History of the Allen Harim and the Poultry Industry
Please Note: This is the presentation given at the May Membership Meeting Featuring Allen Harim by Cathy Bassett, Director of Public Relations.
The Poultry Industry on Delmarva
Chicken is the most consumed meat in the United States, thanks to a few factors. First, it’s low in fat and calories and high in protein, making it a great choice for the health-conscious consumer. Plus it’s packed with the essential nutrients and vitamins that keep us healthy. Second, it’s relatively affordable. It wasn’t always that way, in fact it was once considered a luxury meat. But thanks to competition and innovation, it continues to be an affordable, healthy source of protein. Chicken consumption surpassed pork in 1985, and beef in 1992.
The growth of the chicken industry in the United States is one of the true great success stories in agriculture. In a little over 50 years, the U.S. broiler industry has evolved from a fragmented, mom and pop type operation into a highly efficient, vertically integrated, success story feeding customers around the country and across the globe.
So how did we get here? First a little history. In the 1800s, many people had backyard chicken flocks that supplied eggs, and the occasional Sunday chicken dinner. By the turn of the century, a few entrepreneurs began selling young chicken during the summer for meat as a side business to their farm.
By the 1920s and 30s, chicken meat production, previously just a subsidiary of the egg industry, began with the development of the broiler – a chicken raised specifically for its meat. I should note that the birth of the broiler is largely credited to a woman named Cecile Steele from Ocean View, Delaware. Her husband worked for the Coast Guard in Bethany Beach, and like most good housewives, Cecile raised a few laying hens at home. She would order 50 new chicks a year to replace those that didn’t make it, but in 1923, the hatchery sent her 500 chicks by mistake. Instead of sending them back, she had a small shed built to house them and 18 weeks later they were 2 ½ pounds and she sold them for 62 cents a pound (at least $5 a pound today) to a local buyer who shipped them to New York.
With such a nice profit, the next year Cecile ordered 1,000 chicks and not long after her husband quit his job with the Coast Guard to raise chickens full time. By 1926, she built a broiler house with a capacity to raise 10,000 chickens at a time. News of the Steele’s success traveled fast, and by 1929 there were 500 people growing broilers for meat on Delmarva.
And with that, the broiler industry on Delmarva was born. The Mid-Atlantic offered the best climate, lower labor costs, plenty of available building materials with an abundance of pine trees, an ample supply of grain to feed chicken, and a superior road system to allow trucks to carry the products to big markets nearby including Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia, and New York.
Today there are five poultry companies on Delmarva, and in the order from largest to smallest, they are Tyson Foods, the largest company in the US with headquarters in Springdale, Arkansas, Perdue Foods LLC (#4), based in Salisbury, Mountaire Farms Inc.(#7), based in Millsboro, Amick Farms Inc. (#11) based in Leesville, South Carolina, and Allen Harim (#21), based in Seaford.
Together, on Delmarva these companies produce 4.1 billion pounds of chicken a year. To do that, we use 85.4 million bushels of corn, 35.5 million bushels of soybeans, and 1.7 million bushels of wheat. These companies spent about $997 million on feed costs last year. And together, we paid about $243 million to family farmers to grow our chickens, and about $663 million to our own employees.
Allen Harim is getting ready to celebrate our 100th anniversary. The company, which was formerly known as Allen Family Foods, started in 1919 in the parlor of a farmhouse outside of Seaford with 250 eggs and a kerosene heater. Nettie Allen, the matriarch, worried her husband Clarence would burn the house down so she told him to take his incubator experiments out to the garage. Which he did. And promptly burned it down. He eventually started a hatchery a few miles outside of town and became involved with broilers by World War II.
Their three sons, Charles, Warren and Jack would become involved in the business, and they would grow Allen Family Foods into a vertically integrated company with hatcheries, feed mills, and three production plants at their peak. For a variety of reasons, including soaring feed costs coupled with a sharp drop in the price of chicken, the company faced bankruptcy in 2011.
