Plucked and Burned

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: "Plucked And Burned" is GREAT!! I didn't want it to end. Even though its fiction, it really hit the mark with things that can happen to poultry growers. I hope Sylvia Thomlinson writes a sequel.

Rating:
Summary: You Will Never Think About Chicken The Same Way Again
Review: Before sitting down for you next meal I would suggest that you read this book. You will not look at a chicken dinner in the same way again. Plucked and Burned by Sylvia Tomlinson is a fictional story about the modern day slavery of the poultry industry. Suspenseful and gripping, Mrs. Tomlinson's one big surprise about this book is that all these events in the book are based on true facts. Tomlinson has spent hundreds of hours researching the horrors in the industry, so she can share them with us. Murder, arson, all the good elements you think you would find in a great mystery novel are here in this gripping tale that all of us can learn from.

Rating:
Summary: See, hear, smell, & taste this story throughout!
Review: If you think this is fiction, just invest a half million dollars and find out it is a true story. YOURS!
Sylvia spent the time to know what she was writing about.
Great job!

Rating:
Summary: Heart-Healthy Reading!
Review: It was hard to put the book down. Having been a consumer of typically significant quanitities of poultry and poultry products over the years, I found "Plucked and Burned" to be informative beyond a simple lecture. The story in the book is presented in a personable way and I found myself identifying with the main characters and "feeling" their pain. Woven into the scenario is a depiction of the the tenacity, determination and ultimatly the hope that are the foundation of the American Way. "A good read".

Rating:
Summary: Ranchers plucked again
Review: It was hard to put the book down. Having been a consumer of typically significant quanitities of poultry and poultry products over the years, I found "Plucked and Burned" to be informative beyond a simple lecture. The story in the book is presented in a personable way and I found myself identifying with the main characters and "feeling" their pain. Woven into the scenario is a depiction of the the tenacity, determination and ultimatly the hope that are the foundation of the American Way. "A good read".

Rating:
Summary: Powerful, dramatic, and gripping
Review: Superbly written and very highly recommended reading, Plucked And Burned by Sylvia Tomlinson is a fictionalized drama of the struggle between a community and the spreading tentacles of a poultry processing plant that threatens to overwhelm them all. Powerful, dramatic, and gripping to the last page, Plucked And Burned offers up an impressive portrayal of plant workers, contract growers, and ordinary citizens caught in the bulldozer-like path of big business.

Rating:
Summary: Supurb Reading!
Review: This is a great peek into the poultry industry that you will never hear from a contract grower, as we are all scared to speakup for fear of reprisal. I hope any new people considering getting into the contract broiler business, reads this book first. Its a shame that our lawmakers protect every endangered specie except the American farmer. Farmer or not, read this book, it certainly deserves 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: powerful indictment of poultry industry
Review: This skillfully crafted novel explores the world of chicken growers (and to a lesser extent slaughterhouse workers) who are exploited by the powerful American poultry industry.

The plot, set in rural Oklahoma, centers on a married couple who decide to raise chickens to earn extra income. Doug Blackwelder, who narrates the story, his brother, and their best friend sign up to become chicken growers for a large corporation called Poultry Unlimited. However, their dream of easy money and comfortable living soon turns into a nightmare of exploitation, debt, fear, and murder.

In the very first chapter the body of the brothers' best friend is found hanging from a rope in his chicken house. The mystery of his death is not solved until the very end of the novel, and along the way there are plenty of surprises to keep the reader turning pages to find out what's going to happen next.

The book shows the growers to be no more than indentured servants, kept in line by the poultry company that arbitrarily cuts off shipments of chickens to anybody who complains or causes trouble. When the growers under Doug's leadership finally begin to meet and discuss their grievances, the tension increases and the reader is left to wonder what dirty trick Poultry Unlimited will come up with next to intimidate and control the growers.

Although the story is fictional, its author Sylvia Tomlinson has obviously done extensive research into the plight of poultry growers and the system under which they operate. The poultry company supplies the growers with periodic shipments of thousands of baby broiler chicks from the company's hatchery, as well as feed, medication, and technical instruction to make the chickens grow as fast and as cheaply as possible. In exchange, the growers supply the housing, utilities, and labor, and the company keeps ordering equipment upgrades that the growers have to pay for themselves.

This system allows large agribusiness corporations to control food production and drive small family farmers off their land, concentrating money and power at the top of the pyramid and debt and poverty at the bottom. Once proudly independent family farmers are left with a grim choice: either sign one-sided, exploitative contracts with the poultry industry, or give up their farms that may have been in the family for generations. Is it any wonder that for many the only way out is suicide?

Plucked and Burned is an important book that sheds much needed light on the inner workings of the powerful American poultry industry that exploits workers and birds alike. Those interested in reading a well-written, timely, realistic tale of corporate power and greed and the fear, fraud, poverty, arson, suicide, and murder that it can lead to will not be disappointed by this page-turner of a book.

Review by Charles Patterson, Ph.D., author of ETERNAL TREBLINKA: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust