that I have
to make here, I have to pay the costs.

[narrator] In 2013,

a group of area chicken growers
decided to do something about it.

They formed a coalition to try
to negotiate better contracts with JBS.

They also brought their case
to JBS's patron,

the Brazilian Development Bank.

[Lucia, in Portuguese] We told BNDES

to stop giving financing
to the business,

because it isn't a profitable investment.

Because it isn't profitable
and doesn't cover

the labor cost of its partners.

[narrator] JBS and the Development Bank
never responded.

[Lucia, in Portuguese] As a citizen

who pays taxes, and especially as
producer of food for Brazil and the world,

we felt extremely disrespected.

[narrator]
Riding global demand for cheap meat,

the behemoth meatpacker had reached
a size where it could ignore complaints.

JBS now had power
at the highest levels of government.

[in Portuguese]
In the previous election in 2014,

JBS was the biggest donor...

to political campaigns in Brazil.

They donated almost
400 million Brazilian Reals,

which is about $100 million.

[Raquel, in Portuguese] JBS has a very
strong influence over Brazilian Congress.

They are among the largest
campaign donors,

they have a number of representatives

to whom they donated
large quantities of money.

[in Portuguese] There is a very deep
and very clear symbiosis...

between economic power
and political power in Brazil.

[narrator] That relationship
has turned explosive.

Throughout the past decade,
Brazilians have taken to the streets

to protest corruption.

[in Portuguese] Brazil is grand.
The people are decent.

But the politicians are very corrupt.

[narrator] Among the political scandals
driving Brazil's protests

was an investigation into major companies
securing loans by bribing officials.

One of the companies investigated was JBS.

The Batista family always denies
any political influence,

but there is a lot of mistrust.

And these investigations are ongoing.
We are waiting to see where this goes.

[narrator] The stakes are high.

Not just for JBS, but for
the whole world's food supply.

[Adeodato] If major countries refuse

to import meat from Brazil,

can you imagine the impact
on global protein markets?

Brazil can destabilize
the supply-demand relation, globally.

[narrator] In May 2017,

the political flames surrounding JBS
ignited a firestorm.

Under pressure
from corruption investigations,

Joesley Batista
secretly recorded a conversation

with Michel Temer,
the President of Brazil...

[Batista, in Portuguese]
Hello. How are you, President?

[narrator] ...and raised
the subject of bribes.

[Batista] I'm on good terms with Eduardo.

[Temer] You have to keep that up, OK?

[Batista] Every month, yes.

[narrator] Temer seemed
to encourage Batista

to continue bribing Eduardo Cunha,
the former head of Brazil's Congress.

In pursuit of a plea deal,

the Batista brothers turned over
this audio tape to investigators,

and then confessed to years of paying
massive bribes to government officials.

[in Portuguese] They had
a checking account for bribes.

[narrator] The Batistas admitted
that since 2007

they had paid tens of millions
of US dollars in bribes

to Brazilian officials.

The loans they received in return
allowed them to acquire Pilgrim's Pride

and other companies around the globe.

And then brought their downfall.

In May 2017,
Joesley Batista resigned from JBS.

He and his brother Wesley were arrested in
September on charges of insider trading.

The company has begun to sell off assets
around the globe.

The rise and fall of JBS
is a cautionary tale.

The pursuit of massive scale
has defined the chicken industry

and has been responsible
for its high profile failures.

Even in the grow houses,
the very bottom of the chicken food chain,

the scale of the growth
brings controversy.

The quality of the birds' short lives
is often poor.

They grow so heavy so fast
that many cannot walk.

They almost never see the light of day
since light encourages activity,

and an active bird is a tougher bird.

And the ammonia produced by their
droppings can make their air unbreathable.

So it's hardly surprising that some
entrepreneurs are exploring other models,

ones that minimize cruelty
but still generate profits.

[man] Put yours on the front rack.

[man] There should not be
this push forward,

where you have to grow more, more, more.

It's hard enough to have the burden
of running a successful family and farm

without knowing that you're responsible
for feeding 10,000 people.

