- The chicken industry in the US has doubled its production in the last 25 years, now producing about 160 million chickens per week.
- Chickens have become the reference point for the taste of other meats.
- Chicken farmers often have a different experience than what is portrayed in promotional videos.
- Many chicken farmers live below or near the poverty line.
- Contract farming is the dominant system, where farmers own the property and equipment but the companies own the chickens.
- Farmers are restricted by contracts and cannot provide certain conditions for the chickens.
- Companies can demand expensive upgrades and farmers are paid based on a tournament system, leading to competition and financial punishment.
- The pressures of the industry can have severe consequences for farmers, including loss of home and even suicide.
- A chicken industry spokesman dismisses concerns about farmers living in poverty.
- Farmers who speak out against the industry face retaliation.

- Poultry farmers speak out against poultry companies' wrongdoings and face retaliation in the form of pay cuts, reduced chicken quality, and threats.
- The chicken companies rank the quality of the chickens from 1 to 10, with 1 being the best and 10 being the poorest.
- Farmers fear retaliation and are afraid to attend meetings or speak out against the companies.
- Protective rules for poultry farmers have been written but are not being enforced due to a rider in the agricultural appropriations bill.
- Representative Steve Womack has fought efforts to protect farmers, potentially due to his ties to chicken companies.
- Representative Marcy Kaptur attempted to pass an amendment to protect farmers from retaliation, but it was voted down.
- There is hope that Marcy Kaptur will try again to pass a provision protecting farmers from retaliation in the future.
- The names of the committee members who vote against the amendment will be exposed and labeled as "chicken fuckers" if they do not support the farmers.

John Oliver explains how chicken farming can be unfair, punishing, and inhumane. And not just for the chickens!

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Basically, turkeys with eating disorders.

So much so that we have to produce a lot of it.

In the last 25 years, the chicken industry has doubled its production and head count from 80 million chickens a week to now about 160 million chickens a week.

Those are clean-shaven Leonardo DiCaprio on a yacht anchored outside the Cannes Film Festival numbers.

We eat so much chicken, it has become our reference point for what every other meat tastes like.

I'm telling you, man, it doesn't taste like lizard, it tastes like chicken.

You know what that alligator meat tastes like?

I really hate to say this, it really tastes like chicken.

There is no parallel for the other senses.

If I said to you, everything looks like tables, or everything feels like koosh balls, you'd think I was insane.

Now, obviously, all of this has been great news for the poultry industry, which is dominated by 4 gigantic companies.

Pilgrims, Tyson, Perdue, and Sanderson Farms.

You're thinking, oh, this is just gonna be another story about how horribly chickens are treated.

Chickens and turkeys are arguably the most abused animals on the face of the planet.

You probably have no idea what goes into making a bucket of KFC chicken.

The main ingredient in KFC chicken is not cruelty, it's chicken.

The only thing where cruelty is the main ingredient is child stars.

It goes, cruelty, glitter, child, and then statistically, chicken.

And yes, chickens, no doubt, can be treated terribly, but that is not what this story is about.

And unfortunately, this is gonna be a lot less pleasant than what you are looking at right there.

Poultry companies would have you believe chicken farmers have it made, smiling in their promotional videos, always, no matter the company, over the top of jangly guitar music.

It's a good feeling to have a flock of birds that are beautiful, healthy.

The best product that you could produce has just left your farm.

If someone called me up tomorrow and said, would you be a poultry farmer all over again?

Sometimes I don't understand him as well as I do the chickens.

Your husband is an adult human with a vibrant interior life awash in infinite complexities, and that is just a fucking chicken.

But despite those beautifully produced testimonials, it turns out many farmers have a very different experience.

And there's been lots of nights that we haven't slept.

Multiple studies have shown that many growers whose sole source of income was chicken farming, live below or near the poverty line.

How can the people who make the meat we eat the most barely be making a living?

We eat chicken when it's been popcorned, when it's been fingered, and when it's in Disney's mouse-shaped nuggets, which, incidentally, is a little legally suspicious.

Listen, there might be mouse in these, but we technically told you, so you cannot sue.