The Harim Group out of South Korea purchased the company that same year, and the new Allen Harim was born. Interestingly, the Harim Group is led by Chairman Hong-Kuk Kim, a 60-year-old Korean businessman who when he was just 11 years old, received 10 baby chicks as a gift from his grandmother. He raised them with loving care, and in a few months, sold them for 40 times the value of the chicks. He then reinvested that money and bought 100 more chicks and raised them. By the time he was in high school, he was earning $2,500 a month, much more than his teachers who were coming to school on bicycles. He could afford a motorbike and was already a CEO. Today, Chairman Kim is one of the world’s most successful businessmen with assets totaling more than $10 billion. The Harim Group, South Korea’s largest chicken company, owns 58 other companies around the world, including three in the United States. We are indeed lucky and blessed to be under Chairman Kim’s umbrella.
Allen Harim now employs more than 1,750 employees at our locations including: headquarters in Seaford, hatcheries in Seaford and Dagsboro, our processing plant in Harbeson, feed mill in Seaford, and our breeding operation in Liberty, North Carolina.
Last year, we completed a $30 million renovation of our Harbeson plant, with upgrades to our wastewater treatment plant and extensive renovations to the interior including an overhaul of the bathrooms and cafeteria as well as the production lines. We recently announced an agreement with Artesian to remove all of our wastewater from our Harbeson plant and pipe it to Artesian’s Northern Sussex Water Recycling Facility north of Milton where the company will use it for spray irrigation on agricultural land, a true beneficial use recycling project.
In mid-May, we will officially cut a ribbon on our new solar energy complex on a six-acre parcel of land adjacent to our Harbeson plant. This project is about 4.5 football fields in length, and will supply about 11 percent of the energy used at our Harbeson facility. The 2.3 million kilowatts of power generated through these panels will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1,616 metric tons per year.
And also later this year, we will be breaking ground on a $22 million state-of-the-art hatchery at our Dagsboro location that will have an egg set capacity of 2.5 million eggs per week. We will ultimately be consolidating both of our hatcheries at this new 70,000 square foot facility, and we are excited about the possibilities of having the most technologically-advanced hatchery on Delmarva.
As I said before, Allen Harim is not the largest chicken company, but we were the first company on Delmarva to grow No Antibiotic Ever chicken. We saw an opportunity to create a niche product in the marketplace to meet a growing consumer demand. Our Nature’s Sensation NAE all veggie-fed chicken is sold in markets throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Our relationship with Whole Foods and other similar customers means that our company and our growers are constantly audited to ensure that we are meeting strict standards when it comes to animal welfare. As more restaurant chains are adopting healthier options, we believe our company is well positioned to meet that growing demand.
That leads me into one of my favorite topics: Myths about chicken.
Myth #1 - A lot of folks believe that we pump up our chickens with steroids or hormones to get those really big breasts. Look folks, this is not Hollywood. Let’s put an end to that right now. It’s ILLEGAL to add steroids or hormones to chickens, and it has been since the 1950s. Chickens are bigger and better these days because of good breeding, better nutrition, better living conditions, and proper care by veterinarians. Yet still, 80 percent of Americans still believe we use hormones and steroids. Talk about Fake News.
Myth #2 - Chickens are genetically modified. Nope. Let’s refer back to my last answer. Traditional breeding has developed today’s birds, and it’s a pretty simple process. You take the strongest and best birds and breed them together to get the strongest and best offspring. That process has happened for decades, and so yes, they are larger and provide more meat but they are also the healthiest and strongest birds they’ve ever been.
Myth #3 - Nearly three out of every four Americans believe antibiotics are present in chicken meat. Now, as I’ve already mentioned, we at Allen Harim are leaders in the No Antibiotic Ever chicken movement. As a company, we made the decision in 2015 to move in that direction and you’re seeing a lot more companies going in that direction today. But technically ALL chicken is antibiotic free. If a flock needs to be treated for something, and sometimes for their overall health they do, all antibiotics need to stop a certain amount of time before that chicken goes to market, so that no antibiotics are ever in that chicken’s system. In our case, we label our meat No Antibiotic Ever or NAE. In the rare case that we do have to administer an antibiotic for the health of the bird, we can no longer sell that product as an NAE product. It’s also worth noting that the antibiotics used to treat sick birds are not the same ones used by humans to treat illness.