So I opt out.

No, thank you!

[narrator] Just 26 miles
from Sonny Nguyen's farm,

Nathan Boggs takes a very different path.

He treats mass-market birds
to small-scale care.

He uses the same Cornish Cross bird,

bred for growth so rapid,
it can't live for long.

But the quality of that life
is much improved.

[Nate Boggs] We can
still have the chicken...

be plump and juicy like we're used to.

It's just way better, because
we allow the birds to be birds.

This whole structure is a brooder house.
It keeps them nice and warm.

And protected from the elements,
as their immune system has not developed.

Their feathers to insulate them
are not yet developed.

These animals self-regulate
their temperatures

by getting closer to,
or farther away from the heat lamps.

A brooder house like this
gives the birds the ability to run around,

develop firm muscles, strong bones,

and just really be kids, honestly.

[narrator] By the age of 17 days,

the birds have grown adult feathers
to replace their chick fuzz.

Once we feel that
they do have that insulation,

and can handle that
and be happy and healthy,

we'll put them out there
to do what chickens do best:

run around, scratch, forage,
peck, all that fun stuff.

[narrator] And thrive in an environment
with natural temperature swings.

It's an expensive model.

Nathan's chicken sells
for about three times what you would pay

for most supermarket birds.

But the ruthless treatment of both birds
and growers in the chicken industry

leaves Nathan happy
to chart his own course.

[Nate] We're not trying to feed
all of Charleston from our one farm.

That's unsustainable.

I feel that it makes more sense
to go back to our roots,

where there's a lot
of small, family-owned farms.

[narrator] There are already more than
a thousand farms like this across the US.

And commercial growers are watching.

In 2016, Perdue announced

their chickens would be raised
and slaughtered more humanely.

But the changes are incremental and slow,

not enough to shift the way
most market birds are raised.

Not yet.

And the industry will continue to thrive.

The US broiler belt
has increased its output

by nearly 3 billion pounds
in the last two years.

Big chicken is still in charge.

[Reid Phifer] Somebody will grow chickens.

This is what people want.

We can produce cheaper food

and a good quality food
for your people.

Chicken is going to do well, believe me.

[narrator] In spite of the turmoil
that has roiled its parent company,

Pilgrim's Pride has helped to push
a global surge in chicken consumption.

Chicken is cheap and nutritious.

And that means that Pilgrim's Pride
will continue to grow.

Since 2015,
the year of the chicken killings,

the company has slaughtered
more birds than ever,

while the victims of those crimes
are still recovering.

I just don't want...

to be... hurt.

And I try to forget it.

[narrator] James Lowery
was charged in April 2015.

But a preliminary hearing
did not go as expected.

This was a circumstantial case.

We did not have fingerprints, video,

we didn't have a statement from somebody

saying they saw a certain person
doing the crime.

The judge found
that there was a lack of probable cause

to believe that the person who was
charged, did, in fact, commit the crime.

So no probable cause was found
as a result of that hearing.

We go before the judge
and we present a motive,

and our evidence, and what we've got.

And he says it's enough,
and gives us a warrant to arrest him.

Two weeks later he dismisses it
for lack of evidence.

It's the same evidence.

[narrator] The case against James Lowery
disintegrated

as judges in two counties
dismissed charges.

[Ernest] Because we've had
these two setbacks in magistrate's court,

we have not brought the case
before the grand jury.

Other circumstantial evidence
is being sought,

as well as direct evidence.

Somebody out there may have
seen something, may have heard something,

may have some information
that they weren't even aware was relevant.

I do know the solicitor is a busy man.

He's got more than just this case.

But eventually it should be
on the docket somewhere

to go before a grand jury
and let them decide.

[Sonny Nguyen] I moved to this country
because I believe in justice.

So far, he's still a free man.

And I don't want... I don't know
when justice will be revealed.

Hopefully, one day.

[narrator] Whether or not
such a day ever arrives,

Sonny Nguyen
and his fellow chicken growers

will continue to raise birds,

300,000 at a time.

[tense orchestral music]