This is all thanks to a system called contract farming.

Contract farming is basically chicken daycare.

Companies bring baby chicks to an independent farm, drop them off, and pick them up a little more than a month later when they're fully grown.

And when the chicken companies describe it, again, over jangly fucking guitars, they make the system sound great for farmers.

Tyson Foods actually owns the feed in the feed bins, and we actually own the chickens in the house.

However, the properties, the equipment, the labor, everything around the business on the farm is actually owned by the farmer.

You've got to hand it to them, jangly guitars simply make anything sound more plausible.

-♪♪ Mickey Mouse nuggets take the finest chicken, no mouse, and cover it with breadcrumbs, no mouse.

Our nuggets are the epitome of mouseless chicken, 1 mouse.

But think about what that guy actually just said.

You own the property and the equipment, we own the chickens.

That essentially means you own everything that costs money, and we own everything that makes money.

Because typically, Farmers go into a great deal of debt just to build chicken houses and go into the business.

And the moment you sign that contract, the chicken companies have a lot of leverage over you.

So all those horrible conditions that chickens are kept in, farmers might not care for those either.

Bound by contract, Craig is not even allowed to give them sunshine or fresh air.

If you get that natural sunlight, the birds are more active.

If they don't want that, they want him sitting down, getting up, taking a drink, a bite to eat, and sitting back down.

I absolutely would do away with solid walls.

Letting sunshine and fresh air in is number 1, the birds love it.

Yeah, but of course, chicken companies won't let you do that.

They know that chickens are like reality stars.

The happier they are, the less money they're worth.

Canceled Keeping Up With Alan and Arlene Older, Partners and Best Friends for 50 years.

-...and it's not because Alan was too good a listener.

And the problem is, as fast as farmers try to pay down their debts, companies can pile more on by demanding that they make expensive upgrades.

The companies on a regular basis come around and say, well, you have to do this upgrade or that upgrade, and if you don't, you're not gonna get chickens anymore.

We gotta have this, you gotta have that, you gotta have this, you know.

It started out first, it was nipple drinkers, and then it went to tunnel houses, and then it went to blackout curtains on the south side, and all this more stuff ended up costing more than our original buildings.

Farming chickens is like hooking up with James Franco.

Look, James, first you wanted us to try nipple drinkers, which was weird, but I put up with it.

Then it was the tunnel house, which was even worse.

And now you want us to try blackout curtains?

at this point, a farmer may have borrowed over a million dollars for houses and improvements, But they do this because they're led to believe that they'll have a steady source of income.

Except they're actually paid according to a tournament or gladiator system.

And unfortunately, again, it is significantly less adorable than what you are looking at right here.

Because watch 1 business journalist explain it.

The company takes, you know, could be as many as 100 farmers in an area, and then it ranks them against 1 another.

Those in the top half will get a bonus payment, extra money.

Those in the bottom half will get a deduction.

And what that means is that you are competing against your neighbors.

If they produce fatter chickens with less feed, your pay gets cut.

You can be paid nearly half as much as other growers per pound for reasons not entirely within your control.

It's like an agricultural Glengarry Glen Ross, or Hengarry Hen Ross, if you will.

And look, I do not apologize for that joke.

And look, losing a tournament and being labeled a bad grower cannot just cost farmers their home, it can cost them a lot more.

This past Monday morning in North Carolina, 1 of these bad growers went out, drove down a country road, he was terminated from his contract, about to lose his home, took a gun and ended his life.

That's what we're talking about here today.

At this point, you may be angry at the chicken industry, but careful, you need to leave a little room, because you're about to get even angrier.

A chicken industry spokesman was actually asked about why so many farmers live below the poverty line, and this was his response.

Poverty line in Mississippi and Alabama is different than it is in New York City.

The poverty line is like the age of consent.

If you find yourself passing exactly where it is, you've probably already done something very, very wrong.

And the thing is, chicken farmers can't even complain, because 1 of the reasons that you've not heard about this story is that to hear farmers tell it, companies take a hard line with complainers.