Myth #4 - Chickens are raised in cages. Now this one surprises me. But I guess people see our trucks driving down the road, with chickens in cages, and think that’s how they live. It’s not. Chickens are raised in houses, where they are free to roam, have access to water and food continuously, and are protected from predators likes foxes.
Myth #5 - Chickens are being raised in factory farms. This one kills me, because you get the image in your head of a factory, with smokestacks, and union workers, and whistles blowing, or at least I do. And I think that’s the point. Words are powerful and so are images, so folks who oppose our industry like to portray us in the most negative light. We contract with family farmers, most of whom live on their farms, and take incredibly good care of their chickens. That’s what we pay them to do, and it’s in their best interest to keep those birds healthy and happy.
Myth #6 - Little to no oversight happens inside a chicken plant. It might surprise you to learn that inside our Harbeson plant every single day there are at least 6 USDA inspectors watching every single chicken that comes through our doors. Every. Single. Day. I have to admit, I was kind of blown away by this when I first learned this. Federal inspection of broilers became mandatory in 1959. Now just imagine a federal inspector looking over your shoulder at your job every day.
Finally, I wanted to leave you today with a little food for thought. When it comes to food trends, I love reading about what chefs are talking about. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but kale and quinoa are out, which is good, because I really struggle with quinoa – how to pronounce it, how to spell it, and how to cook it. Cauliflower is in. Grapeseed and Flaxseed Oil is gaining in popularity too. Purple foods are in. Poke is becoming hot right now, and if you don’t know what that is, you’re not alone. It’s a raw fish dish. And edible cookie dough is coming to a grocery store near you.
And chefs are talking about chicken. Look for more chicken at breakfast, as a substitute for sausage and bacon. The fast food chain Jack in the Box rolled out their bacon and egg chicken breakfast sandwich, and a restaurant chain in California is serving chicken with donuts. I mean, we have chicken and waffles, so why not donuts? In any event, I hope you will join me and adopt my New Year’s Resolution this year to Eat More Chicken.
The growth of the chicken industry in the United States is one of the true great success stories in agriculture. In a little over 50 years, the U.S. broiler industry has evolved from a fragmented, mom and pop type operation into a highly efficient, vertically integrated, success story feeding customers around the country and across the globe.
So how did we get here? First a little history. In the 1800s, many people had backyard chicken flocks that supplied eggs, and the occasional Sunday chicken dinner. By the turn of the century, a few entrepreneurs began selling young chicken during the summer for meat as a side business to their farm.
By the 1920s and 30s, chicken meat production, previously just a subsidiary of the egg industry, began with the development of the broiler – a chicken raised specifically for its meat. I should note that the birth of the broiler is largely credited to a woman named Cecile Steele from Ocean View, Delaware. Her husband worked for the Coast Guard in Bethany Beach, and like most good housewives, Cecile raised a few laying hens at home. She would order 50 new chicks a year to replace those that didn’t make it, but in 1923, the hatchery sent her 500 chicks by mistake. Instead of sending them back, she had a small shed built to house them and 18 weeks later they were 2 ½ pounds and she sold them for 62 cents a pound (at least $5 a pound today) to a local buyer who shipped them to New York.
With such a nice profit, the next year Cecile ordered 1,000 chicks and not long after her husband quit his job with the Coast Guard to raise chickens full time. By 1926, she built a broiler house with a capacity to raise 10,000 chickens at a time. News of the Steele’s success traveled fast, and by 1929 there were 500 people growing broilers for meat on Delmarva.
And with that, the broiler industry on Delmarva was born. The Mid-Atlantic offered the best climate, lower labor costs, plenty of available building materials with an abundance of pine trees, an ample supply of grain to feed chicken, and a superior road system to allow trucks to carry the products to big markets nearby including Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia, and New York.
