Fulton Valley Farms
Posted by Jay on Sunday, 24 December 2006
Another place we’ve visited on this trip is Fulton Processors, which is a chicken processor outside of Santa Rosa. This plant processes Fulton Valley Farms chickens.
Fulton Valley Farms chickens are grown by a group of 14 different farms, which are either owned by FVF or under exclusive contract to them. The chickens are all naturally raised, with no hormones or antibiotics, and are fed corn-based diets with no animal byproducts.
We have chosen Fulton Valley Farms for our chicken because the birds are delicious and the operation seems to offer a little more transparency than other chicken processors we’ve found. We did however discover that we knew a little less than we thought about the chickens.
The chickens are actually grown in the Central Valley of California, not in Sonoma County as I had thought. Additionally, while the chickens are described as free-range, none of the 14 farms allow visitors. So it’s really difficult to get a sense of whether free-range means that the birds actually walk around a lot or merely have an door to their coop which is periodically opened. In the latter case, the range bird would be little different than a penned bird.
Fulton does assert that their chickens are raised in a humane manner, and of course in a natural way free of hormones or antibiotics, both of which I see no reason to question. And both of which are good things.
We would of course prefer to work with farmers whose operations we could visit and learn about, so we’ll keep looking for chicken purveyors that can provide that. In the meantime, when we have Fulton chickens we’ll describe them only as from California, not Sonoma County.
That said, the folks at Fulton Processors were very generous with their time and explanations, and it was good to see how a poultry plant works. The biggest differences we saw between the chicken plant and the other meat processors I’ve visited is that with the scale and speed of a chicken plant (this one was small and processed 80,000 birds a week), everything is faster and more automated. Almost every station was performed by a machine, usually with a human operator or backup. This was in marked contrast to the beef plant in which most stations were manned by a skilled person using just a knife or other tool.
January 17th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
[…] Whose batter is better?: Local restaurants can’t keep up with Bay Area demand for fried chicken. Farmerbrown’s chef and apparently others prefer Fulton Valley Farms chicken, “for its deep flavor and ethical upbringing; they’re free-range and antibiotic-free. (Dairy Queen adds, in reference to the Bay Area poultry panic of 2007: When I was craving fried chicken back in November and found it at Farmerbrowns (review), I poked around the FVF website, which claims the chickens actually have outdoor forage space; and Jay at the Linkery found out it’s a cooperative when he visited the processor. I plan to contact FVF and find out more.) San Francisco Chronicle […]
March 5th, 2007 at 11:40 am
[…] A few readers may remember that when we visited the Fulton Valley Farms processor in December, Fulton — while totally transparent in their processing operations — informed us that for “biosecurity” reasons we couldn’t go visit the chicken farms themselves. That was frustrating, since we really want to know what “free-range” chickens means to Fulton Valley Farms. […]
April 20th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
I have not been to Fulton Valley Farms myself, but I have looked at their website. They don’t go out of their way to tell you that their chickens are actually range-fed. In fact, it says they are corn-fed (which strictly speaking, in the opinion of some, is not so great in itself, as corn in this country is grown very energy-intensively). But if you take a look at Marin Sun Farms, which is only maybe an hour or so away, they take great pains to tell you and show you how they let their chickens run around in fields all day where they forage for themselves. Seems to me that is probably a healthier life for a chicken, and therefore for anyone who might eat them.
I am not trying to condemn FVF, but I just wanted to throw this into the mix.
April 20th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Erika,
I hadn’t heard about Marin Sun Farms, but I’m excited to hear about them. We’ll look into possibly getting some of their bird in, it sounds like just the kind of food we like to showcase. Thanks for commenting!
Jay
October 11th, 2007 at 11:57 am
[…] is rather a fuzzy term even when applied to chickens. Michael Pollan pointed this out in the Omnivore’s Dilemma, and […]
June 30th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
[…] at the Linkery There’s a reason for that: while the free-range organic chickens we get from Fulton Valley Farms are very tasty, and are farmed in a manner much more responsible (and costly) than any other […]