Every time that I've spoke out against the poultry companies and the wrongdoings, they retaliate by cutting my pay, cutting my chickens back, cutting the quality of my chickens that I get.

Number 1 is the best chicken they got, number ten's the poorest chicken coming off.

Sometimes, based on your mouth, you'll get a lot of 8, 9, and 10 chickens.

When controlling assholes threaten their dependents with numerically inferior chicks, that's not a responsible business model, that is entourage.

Hey, if you ding my Benz, bro, I'll have every girl in L.A.

Avoid your dick like it's a fucking carbohydrate.

If you're given inferior chicks, you are going to suffer in the tournament and potentially lose your farm.

Now, the chicken companies claim that they don't do that, although I will note that in researching this story, we've spoken to a lot of farmers who believe it to be real and are terrified of it happening to them.

A few years ago, the Obama administration tried to address many of these problems with new regulations.

They held town hall meetings, and there was something of a common theme.

Let me say that numerous growers are not attending these workshops because of being afraid of retaliation on them by their integrator.

In the last 48 hours we've had growers who've been threatened not to attend this meeting and not to speak out.

I represent or help represent 650 chicken growers in the state of Alabama.

And Out of all the 650 of them, there's 2 that was not afraid to come up here.

I'm saying I'm a proud American, I'm a veteran, and I need the right to be able to talk to y'all today.

chicken industry, you would have to be an idiot to stand up in that room and try to defend your behavior.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, an idiot.

5 years ago, knowing what you know, or at least I think you must have known, why would you get into a business that you feel, at least from your comments, that's not a very good business?

Why did you let us fuck you over is not a defense against fucking people over.

And luckily, there was a farmer in that very room who was happy to explain things to him.

My comment is directed towards a gentleman that said she wondered why Valerie Ruddell got into the business.

I can tell you the reason why she got into it is the company lied.

When you put numbers down on a piece of paper to get the bankers to loan you the money, And then it don't follow through, how do you make bank payments?

We've heard a lot of information here today, and I really didn't want to get up here and speak.

Because he's talking like someone who just caught his roommate masturbating in the living room.

I know it's just the 2 of us, but Greg, this needs to stop!

the good news is, protective rules for poultry farmers did actually get written.

The bad news is, they are not currently being enforced.

Because every year since the rules were written, a rider has been inserted into the agricultural appropriations bill that explicitly forbids the USDA from enforcing them.

And in recent years, this effort has been championed by Representative Steve Womack.

Maybe it's because his home district is the site of Tyson's World Headquarters, or the fact that he's received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from chicken companies, or maybe he's just sexually attracted to chickens, and is jealous that farmers get to spend so much time with them.

The point is, he has fought efforts to protect farmers.

Just last year, Representative Marcy Kaptur attempted to pass an amendment simply giving farmers protection to speak out without retaliation.

The Department of Agriculture wants to enforce these regulations so that farmers have standing and that they don't have their livelihoods taken away from them simply because they're allowed to speak about their conditions.

And what is wrong with that is that the companies in this situation have too much power.

Those doing the work in these houses don't have enough power.

We need to give them equal standing in the courts and in their ability to come and see us and exercise their rights of free speech.

kind of speech that normally has soaring music behind it and precedes a come from behind victory at the end of a movie.

But in real life, this is what happened immediately afterwards.

That is the most depressing ending since the Sex and the City movie.

If anything, you should have ended up with Aiden.

Yes, Aiden was boring, Carrie, but guess what?

And look, look, I know this story has been depressing, and you might be wondering what you can do.

I mean, you could stop eating chicken, but you're not gonna do that because chicken is delicious.

I'm getting hungry just thinking about it now.

You could say, well, I'll vote against Congressman Steve Womack, but you won't, because you don't live there, and also, for the last 2 elections, he has had no major opponent.

The only small satisfaction I can give you is letting Sean Connery voice your feelings about Womack.

Why am I not surprised, you piece of shit?

A momentary visceral satisfaction, but it doesn't really change anything.

But the truth is, there is actually a glimmer of hope.

That same committee is set to meet again next month, and Marcy Kaptur might again try to pass a provision protecting farmers from retaliation.

