Planting chicken? How the Onion put Perdue Farms in the satirical spotlight

Olivia Minzola, Salisbury Daily Times
·2 min read
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Breaking News! Salisbury's Perdue Farms has been featured on The Onion.

As stated on the company's official website, Perdue Farms remains committed to incorporating sustainable agricultural practices. Now, according to The Onion, the poultry processing conglomerate has vowed to take said practices one step further.

"Perdue Farms has pledged to plant one chicken for every chicken it sold," the American satirical digital media company and newspaper organization reported on Thursday, Aug. 24.

"As part of our broader efforts to be thoughtful, responsible stewards of our planet’s natural resources, I’m happy to inform our customers that, starting today, a Perdue chicken bought is a Perdue chicken buried," said CEO Kevin McAdams in a phony quote on the site, who explained how the company was working with partners around the globe to offset the 700 million birds it slaughters each year by planting 700 million still-living chickens up to their necks in dirt, the satirical article read.

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Two of Perdue Farms’ organic chickens roam outside at one of its farms.
Two of Perdue Farms’ organic chickens roam outside at one of its farms.

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Most have heard of a carbon footprint, as well as an ecological footprint. Now, said The Onion, Perdue Farms has turned its attention to another pressing issue - the world's chicken footprint.

“'With this net-zero chicken initiative, Perdue will be able to dramatically increase the number of domestic fowl populating our world’s vitally important rainforests. We can’t think of a better way to reduce our environmental impact and lower our overall chicken footprint," McAdams' phony quote on the satirical site read.

There's more: The satirical news site reported that McAdams went on to state that for each 2-pound bag of frozen chicken nuggets sold, Perdue would dump a similar quantity of nuggets into the ocean to help restore coral reefs.

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Olivia Minzola covers communities on the Lower Shore. Contact her with tips and story ideas at ominzola@delmarvanow.com.

This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: Perdue Farms gets the satirical treatment from The Onion: Here's how