The Hawkins Farm in Northeastern Indiana
has been a working family farm since 1957.
Today, Jeff Hawkins and his son Zach continue the tradition.
So this is a 99-acre farm in Wabash County, Indiana.
And my dad and I farm together.
Jeff and Zach raise hogs, cattle, vegetables, and poultry.
They sell primarily to families and restaurants in the area.
And in the summer, Friday is brick-oven pizza night.
We embody what people romantically think about
when they think about a farm.
You know, big corporations put red barns
and, you know, cattle out in green pastures on their labels.
And we are that.
In 2018,
more than 9 billion chickens were raised for their meat.
About 30 companies control 95% of the $31 billion industry,
and they processed more than 150 million chickens each week.
The Hawkins Farm processes around 200 birds per week.
The state of Indiana grants an exemption
that allows small farmers
to process their own chickens on the farm
rather than sending them off to a large poultry processor.
There are all sorts of regulations
that need to be followed.
We do a citric acid dip at the end,
which helps with microbial issues,
and they're put into a poultry chiller,
which is a very powerful refrigerator
so that pathogens are not allowed to grow
and it's a very safe, clean system.
And to our knowledge, there has not been
one recorded case of foodborne illness
from birds that have been butchered under this exemption.
And this exemption has been in place for around 50 years.
Their chicken is off the chart, and we've featured them
since day one of the restaurant, basically.
Pete Eshelman owns a four-star restaurant
in nearby Fort Wayne, Indiana.
He also runs his own farm to support the restaurant
and buys food from local farmers.
In 2015, the Indiana State Legislature
invited Jeff and Pete to make a presentation
on farmers markets and local restaurants.
And then I'm bragging about Hawkins
and I'm bragging about his chicken that
is as good as the finest chicken you buy from France,
and he got up and talked about the great partnership.
Our next presenter is Jeff Hawkins
from Hawkins Family Farms.
I come today as a fifth- generation Wabash County farmer.
My son, who is my partner, is the sixth generation...
But they were in for a surprise.
We finished our presentation,
and the chair of the committee said, well, that's illegal.
So she went to the Indiana State Department of Health
and she requested that they issue a cease and desist letter.
Both the Hawkins Farm and Pete Eshelman's restaurant
received the letter.
They immediately had to stop selling
and serving chickens from the farm.
When we first received the letter, I mean,
I think it was overwhelming and we felt very helpless.
The state attorney general soon declared it was, in fact,
legal for the Hawkins to process chickens on their own farms.
It seemed that the issue was resolved.
But despite the ruling,
certain senators drafted a new law
in order to make it illegal.
So that's how a hashtag was born,
#keepchickenonthemenu.
If you've enjoyed this meal,
will you please contact your representative?
People were telling us they would call,
and they actually would lead with
is this about the chicken thing?
when they picked up the phone. Not even hello.
Once again, Jeff, Zach, and Pete
head to Indianapolis to testify.
They basically came up with a story
that small farms processing chicken on the farms
is a health risk.
Two weeks before we testified,
there were two recalls back to back
of something like 4 million pounds of chicken
that had been inspected.
By the end of that year, over 8 million pounds
of chicken had been recalled from major producers.
In 2018 alone, there were 34 poultry recalls
from the large producers.
Remember, in over 50 years,
there wasn't a single reported health issue
with any small farms
that were processing poultry under the exemptions.
But it didn't seem to move the needle much.
And that suggested
that safety wasn't fully the argument.
Why was tiny little really unusual Hawkins Farm a threat?
The opposing side was not only represented by state regulators,
but also by large agricultural lobbying interests,
including the Indiana Farm Bureau,
the Indiana State Poultry Association,
the Indiana Pork Producers Association,
and the Indiana Beef and Cattle Association.
At this point, we're dead in the water.
But when you uncover really what happened here,
and it took a while to figure this out,
it's all about eliminating competition.
So if at that time, the large poultry producers,
they're very well organized,
they saw a small farm that was operating legally
to process chickens on the farm, that's competition to them.
And so how was one farm going to hurt these big producers
of hundreds of thousands of birds,
you know, a year or more?
It's because they don't want 1 farm, 2 farms, 100 farms,
500 farms, 1,000 farms.
So the other thing is the value system
associated with raising food locally,
humane, drug-free, stress-free,
you know where your food comes from,
that gets people questioning a lot
about what happens in industrial agriculture.
It might be a use regulation to stifle competition thing.
Nobody's declared that, you know,
so draw what conclusions you will.
The social media campaign continued to create
enormous public pressure,
so local politicians took a closer look
without the influence of the agricultural lobbyists.
Small farm owners were invited to meet with state agencies
to redraft the bill.
They brought us together with the Board of Animal Health
and the Department of Health and kind of said, you know,
what can we do to make this better?
Is there a creative solution here?
Remarkably, a revised bill
was drafted to everyone's satisfaction.
And then that bill did pass.
So we are, yeah, we're under a new kind of regulation,
but one that feels appropriate to what we're trying to do here.
It went from the worst form of government
to try to put somebody out of business
to actually an example of how government works
when you have the right people in place on all sides
and you're willing to listen and kind of find common ground.
We were braced for things to unfold the way
they usually unfold,
you know, for the small farm to lose the battle.
But because people joined in the process,
people called their representatives,
they shared our story online,
and I think that was to the surprise of everyone involved.
Despite the efforts of large agricultural interests,
the state government and local farm owners found a solution.
In fact, the regulations were improved to better suit
small farms while maintaining high safety standards.
Now, restaurants like Pete Eshelman's can continue
to serve locally sourced poultry,
and neighbors have a choice in the food that they eat.