And if she does, then let me use the chicken company's weapon against them.

I'm talking, of course, about jangly guitar music to convince you that everything I'm about to say is true.

Because, listen to this, there are 51 voting members on the committee.

If your representative's name is up there and they vote against Marcy Captain's amendment, it is because they, and I cannot stress this enough, are chicken f**kers.

And unless they want that chicken f**ker label to follow them for

want to think extra carefully about which way they are going to vote.

Because chicken-fucker accusations do not come off a Wikipedia page easily.

Or if they do, they tend to go right back up.

Because chicken companies may be able to retaliate against farmers for speaking out, but they cannot prevent us, as 1, from screaming, chicken fucker, at the top of our lungs, if any of these people votes against the farmers in this tiny, tiny amendment.

All potential chicken fuckers here, Don't be 1 of them, that's all we're saying.

That's our show, we are off next week, but we'll be back the week after that.


Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Chickens. Basically, turkeys with eating disorders. We love eating chicken in this country. So much so that we have to produce a lot of it.

Speaker 1: In the last 25 years, the chicken industry has doubled its production and head count from 80 million chickens a week to now about 160 million chickens a week.

Speaker 0: 160 million chicks a week? Those are Warren Beatty numbers. Those are Rob Lowe at the St. Elmo's Fire premiere party numbers. You know what?

Those are clean-shaven Leonardo DiCaprio on a yacht anchored outside the Cannes Film Festival numbers. That's a lot of chicks. That's an unmanageable amount of chicks. We eat so much chicken, it has become our reference point for what every other meat tastes like.

Speaker 2: Pretty good. I'm telling you, man, it doesn't taste like lizard, it tastes like chicken.

Speaker 3: Raccoon is a delicacy in China. I hear it tastes like chicken.

Speaker 2: You know what that alligator meat tastes like? Chicken.

Speaker 4: What does that taste like? I really hate to say this, it really tastes like chicken.

Speaker 0: Armadillo tastes like chicken? But think about that. That's amazing. There is no parallel for the other senses. If I said to you, everything looks like tables, or everything feels like koosh balls, you'd think I was insane.

Now, obviously, all of this has been great news for the poultry industry, which is dominated by 4 gigantic companies. Pilgrims, Tyson, Perdue, and Sanderson Farms. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, oh, this is just gonna be another story about how horribly chickens are treated. And I know, we do hear about that a lot.

Speaker 5: Chickens and turkeys are arguably the most abused animals on the face of the planet.

Speaker 6: You probably have no idea what goes into making a bucket of KFC chicken. Sadly, the main ingredient is cruelty.

Speaker 0: Okay, Pam, look, let's be fair there. The main ingredient in KFC chicken is not cruelty, it's chicken. The only thing where cruelty is the main ingredient is child stars. It goes, cruelty, glitter, child, and then statistically, chicken. And...

And yes, chickens, no doubt, can be treated terribly, but that is not what this story is about. This is about chicken farmers. And unfortunately, this is gonna be a lot less pleasant than what you are looking at right there. Poultry companies would have you believe chicken farmers have it made, smiling in their promotional videos, always, no matter the company, over the top of jangly guitar music.

Speaker 7: It's a good feeling to have a flock of birds that are beautiful, healthy. You know you've done a good job. The best product that you could produce has just left your farm.

Speaker 8: If someone called me up tomorrow and said, would you be a poultry farmer all over again? I would say yes.

Speaker 9: Sometimes I don't understand him as well as I do the chickens.

Speaker 0: Yeah. Of course you don't. Your husband is an adult human with a vibrant interior life awash in infinite complexities, and that is just a fucking chicken. So, yes, it's easier to understand. But despite those beautifully produced testimonials, it turns out many farmers have a very different experience.

Speaker 5: I've had 5 heart attacks... Since I've been in the chicken business.

Speaker 10: The struggle has been very real. And there's been lots of nights that we haven't slept.

Speaker 11: It's kind of tough. Not kind of tough, it is tough.

