I’ve been enjoying reading the information everyone has been digging up this week. I thought I would review Perdue chicken since they are a family favorite. We raise our own free-range chickens and after culling several last summer decided we would rather buy the chickens we eat and gather the eggs from the chickens we raise.

Perdue is a privately held, family-owned company spanning three generations beginning in 1920. Corporate is in Salisbury, MD, across the street from the original Perdue family farm.  Perdue is involved in all aspects of the supply chain - from eggs to marketing and everything in between.

Although their chickens are not free-range in the typical sense, they are not kept in densely packed cages. They are raised on family-owned farms and kept in temperature-controlled houses where they are protected from the elements, predators, and disease. They are free to move about within the house. Additionally, they don’t use antibiotics for growth promotion and never used hormones or steroids. I did read elsewhere that Perdue Farms did use antibiotics as of September 2007. This may have changed in the past 2 1/2 years, though.

Perdue Farms is the first and only chicken company to receive the USDA Process Verified Seal for its practices. This means the USDA has audited the company’s processes behind claims made on the product’s packaging.

Yet more recently, a lawsuit has been filed against Perdue farms and a poultry farm who raises Perdue chickens, “alleging the farms lack of sufficient management techniques have contributed to the ‘dead zones’ in Chesapeake Bay”.

All in all, it looks like Perdue does its best to provide a quality product while maintaining a decent quality of life for the chickens while they are being raised. Nothing is perfect and I’m sure there is more to be found here. At this time I will continue to purchase their whole chickens as they truly are my family’s favorite.

Anne