When the Melani family emigrated from Italy to the United States in the early 1900s, they took along their duck-raising operation. By the time the business was officially incorporated in 1965, they had started raising chickens as well, largely due to the higher demand for chicken in the United States. 

The family-owned-and-operated farm is now run by third-generation farmer Andrew Carlson, who grows and processes only vegetarian-fed, antibiotic-free chickens. He provides all the chicken for our Pacific Village label chicken.

Nearly 120,000 chickens are processed a week, which may seem like a large volume but is actually only about one percent
 the size of a normal conventional chicken producer in the United States. As a smaller business, the family needed to find some way to differentiate their product from the larger market or they’d never survive financially.

Since 2009, the chickens provided by the Carlson family have been air-chilled, a process that uses significantly less water than the method of immersion chilling. The results are rich, flavorful chicken without water gain.

Andrew’s chickens have been in our meat cases under our Pacific Village label since fall 2004, and he’s spent a lot of time with the staff behind our counters, educating them about the chicken products and where they came from. He says that being a small, family-owned business is challenging, but that his is going to survive.

“We love what we do, and we wanted to make sure we could keep doing it,” he says. So the family decided to venture into the world of natural chicken production. One of the luxuries of running a smaller operation is the complete control the family has over the entire process, keeping track of every detail from the day the egg is laid to where the chicken ends up in a meat case, all to make sure you get the best product possible.

Andrew and his family process the chicken feed themselves, buying the raw grain and mixing it to their needs. The chickens are fed a mixture that is 95 percent corn and soybeans, with the rest of the ration consisting of needed trace minerals and vitamins. A good portion of the corn used in the feed is distillery grains, the parts of the corn left over after the production of ethanol.  This means that when the corn is done providing energy for our cars and homes, it provides energy for these chickens. The family continues to do its part as responsible stewards of sustainable agriculture, recognizing opportunities for recycling and reclaiming resources that would otherwise be seen as waste.

“We are making it,” he says. “We can move quickly, and change our business to fit the needs of our customers on the turn of a dime. Larger companies would take much longer to do that. What we’re doing is much more of a lifestyle, and less of a job.” Despite the difficulties of running a small chicken operation, Andrew is looking forward to passing the business along to the next generation.