Episode 1 The Chicken People

In the UK, each and every day, we eat more than two million chickens.

One in three comes from a single company in Northern Ireland.

Good afternoon. Moy Park.

That's nearly 10,000 tonnes a week of fillets, nuggets,

drumsticks and Kievs.

Very little of the chicken is actually lost.

All that we lose is the cock-a-doodle-do. Everything else, we sell.

From farm to fork, it's a business worth billions.

She's cross with me working all the time.

I don't know why. She likes the money.

This massive operation takes a small army of farmers,

factory workers, technicians and tasters.

That's maybe just a wee bit hard.

It might be a wee bit hard.

Meet...the chicken people.

PHONE BEEPS

Good afternoon. Moy Park.

'My name is Joan Crozier.

'I am the telephonist/receptionist in Moy Park.'

He's back from Craigavon.

'I wouldn't like to work in the factory part, I couldn't do it.'

I couldn't bear all that noise of machinery and...

PHONE BEEPS LOUDLY

-Is that...?

-Oh, yeah.

See, I was so taken in there, I was...

Good afternoon. Moy Park.

Just a moment, please.

People in Northern Ireland know who Moy Park is.

There's a certain generation, we're all starting to grey little bit,

that remembers the banjo-playing chicken.

# Moy Park chicken

# The tender, tasty chicken

# It's tender, tasty chicken from Moy Park... #

So people know who Moy Park are.

They have no idea, I think, of the scale of the business.

The Moy Park empire employs more than 12,000 people...

Shut up!

..from every walk of life...

A wee bit of time away from the desk is very welcome, so it is, yeah.

Roosters are the most vicious.

Those boys would just take the ankles clean off you.

..all working at a furious pace...

No-one touch these, OK?

Just lean over it.

..to satisfy our love of chicken.

Absolutely beautiful.

I'd better go before he kills me.

It certainly is a lovely, free way of life.

-Don't... Don't paint it too good.

-Oh, no, it's very hard!

I never really particularly liked chickens, if I'm honest.

It is relentless.

Every week, we are producing five million fresh chickens.

And at any moment in time,

we will have somewhere in the region

of 40 million chickens on the ground.

If I wanted to come back as a chicken,

I'd certainly want to be a free-range chicken.

If they got the better of you,

I would say you would have to worry.

You're in their territory.

Just take it nice and slow.

We've got less than, very often, 12 hours

from the time that we get the order

to get that product onto the customer's shelf.

These lines are running at about 18,000 birds per hour.

This line I like to see full.

If it is full, we're making some money, so we are.

So in the last five minutes that we've been chatting,

our chicken have consumed somewhere in the region of ten tonnes of feed.

They have produced 5,000 eggs.

We've processed 3,000 birds.

And we've produced about 10,000 consumer packs.

Now, that's not bad for five minutes, is it?

For the factory workers clocking on at Moy Park's

primary processing plants in Ballymena and Dungannon,

it's the beginning of another day on the production lines.

Oh, they're not here.

But for manager Jim Trotter, things are already off to a busy start.

Have you seen Jo about?

I'm Jim Trotter and I'm the production manager

here in Moy Park, Dungannon.

Lovely smell.

Such is teamwork.

First thing, anyway,

I like to try and talk to as many people as I can face to face.

Jo, where are you?

My job is about making sure our people are performing

and looking to try and make sure they have the tools to do the job

and that we're helping them as much as possible.

Now, come on in here to the operations office, will you?

I was looking for Jo, there. I couldn't get her. Erm...

Livers were...

Orders have gone through the roof.

Our orders come in. We check the orders.

Make sure all of our lines are manned up appropriately.

And, long story short, make sure that the orders are produced in time

to get into the lorries to be delivered to the customer.

What are you going to be like for size?

I've got two.

I know you've got two, but I need six tonne.

HE SIGHS DEEPLY

That's us now back to the floor.

Hopefully, most things sorted, initially.

