Official Website of the California Poultry Federation

A California-based poultry company that recently took over a closed Louisiana processing plant with assistance from the state says it will not extend contracts to all of the plant's former growers. Foster Farms agreed to buy the shuttered Pilgrim's Pride poultry processing plant in Farmerville for $80 million, with Louisiana contributing $50 million of the purchase price and another $10 million for equipment upgrades. The company's director of marketing services, Ira Brill, said in a statement that independent growers had been providing chickens to both the Farmerville plant and another now-shuttered Pilgrim's Pride plant in Clinton, Ark. "As Foster Farms brings the Farmerville plant up to full capacity, it expects to extend contracts to the vast majority of Louisiana growers, but the regrettable fact is that this single plant cannot fully accommodate a grower base that was previously supplying two plants," Brill said. <more> July 2, 2009 AP