Speaker 0: And it has been tough for a long time. Multiple studies have shown that many growers whose sole source of income was chicken farming, live below or near the poverty line. Which sounds insane. How can the people who make the meat we eat the most barely be making a living? We eat chicken when it's been popcorned, when it's been fingered, and when it's in Disney's mouse-shaped nuggets, which, incidentally, is a little legally suspicious.

Listen, there might be mouse in these, but we technically told you, so you cannot sue. This... This is all thanks to a system called contract farming. Contract farming is basically chicken daycare. Companies bring baby chicks to an independent farm, drop them off, and pick them up a little more than a month later when they're fully grown.

I'm assuming that's how daycare works. -...97% of chickens are raised this way. And when the chicken companies describe it, again, over jangly fucking guitars, they make the system sound great for farmers.

Speaker 12: Tyson Foods actually owns the feed in the feed bins, and we actually own the chickens in the house. However, the properties, the equipment, the labor, everything around the business on the farm is actually owned by the farmer.

Speaker 0: You've got to hand it to them, jangly guitars simply make anything sound more plausible. Here, I'll show you. Give me some music. -♪♪ Mickey Mouse nuggets take the finest chicken, no mouse, and cover it with breadcrumbs, no mouse. Our nuggets are the epitome of mouseless chicken, 1 mouse.

But... See, it works. But think about what that guy actually just said. You own the property and the equipment, we own the chickens. That essentially means you own everything that costs money, and we own everything that makes money.

Because typically, Farmers go into a great deal of debt just to build chicken houses and go into the business. And the moment you sign that contract, the chicken companies have a lot of leverage over you. So all those horrible conditions that chickens are kept in, farmers might not care for those either.

Speaker 2: Bound by contract, Craig is not even allowed to give them sunshine or fresh air.

Speaker 13: If you get that natural sunlight, the birds are more active. If they don't want that, they want him sitting down, getting up, taking a drink, a bite to eat, and sitting back down. He gets fat then. I absolutely would do away with solid walls. I would give them back sunlight.

Letting sunshine and fresh air in is number 1, the birds love it. And number 2, it's better for me.

Speaker 0: Yeah, but of course, chicken companies won't let you do that. They know that chickens are like reality stars. The happier they are, the less money they're worth. There is... There is a reason that E!

Canceled Keeping Up With Alan and Arlene Older, Partners and Best Friends for 50 years. -...and it's not because Alan was too good a listener. And the problem is, as fast as farmers try to pay down their debts, companies can pile more on by demanding that they make expensive upgrades.

Speaker 14: The companies on a regular basis come around and say, well, you have to do this upgrade or that upgrade, and if you don't, you're not gonna get chickens anymore.

Speaker 8: We gotta have this, you gotta have that, you gotta have this, you know. It started out first, it was nipple drinkers, and then it went to tunnel houses, and then it went to blackout curtains on the south side, and all this more stuff ended up costing more than our original buildings.

Speaker 0: And that must be frustrating. Farming chickens is like hooking up with James Franco. Look, James, first you wanted us to try nipple drinkers, which was weird, but I put up with it. Then it was the tunnel house, which was even worse. And now you want us to try blackout curtains?

No, James, no. I'm out. We're done, James. We're done.

Speaker 15: So... -...if you think about it,

Speaker 0: at this point, a farmer may have borrowed over a million dollars for houses and improvements, But they do this because they're led to believe that they'll have a steady source of income. Except they're actually paid according to a tournament or gladiator system. And unfortunately, again, it is significantly less adorable than what you are looking at right here. Because watch 1 business journalist explain it.

Speaker 2: The company takes, you know, could be as many as 100 farmers in an area, and then it ranks them against 1 another. Those in the top half will get a bonus payment, extra money. Those in the bottom half will get a deduction. They'll get financially punished.

Speaker 0: And what that means is that you are competing against your neighbors. If they produce fatter chickens with less feed, your pay gets cut. And not by a little. You can be paid nearly half as much as other growers per pound for reasons not entirely within your control. It's like an agricultural Glengarry Glen Ross, or Hengarry Hen Ross, if you will.

