Poultry bet pays off
Mary’s free-range birds save struggling farms
After three generations, the Pitman family farms were dying. From Thanksgiving to Christmas, sales of their turkeys were lucrative. But the rest of the year, business was too slow to make a living.
By 1998, Rick Pitman was ready to close the family’s San Joaquin Valley farms. But three forces collided that saved them: his son, David; his wife, Mary; and a nation obsessed with heritage turkeys.
Today, the family’s poultry, known as Mary’s Chickens, is sold in nearly every specialty store in the West and carried in
many of the Bay Area’s finest restaurants. The heritage turkeys, sold nationwide, have become the darlings of the holiday table.
“I’ve never been in People magazine, but my turkeys have,” said Mary Pitman, whose heritage turkeys were featured in one of the magazine’s Thanksgiving issues.
Besides the quality of the poultry, the Pitman farms have become known for the way they treat their birds, before and during slaughter. All of the birds are free to leave the barn, and unlike traditional methods, the chickens are gassed before having their throats slit at slaughter. The technique, used in only one other American chicken operation, is considered more humane and is sanctioned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
“We’re an animal rights organization,” said David Byer, a spokesman for PETA. “But this system causes the least amount of suffering and the least amount of stress.”
The farms’ turnaround began in the late 1990s, when David Pitman offered to help solve the family crisis. He was attending Cal PolySan Luis Obispo, majoring in agribusiness and minoring in poultry management. He was young, fiery and filled with confidence. “And stupid,” he added. “Dad,” he said. “If we’re going down, let’s go down big.”
Up to that point, the Pitmans only sold turkeys, but David Pitman suggested that they add chickens to their repertoire, noting that they sell year-round. Rick Pitman, eager to save the business his father had founded in 1954, thought the idea made sense. But he had an even bigger plan.
The Pitmans had always sold their turkeys to large processing companies, but Rick wanted the family to stop raising poultry for the big guys, build their own processing plant and sell their birds under their own label. After throwing around a couple of names for their new company, Mary Pitman said her husband woke up in the middle of the night.
“Mary’s,” she remembered him saying. “We’ll call it Mary’s.”
But more than just using her name, they decided to use Mary’s nutrition philosophy. That meant all the birds would be free-range (every henhouse has a spacious yard). Because they wouldn’t feed their birds antibiotics for non-therapeutic use, their barns would have to be roomier, cleaner and warmer than most conventional farms, so the fowl wouldn’t get sick.
With the business plan in order and the processing plant in the works, “we rolled the dice,” David Pitman said.
And Central Valley farmers rolled their eyes.
“They laughed at us when we opened the plant,” Mary Pitman said. “They said, ‘The Pitmans now have a money pit.’ ”
Even crazier, they paid cash — for everything.
“They laughed at us when we opened the plant. They said, ‘The Pitmans now have a money pit.’ ”
Mary Pitman
“My grandfather grew up in the Depression,” David Pitman explained. “He didn’t believe in borrowing what you couldn’t afford to pay for.”
In 2003, when their plant — about the size of a Costco — was completed in Sanger (Fresno County), they further broke convention by processing their chickens, turkeys and ducks under one roof. Traditionally, no one does all three, David Pitman said, because it tends not to be efficient.
However, having put up so much capital to build the plant, the Pitmans were soon facing the same financial problems they had in 1998. Once again they considered closing. But about that time, the Pitmans were contacted by the New York chapter of the Slow Food organization, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving home-cooked meals while railing against fast-food chains. Slow Food was asking turkey farmers nationwide to raise 200 Narragansett turkeys each. The heirloom birds, which are descended from colonial times, were dying out because producers favored turkeys bred for bigger breasts.
Once again, Rick Pitman went out on a limb, offering to raise 1,000 of the Narragansett chicks. By Thanksgiving 2004, demand for heritage turkeys seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, said Mary Pitman. There were lines at gourmet markets, with customers clamoring for the birds.
The Pitmans soon became the go-to farm for the heirloom turkeys. To this day, Mary Pitman still mans the Thanksgiving hotline for home cooks with questions.
“When I tell people on the phone that I’m Mary, their response is ‘No way,’ ” she said.
The heritage turkeys kept the Pitmans hanging on a little longer. Then, in 2005, the ultimate lifesaver came swooping to the rescue in the form of Whole Foods Markets, a chain with the same artisan philosophy as the Pitmans. Whole Foods contracted with Mary’s to carry both their chickens and turkeys, providing a steady flow of cash to the business.
Over the next several years the Pitmans scrimped and saved so they could go to Europe to buy the controlled atmosphere stunning system. A member of PETA accompanied them to provide advice. The system they purchased only accommodates chickens — now 85 percent of their business — but eventually they would like to buy a second setup for turkeys.
“What this system eliminates is the worst things that happen to chickens during the killing process,” PETA’s Byer said.
Typically the birds are shackled upside down on a motorized line, then run through an electric water bath, which paralyzes them before they are bled out.
“It’s very traumatic for the bird,” said David Pitman. “They flap their wings and are extremely stressed out.”
With the new method, also used by Bell & Evans in Pennsylvania, the birds remain in the crates they were transported in and are moved through a chamber that is slowly filled with carbon dioxide, rendering them unconscious before slaughter.
The setup could be seen as a great marketing tool — companies such as Subway, Starbucks, Chipotle, Denny’s and Quiznos have already shown a preference for birds slaughtered this way, according to PETA. But David Pitman said it’s simply the right thing to do.
“Before, it was difficult to watch,” he said. “I never really felt comfortable with it.”
Another thing he’s feeling more comfortable with is the stability of the business. Sales have never been better, he said. Mary’s now has contracts with a number of family farmers in the Central Valley to help supply its birds.
Mary’s offers several lines of poultry, such as organic and birds that are fed non-genetically modified corn. Consumers can also buy pasture-raised (for a price — $6 a pound), which are chickens that roam a quarter of an acre on a Pitman farm.
“It’s an American success story,” said Gary Talley, a consumer safety inspector with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, during his regular visit to check the plant. “We thought they were crazy, but they did it.”