And take it from there, then.

But it's out here on the factory floor,

where thousands of birds are processed every hour,

that things really start to kick off for Jim.

The first hour, a bit hectic. It is a bit hectic.

And it's the same every morning.

We can be processing 7,000, 8,000, 9,000 birds per hour.

And as the day goes on, as things change, you have to be flexible.

Going past line five, they're all sitting and they're not moving,

while line four is on the move all the time.

It's people management.

It's not a magic wand.

As long as the machinery works, it's all about us

just getting the stuff packed properly,

customer spec and out the door.

And we do it right well, I think. We do it right well.

A little over a month ago,

long before they reached Jim's production lines,

these birds were just a twinkle in their mother's eye.

At Moy Park's breeding farms,

the chickens have only one thing on their minds...

sexy time.

COCK CROWS

It's here that the eggs that will become your chicken dinners get laid.

As do the chickens.

COCK CROWS

The cockerel's job is just mating all the time, I guess.

That's the job he's here to do.

COCK CROWS

There's no chocolate,

there's no romance, there's no flowers.

The rooster has a good job in here.

So, yeah, sex all the time.

As if that wasn't enough, every randy rooster in the house

gets to choose from an average of ten working girls.

Yeah, they're my babies.

There's 9,000 in this house,

plus 900 roosters.

And some of these boys take their work so seriously

they make quite an impression on the ladies.

Whenever a hen loses...

You see the hen loses feathers?

That's the rooster jumping on top of it and mating with it.

And that's what we want to see.

Whenever you see a loss of feathers on the back,

that lets you know that hen's working.

This is the nest.

So the hens go in and lay their eggs.

You'll see a few in there at the minute.

The hens go and lay their egg there.

Once they lay their egg, they never see it.

It runs away on the conveyor belt there.

And according to Kevin,

there's no great secret to keeping his girls happy.

You do as little to annoy them as possible.

She's a typical woman.

Temperamental.

Our insatiable appetite for chicken means that Moy Park

is always on the lookout for new recipes,

which is why they employ a specialist team of development chefs.

Product development chef is quite a strange job.

Not a lot of people know what we do.

What we're trying to do here is create a restaurant-style dish

and upscale that so we can make thousands of them

in a factory every day.

Food is a part of everything we do.

We're always looking for new things, new ideas, new flavours.

The sauce isn't great.

I think, as a chef team, you know,

we're really starting to drive that into the business.

So, barbecue 2016 - inspiration.

Today, the chefs are brainstorming new ideas for barbecue season

and the world is, literally, their oyster.

We know South America is going to be big, that will have to be a key.

That's almost, from a flavour point of view,

-we need it to be an offshoot of South America on its own.

-Right. OK.

Because you'll drill down, that covers Brazil...

It covers all of South America.

Moy Park are very forward-thinking as a business. They're happy...

At least I think they're happy.

..to send me around the world, essentially,

to look at, sort of, food trends.

I'm hoping to go to the States to sort of eat some barbecue food.

I'll feed that one back to you, how that one went.

I'm recently back from South America,

where I was in Brazil, Peru, Argentina.

And I was there, basically, to eat food.

It's bread? Just bread?

Is that chicken?

You always have the cynics that will say it's a great thing to do.

But if you're a food business,

you don't get everything off the internet.

You need to sort of go out and experience these things.

As much as it was only a snapshot

of being there for, you know, a couple of weeks,

I'm much better, more up to speed with what Peruvian food is,

what Argentinian food is, what Brazilian food is.

Let's look at how far we can push things with our customers

with the likes of Peruvian food, Brazilian food.

You know, it's...

We're not going to sell any chicken heads, I don't think, but...

The product development team and the executive chefs,

I mean, they're just fabulous guys. They are a breed of their own.

They travel the world.

They come back with these fantastic ideas.

I love it when they come back.

We all love it, because then we get to sample their ideas.

Just last week, we were tasting some fantastic products.