Today there are five poultry companies on Delmarva, and in the order from largest to smallest, they are Tyson Foods, the largest company in the US with headquarters in Springdale, Arkansas, Perdue Foods LLC (#4), based in Salisbury, Mountaire Farms Inc.(#7), based in Millsboro, Amick Farms Inc. (#11) based in Leesville, South Carolina, and Allen Harim (#21), based in Seaford.
Together, on Delmarva these companies produce 4.1 billion pounds of chicken a year. To do that, we use 85.4 million bushels of corn, 35.5 million bushels of soybeans, and 1.7 million bushels of wheat. These companies spent about $997 million on feed costs last year. And together, we paid about $243 million to family farmers to grow our chickens, and about $663 million to our own employees.
Allen Harim is getting ready to celebrate our 100th anniversary. The company, which was formerly known as Allen Family Foods, started in 1919 in the parlor of a farmhouse outside of Seaford with 250 eggs and a kerosene heater. Nettie Allen, the matriarch, worried her husband Clarence would burn the house down so she told him to take his incubator experiments out to the garage. Which he did. And promptly burned it down. He eventually started a hatchery a few miles outside of town and became involved with broilers by World War II.
Their three sons, Charles, Warren and Jack would become involved in the business, and they would grow Allen Family Foods into a vertically integrated company with hatcheries, feed mills, and three production plants at their peak. For a variety of reasons, including soaring feed costs coupled with a sharp drop in the price of chicken, the company faced bankruptcy in 2011.
The Harim Group out of South Korea purchased the company that same year, and the new Allen Harim was born. Interestingly, the Harim Group is led by Chairman Hong-Kuk Kim, a 60-year-old Korean businessman who when he was just 11 years old, received 10 baby chicks as a gift from his grandmother. He raised them with loving care, and in a few months, sold them for 40 times the value of the chicks. He then reinvested that money and bought 100 more chicks and raised them. By the time he was in high school, he was earning $2,500 a month, much more than his teachers who were coming to school on bicycles. He could afford a motorbike and was already a CEO. Today, Chairman Kim is one of the world’s most successful businessmen with assets totaling more than $10 billion. The Harim Group, South Korea’s largest chicken company, owns 58 other companies around the world, including three in the United States. We are indeed lucky and blessed to be under Chairman Kim’s umbrella.
Allen Harim now employs more than 1,750 employees at our locations including: headquarters in Seaford, hatcheries in Seaford and Dagsboro, our processing plant in Harbeson, feed mill in Seaford, and our breeding operation in Liberty, North Carolina.
Last year, we completed a $30 million renovation of our Harbeson plant, with upgrades to our wastewater treatment plant and extensive renovations to the interior including an overhaul of the bathrooms and cafeteria as well as the production lines. We recently announced an agreement with Artesian to remove all of our wastewater from our Harbeson plant and pipe it to Artesian’s Northern Sussex Water Recycling Facility north of Milton where the company will use it for spray irrigation on agricultural land, a true beneficial use recycling project.
In mid-May, we will officially cut a ribbon on our new solar energy complex on a six-acre parcel of land adjacent to our Harbeson plant. This project is about 4.5 football fields in length, and will supply about 11 percent of the energy used at our Harbeson facility. The 2.3 million kilowatts of power generated through these panels will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1,616 metric tons per year.
And also later this year, we will be breaking ground on a $22 million state-of-the-art hatchery at our Dagsboro location that will have an egg set capacity of 2.5 million eggs per week. We will ultimately be consolidating both of our hatcheries at this new 70,000 square foot facility, and we are excited about the possibilities of having the most technologically-advanced hatchery on Delmarva.
