Who Is "Big Turkey"?

We're continuing our descent into Turkeymania 2008 today, revealing the identities of the major companies of the U.S. turkey-industrial complex perhaps better known collectively as "Big Turkey."

Who are these companies and how big are they? The chart below answers in terms of the live weight of the turkeys they processed in 2007:

We've gone the extra mile and created a dynamic table with this data that you can sort alphabetically by company, by the combined live weight of the turkeys they processed in 2007, or by the percentage share of the total live weight of turkeys produced in 2007. You just need to click the column headings to sort the data into the order that you'd like to see it:

Top U.S. Turkey Processors, 2007

Company	2007 Live Weight Processed [millions lbs]	Percentage of Market in 2007
Butterball	1375	17.47
Jennie-O Turkey Store	1255	15.95
Cargill Meat Solutions	1112	14.13
Farbest Foods	271	3.44
House of Raeford Farms	255	3.24
Perdue Farms	252	3.20
Foster Farms	248	3.15
Virginia Poultry Growers Coop.	241	3.06
Prestage Foods	236	3.00
Sara Lee	220	2.80
West Liberty Foods	218	2.77
Oscar Mayer	213	2.71
Cooper Farms	178	2.26
Michigan Turkey Producers	171	2.17
Norbest	150	1.91
Dakota Provisions	145	1.84
Zacky Farms	131	1.66
Turkey Valley Farms	115	1.46
Norther Pride	40	0.51
White Water Processessing	32	0.41
Combined Total for Smaller Producers	1011	12.85
Total for 2007	7869	100.00

We find that just three companies process 47.6% of the total mass of turkeys produced in 2007, as measured by their live weight: Butterball, Jennie-O and the mysterious Cargill Meat Solutions*.

* With a name like "Cargill Meat Solutions," it has to be mysterious - to the best of our knowledge, meat only "solves" one problem: hunger! What other problems meat might solve is left to the reader's imagination....

The smaller producers referred to in the table above are those that processed less than 32 million pounds of live turkeys individually in 2007.