Both Weaver and Hedrick raise their chickens for Pilgrim’s, one of the country’s biggest chicken producers. Bill Lovette, C.E.O. of Pilgrim’s, refused to comment. A company spokesman, Cameron Bruett, said that all sick birds are screened out and never make it to the table, and that even if they did, there would be no health risk to humans.

Weaver and Hedrick, who risk their livelihood by speaking out, say that the chicken companies rig the system against the ordinary farmers who actually raise the birds for them. The companies supply the birds and feed, so the farmers describe themselves as modern sharecroppers, with no control over their operations, squeezed by the companies and punished if they protest.

A 12-piece KFC chicken meal costs about $30, and the farmers say their share is about 1 percent of that — less than the tax.

In fairness, the chicken companies excel at producing cheap food, with the price of chicken falling by at least half in real terms since 1930. Chicken is cheap partly because companies have tinkered with genetics so that a baby chick burgeons in five weeks to a full-size bird with an enormous breast. By my calculations, if humans grew that explosively, a baby at five weeks would weigh almost 300 pounds.

Yet today there’s growing recognition, from the Obama administration to rural America to urban foodies, that this agribusiness model is profoundly flawed.

“I wouldn’t say it is dysfunctional,” Weaver told me. “More like it is functioning very well for the companies and their executives only, and very poorly for farmers and consumers.”

The animal welfare issue is a bit complicated. Chickens raised for meat roam within a barn, so while conditions are grim, these chickens are at least better off than egg-laying hens crowded into tiny cages.