I can't say, because, obviously, it's top secret at the moment.

But we believe that it'll be the next chicken Kiev

or the next Southern-fried chicken.

We're always looking for the next product

that the consumers will absolutely love.

Whatever their top-secret new recipe is,

you can be sure it will end up here

at Craigavon's secondary processing plant.

On these lines, chicken meat from Ballymena and Dungannon

gets turned into all manner of things.

Goujons, mini fillets,

chicken burgers and, of course, the nation's favourite Ukrainian dish...

chicken Kievs.

I'm Paul Conway, the section leader.

So I'm doing my part.

Today, I'm in charge of line four, the Kiev line.

We'll get through, case wise, probably 8,000 or 9,000 cases.

Which is eight to a batch and two to a tray.

Which is 16 Kiev to every batch, so it is.

So that's 8,000 or 9,000 multiplied by 16, which is...whatever that is.

In the big man's defence,

I don't think Stephen Hawking knows a lot about chicken, either.

Ever since they were introduced in the 1970s,

chicken Kievs have been one of the nation's favourites.

But here on the production lines, they're not always quite so popular.

It definitely used to be the case that,

if you were not pulling your weight or not doing the job,

the Kiev line was the place where they would have said,

"If you don't do what you're told to do,

"you're going to end up on line four moulding Kievs."

And, as I say, most people don't like this line.

But the guys that work here, you couldn't get them to leave.

Some of these people have worked here for over 20 years

and they've never left this line because they love it so much.

The guys here, I'd say they love it, like. They love it, like.

These are production lines, at the end of the day.

It is food production. And some of the jobs can be monotonous.

To some people, this might seem like a monotonous job.

But the guys get their way through the day

by having a bit of fun with each other,

enjoying each other's company,

having a bit of banter with each other and...

..packing as fast as they can!

Oh, there's definitely a buzz

and I think you can't be a production person

if you don't have that buzz about you.

It's in your blood a wee bit, do you know what I mean?

It's what keeps you going, it's what keeps you interested.

And it's working with all these different people day in and day out.

Daniel is one of the machine minders.

He does shifts Monday to Friday, but he's a DJ at the weekend.

I was watching him earlier, his hands going...

Being able to communicate with them, work as a team.

You get to know each other.

-Is that yours?

-No, it's Chris'.

I don't want to say how the money is, because that's a bit cheesy.

But it is a really nice place to work.

And I couldn't work with a better bunch of people.

INDISTINCT

Back on the breeding farm,

Kevin's three chicken houses produce more than 20,000 eggs a day.

So when it comes to collection time,

three generations of the Scullion family set to work.

Caoimhe is on the packing trays there. That's my daughter.

-This is Colette....

-Hi.

-..my wife.

Sometimes she doesn't like me saying that.

-I don't know why.

-I don't like being called "the wife".

This is my father here.

-78...

-Hello.

-..and still working.

My son.

24. Looking for a woman.

Me and my dad had hens from '73, I was only nine years of age.

Wasn't I a good worker at nine years of age, Dad?

Oh, you weren't that bad.

You couldn't do it without them. Definitely not.

It takes everybody's hand in.

Many hands makes light work.

I was probably six or seven when my daddy got me down here working.

I didn't have a choice.

Packing eggs is the easy part.

It's what you do inside the hen which is the hard part.

And if it's not right, it'll not be right out here.

Breeders like Kevin only get paid for an egg

if it contains a healthy chick.

And no-one will know that for sure until they reach the hatcheries.

Like this one in Donoughmore.

At any one time,

George Ferguson is surrogate father to as many as six million youngsters.

Shush... They're sleeping.

These incubators, called setters,

are Moy Park's answer to Mother Nature.

We can control the temperatures and humidities

much tighter than you could with nature

but, really, we are replicating what the hen would do herself.

In other words,

these machines can outperform six million chickens' bottoms.

After three weeks,

the chicks are ready for their first glimpse of the big, wide world.