As I said before, Allen Harim is not the largest chicken company, but we were the first company on Delmarva to grow No Antibiotic Ever chicken. We saw an opportunity to create a niche product in the marketplace to meet a growing consumer demand. Our Nature’s Sensation NAE all veggie-fed chicken is sold in markets throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Our relationship with Whole Foods and other similar customers means that our company and our growers are constantly audited to ensure that we are meeting strict standards when it comes to animal welfare. As more restaurant chains are adopting healthier options, we believe our company is well positioned to meet that growing demand.
That leads me into one of my favorite topics: Myths about chicken.
Myth #1 - A lot of folks believe that we pump up our chickens with steroids or hormones to get those really big breasts. Look folks, this is not Hollywood. Let’s put an end to that right now. It’s ILLEGAL to add steroids or hormones to chickens, and it has been since the 1950s. Chickens are bigger and better these days because of good breeding, better nutrition, better living conditions, and proper care by veterinarians. Yet still, 80 percent of Americans still believe we use hormones and steroids. Talk about Fake News.
Myth #2 - Chickens are genetically modified. Nope. Let’s refer back to my last answer. Traditional breeding has developed today’s birds, and it’s a pretty simple process. You take the strongest and best birds and breed them together to get the strongest and best offspring. That process has happened for decades, and so yes, they are larger and provide more meat but they are also the healthiest and strongest birds they’ve ever been.
Myth #3 - Nearly three out of every four Americans believe antibiotics are present in chicken meat. Now, as I’ve already mentioned, we at Allen Harim are leaders in the No Antibiotic Ever chicken movement. As a company, we made the decision in 2015 to move in that direction and you’re seeing a lot more companies going in that direction today. But technically ALL chicken is antibiotic free. If a flock needs to be treated for something, and sometimes for their overall health they do, all antibiotics need to stop a certain amount of time before that chicken goes to market, so that no antibiotics are ever in that chicken’s system. In our case, we label our meat No Antibiotic Ever or NAE. In the rare case that we do have to administer an antibiotic for the health of the bird, we can no longer sell that product as an NAE product. It’s also worth noting that the antibiotics used to treat sick birds are not the same ones used by humans to treat illness.
Myth #4 - Chickens are raised in cages. Now this one surprises me. But I guess people see our trucks driving down the road, with chickens in cages, and think that’s how they live. It’s not. Chickens are raised in houses, where they are free to roam, have access to water and food continuously, and are protected from predators likes foxes.
Myth #5 - Chickens are being raised in factory farms. This one kills me, because you get the image in your head of a factory, with smokestacks, and union workers, and whistles blowing, or at least I do. And I think that’s the point. Words are powerful and so are images, so folks who oppose our industry like to portray us in the most negative light. We contract with family farmers, most of whom live on their farms, and take incredibly good care of their chickens. That’s what we pay them to do, and it’s in their best interest to keep those birds healthy and happy.
Myth #6 - Little to no oversight happens inside a chicken plant. It might surprise you to learn that inside our Harbeson plant every single day there are at least 6 USDA inspectors watching every single chicken that comes through our doors. Every. Single. Day. I have to admit, I was kind of blown away by this when I first learned this. Federal inspection of broilers became mandatory in 1959. Now just imagine a federal inspector looking over your shoulder at your job every day.
Finally, I wanted to leave you today with a little food for thought. When it comes to food trends, I love reading about what chefs are talking about. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but kale and quinoa are out, which is good, because I really struggle with quinoa – how to pronounce it, how to spell it, and how to cook it. Cauliflower is in. Grapeseed and Flaxseed Oil is gaining in popularity too. Purple foods are in. Poke is becoming hot right now, and if you don’t know what that is, you’re not alone. It’s a raw fish dish. And edible cookie dough is coming to a grocery store near you.
And chefs are talking about chicken. Look for more chicken at breakfast, as a substitute for sausage and bacon. The fast food chain Jack in the Box rolled out their bacon and egg chicken breakfast sandwich, and a restaurant chain in California is serving chicken with donuts. I mean, we have chicken and waffles, so why not donuts? In any event, I hope you will join me and adopt my New Year’s Resolution this year to Eat More Chicken.
History of the Allen Harim and the Po...
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