ABC. A, always, BBC, clucking. Do it. And look, I do not apologize for that joke. I stand by it.

I stand by that. No, no, no. You had your chance,

Speaker 15: you didn't get on board.

Speaker 0: And look, losing a tournament and being labeled a bad grower cannot just cost farmers their home, it can cost them a lot more.

Speaker 9: This past Monday morning in North Carolina, 1 of these bad growers went out, drove down a country road, he was terminated from his contract, about to lose his home, took a gun and ended his life. That's what we're talking about here today. This is personal. It gets real for poultry growers.

Speaker 0: At this point, you may be angry at the chicken industry, but careful, you need to leave a little room, because you're about to get even angrier. A chicken industry spokesman was actually asked about why so many farmers live below the poverty line, and this was his response.

Speaker 16: Which poverty line are you referring to? Is that a national poverty line? Is that a state poverty line? Poverty line in Mississippi and Alabama is different than it is in New York City.

Speaker 0: What the fuck are you talking about? It doesn't matter. The poverty line is like the age of consent. If you find yourself passing exactly where it is, you've probably already done something very, very wrong. And...

And the thing is, chicken farmers can't even complain, because 1 of the reasons that you've not heard about this story is that to hear farmers tell it, companies take a hard line with complainers.

Speaker 17: Every time that I've spoke out against the poultry companies and the wrongdoings, they retaliate by cutting my pay, cutting my chickens back, cutting the quality of my chickens that I get.

Speaker 5: They're ranked 1 through 10. Number 1 is the best chicken they got, number ten's the poorest chicken coming off. Sometimes, based on your mouth, you'll get a lot of 8, 9, and 10 chickens.

Speaker 0: Holy shit. When controlling assholes threaten their dependents with numerically inferior chicks, that's not a responsible business model, that is entourage. That's what that is. Hey, if you ding my Benz, bro, I'll have every girl in L.A. Avoid your dick like it's a fucking carbohydrate.

Can't wait for the movie. I cannot wait for the movie. It's gonna be

Speaker 15: sick. It's gonna... The boys are back. The boys are back. The boys are back.

And remember,

Speaker 0: If you're given inferior chicks, you are going to suffer in the tournament and potentially lose your farm. Now, the chicken companies claim that they don't do that, although I will note that in researching this story, we've spoken to a lot of farmers who believe it to be real and are terrified of it happening to them. A few years ago, the Obama administration tried to address many of these problems with new regulations. They held town hall meetings, and there was something of a common theme.

Speaker 18: Let me say that numerous growers are not attending these workshops because of being afraid of retaliation on them by their integrator.

Speaker 2: In the last 48 hours we've had growers who've been threatened not to attend this meeting and not to speak out.

Speaker 19: I represent or help represent 650 chicken growers in the state of Alabama. And Out of all the 650 of them, there's 2 that was not afraid to come up here. I'm not saying I'm brave. I'm saying I'm a proud American, I'm a veteran, and I need the right to be able to talk to y'all today. -...whoo!

Speaker 0: -...that... -..whoo! -...that is an impressive man. -..whoo! -...now,

Speaker 15: if you worked for the

Speaker 0: chicken industry, you would have to be an idiot to stand up in that room and try to defend your behavior. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, an idiot.

Speaker 20: 5 years ago, knowing what you know, or at least I think you must have known, why would you get into a business that you feel, at least from your comments, that's not a very good business?

Speaker 0: Wait. Why did you let us fuck you over is not a defense against fucking people over. It just isn't. And luckily, there was a farmer in that very room who was happy to explain things to him.

Speaker 21: My comment is directed towards a gentleman that said she wondered why Valerie Ruddell got into the business. I can tell you the reason why she got into it is the company lied. When you put numbers down on a piece of paper to get the bankers to loan you the money, And then it don't follow through, how do you make bank payments? We've heard a lot of information here today, and I really didn't want to get up here and speak. But we really need these rules.

And we need them quick.

Speaker 0: We need rules and we need them quick. You know this guy is serious. Because he's talking like someone who just caught his roommate masturbating in the living room.