Ah...

But there's no time to take in the view.

Almost immediately, the chicks set off

on a rollercoaster ride of grading and sorting.

It's sheer POULTRY in motion.

Biff!

More than a quarter of a million birds a day

pass along these conveyor belts

and they all have to be sorted into boy chicks and girl chicks.

It takes the skills of an experienced chicken sexer,

yes, really, to spot the difference in less than a second and a half.

Before long, the chicks are counted into crates

and they're ready for the farm.

So the chicks are all for broiler production.

So they will end up going to broiler houses.

A broiler chick is a chicken that's destined for the tables for eating.

It's the thing that differs from, you know,

the chicks that go out for laying purposes.

These are specifically table birds for eating.

Back in Dungannon, manager Jim is still very much on the move.

Trotter by name, trotter by nature.

At the moment, as I'm walking by,

I'm looking to make sure that the lines are functioning,

that the lines aren't overmanned.

We don't want too many people working on each line.

That the areas that supply us with the meat

are actually supplying meat.

It's here in Dungannon that nearly half of Moy Park's

five million chickens a week become, well, ex-chickens.

Like anything where you're dealing with livestock,

there is a process where you have to take the live animal

and you have to convert it into a consumer pack

or a pack for the public to eat.

And we have done a lot of work to ensure that that is done

very humanely so that the birds have got the, I guess,

the most pleasant transition from being live to being, erm, dead.

The birds that you see coming out now

would have been running around at this time yesterday.

But at the moment it's, what, almost ten o'clock.

If you come back here at one o'clock,

there'll have been birds that were running around earlier this morning.

Our big thing is, because our orders come in live,

we'll have some orders that come in at ten o'clock,

some at 12 o'clock that will have to go out at six.

We have to make sure that we've scheduled our people,

scheduled our needs to make sure they produce what we need,

when we need it to get it out the door.

Did you see Joanne or any of them in?

No, I've just seen John earlier on.

We're busy enough.

We have to be on top of our early orders,

which is the big thing this morning.

But once we get that sorted out, the day should be steady.

If everything goes smoothly...

But don't count your chickens yet, Jim.

One of the conveyor belts has broken down and the orders are stacking up.

Do you want me start it or...?

Start traying up, OK?

And if you can, hand feed it through, get them through that way.

OK? And I'll get somebody up now.

Davey, I need somebody up to line five.

Can you get them up as soon as possible or I'll be hanging?

Another day in paradise.

It's not that bad.

I actually enjoy the bustle.

It's constantly changing.

Much damage, boys?

We've a problem on process one.

It's going to have a dramatic impact on what we do throughout the day,

because process one feeds the whole factory.

Under a bit of pressure today, so we are.

But we'll get there.

We don't let our customers down, so we'll get there.

Arriving by lorry, thousands of-day-old baby chicks

are about to get their first glimpse of their new home.

The chicks will stay here until they're fully grown and ready to eat.

Just over a month from now.

And farmer Roy Wright can tell that all 25,000 of them

are already off to a good start.

They're very good birds, because they're following us about

and they're following the noise,

they're stalking, they're coming down.

What you don't want is the birds sitting in big clumps.

It means they're not doing well.

But they're very lively, these ones.

They usually do OK.

But sadly, those youthful good looks can't last for ever.

Just over a month later,

the fully-grown chickens are ready for the dinner table.

It's a short stay, but farmers like Jeremy Hobson and his wife Caroline

try to make it as sweet as possible.

Jeremy has seven chicken houses,

all about the same size here.

But five of the houses are full of what they call select birds.

A select house has a lot of, I suppose,

what you would call added extras.

And select houses have glass windows, so they have natural light.

They can look out and see the sheep and the horses, if they want.

They have things like play bales scattered all around the house,

which gives them the opportunity to scratch around and...

-Act naturally.

-Yeah.

The Hobsons' seven chicken houses hold a total of 165,000 birds.

