Pilgrim's Pride, the largest chicken processor in the US and the second largest in Mexico, employs 55,000 US workers that kill, pluck, and process 44 million chickens per week at their 37 US factories. The result is almost 9 billion pounds of "product" per year.Some of this product may very well find its way onto your dinner plate via a very indirect route as Pilgrim's Pride also provides ranchers with cattle feed. According to a Wikipedia entry, this supply of cattle feed has been criticized because of the alleged use of "inedible" chicken parts being used for protein content. In order to profit from all parts of the bird, this is a common practice in the poultry industry and is known as "protein conversion".
Protein conversion uses industrial processes to convert inedible parts of the animal, such as keratin in feathers and skin into digestible protein to be used for livestock and pet food (and perhaps, I surmise, chicken nuggets).
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