Speaker 15: House meeting! House meeting! I know it's just the 2 of us, but Greg, this needs to stop! House meeting now! Strike 4, Greg!

Strike 4 on you, Greg! Now,

Speaker 0: the good news is, protective rules for poultry farmers did actually get written. The bad news is, they are not currently being enforced. Because every year since the rules were written, a rider has been inserted into the agricultural appropriations bill that explicitly forbids the USDA from enforcing them. And in recent years, this effort has been championed by Representative Steve Womack. So, why does he do this?

Who knows? Maybe it's because his home district is the site of Tyson's World Headquarters, or the fact that he's received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from chicken companies, or maybe he's just sexually attracted to chickens, and is jealous that farmers get to spend so much time with them. I don't know. I'm speculating here. The point is, he has fought efforts to protect farmers.

Just last year, Representative Marcy Kaptur attempted to pass an amendment simply giving farmers protection to speak out without retaliation. That was it. And she made a convincing case.

Speaker 3: The Department of Agriculture wants to enforce these regulations so that farmers have standing and that they don't have their livelihoods taken away from them simply because they're allowed to speak about their conditions. What is wrong with that? What is wrong with that? And what is wrong with that is that the companies in this situation have too much power. Those doing the work in these houses don't have enough power.

We need to give them equal standing in the courts and in their ability to come and see us and exercise their rights of free speech. Please support this amendment.

Speaker 15: Wow. Wow. Wow. That is... That is the

Speaker 0: kind of speech that normally has soaring music behind it and precedes a come from behind victory at the end of a movie. But in real life, this is what happened immediately afterwards.

Speaker 3: Please support this amendment.

Speaker 4: Question is on the Kepner amendment. All in favor say aye. ALL CONGREGATION

Speaker 3: SAY AYE.

Speaker 4: All opposed, we'll say no. ALL SAY NO The no's seem to have it. ALL SAY NO

Speaker 0: That is the most depressing ending since the Sex and the City movie. Oh, big, Carrie, big. You're better than that, Carrie. If anything, you should have ended up with Aiden. Yes.

Yes. Yes, Aiden was boring, Carrie, but guess what? So are you. So are you, Carrie. And look, look, I know this story has been depressing, and you might be wondering what you can do.

I mean, you could stop eating chicken, but you're not gonna do that because chicken is delicious. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it now. Here, delicious. It tastes like armadillo. -♪ ♪ -♪ You could say...

You could say, well, I'll vote against Congressman Steve Womack, but you won't, because you don't live there, and also, for the last 2 elections, he has had no major opponent. The only small satisfaction I can give you is letting Sean Connery voice your feelings about Womack. Womack,

Speaker 19: Why am I not surprised, you piece of shit?

Speaker 15: Yeah, that helps a bit. It helps a little bit. It gives you...

Speaker 0: A momentary visceral satisfaction, but it doesn't really change anything. But the truth is, there is actually a glimmer of hope. That same committee is set to meet again next month, and Marcy Kaptur might again try to pass a provision protecting farmers from retaliation. And if she does, then let me use the chicken company's weapon against them. I'm talking, of course, about jangly guitar music to convince you that everything I'm about to say is true.

Because, listen to this, there are 51 voting members on the committee. These are their names and their states. If your representative's name is up there and they vote against Marcy Captain's amendment, it is because they, and I cannot stress this enough, are chicken f**kers. They f**k chickens. That's what they do.

Every day, every which way. And unless they want that chicken f**ker label to follow them for

Speaker 15: the rest of their lives, they might

Speaker 0: want to think extra carefully about which way they are going to vote. Because chicken-fucker accusations do not come off a Wikipedia page easily. Or if they do, they tend to go right back up. Because chicken companies may be able to retaliate against farmers for speaking out, but they cannot prevent us, as 1, from screaming, chicken fucker, at the top of our lungs, if any of these people votes against the farmers in this tiny, tiny amendment. All potential chicken fuckers here, Don't be 1 of them, that's all we're saying.

That's our show, we are off next week, but we'll be back the week after that. Goodnight!

Speaker 15: You You

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Chickens: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)