Collectively referred to as "a crop".

-A crop of chickens, yes.

-That's terrible, isn't it?

We call it a crop. Not, erm...

That's just what they're known as, a crop of chickens.

I could never understand that when I first came here,

because a crop, as far as I'm concerned,

is something that you grow in the field and then you harvest.

I think they could come up with a better word for it than that.

But they do come in

and they're out again in such a short period of time.

It's not like you actually get to know them all.

Not like the sheep or the pigs or anything like that,

where they all have personalities.

For a site my size, you really need two people nowadays working it.

And for all the paperwork involved...

you really need two people at it.

So basically I'm a secretary, is what he's saying.

Secretary-cum-skivvy.

Oh...!

At Craigavon, every eight-hour shift sees around a million packs of food

dispatched to the supermarkets.

But nothing is allowed to leave

unless it meets the rigorous standards

set by a team of tasters, headed up by Eileen.

My job is going on the lines

and randomly picking up samples for our taste panel.

OK, folks. So the first thing we need to look at is the packaging.

Packaging, looks, flavour...

Everything comes under the scrutiny of the experts.

Nothing is left to chance.

We do sensory analysis training,

so we actually learn how to pick up the notes,

like the peppery notes, the flavourings,

the texture, you know, what's soft.

But it all depends what the customer is actually looking.

Food label positioning.

And good seal.

Nothing escapes their attention.

They're not only coming in to taste the product.

They're coming in to make sure that the product is what it should be.

With everything to play for, anything could go wrong.

Say the Southern-fried portions,

that they're not being put into the same breaded pack,

or if we have, say, cheese and ham Kiev...

Good flavour.

..it's not pepper Kiev.

You know, these are all the things that they have to look out for.

How would you score it?

-Three?

-Three.

It's no place for the faint-hearted.

Yeah, hot.

Oh, man up!

We don't really look at it as food in here.

You know, it's part of a job.

You don't want to taste it every day

or we'd all end up the size of a house!

And just when they think they're out of the woods,

a leaky Kiev threatens everything.

Just means that the butter, there's butter on top of the steak

and the butter has just leaked out slightly.

Not necessarily a fail. You'd be allowed a slight leakage.

It's still a dent to the standards, so it is.

It's a close call.

Everyone in agreement for a green, yeah?

-Yeah.

-Yep.

Yay!

Ultimately, the Kiev passes the test.

Southern-flied...fried flavour good?

The southern flied is lovely!

That's a new flavour!

With the seal of approval from the taste team,

most Moy Park packs are destined for the supermarket.

But at Craigavon's factory shop,

there's always the chance for a bargain

and a quick chat with the shopkeepers, Theresa and Helena.

These are girls out of the factory

and they're out on their break shopping.

And he's walking around and he shouldn't be out until dinner time.

I shouldn't be. I'm not normally allowed out.

You hear some stories.

You see some sights.

We get lovers that come in kissing and hugging.

And we get people that come in and they're...

Maybe a man comes in and his zip's down on his trousers, so...

Bye!

If things like that happen, she runs out and leaves me to deal with it.

And I have to explain to the man, you know,

"Put your budgie back in his cage."

We had a wee incident one time where we have a wee man

and we always called him the Wednesday man.

A lovely wee chap, but he came in every Wednesday

and we noticed that he hadn't been in for about eight weeks.

And then one particular day, Theresa was speaking to his daughter

and she says, "My daddy was very fond of you two girls.

"And he passed away."

A couple of days later, Theresa explained to me and I said,

"Oh, God love him."

And it turned out it was the wrong person,

because he walked in the following Wednesday!

Next time on The Chicken People...

Some people describe farming as a disease.

..it's all about the farmers.

The roosters are the most vicious.

Those boys would just take the ankles clean off you.

These things rip, but...

These things look incredibly good for 11 days.

I think it probably is more seen as a man's job.

But I'll try and prove them wrong.