above - the headquarters of Pilgrims Pride in Pittsburg TX
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that “Lenders gave a temporary reprieve to Pilgrims Pride Corporation on Monday, Oct. 27th as it fights to avoid bankruptcy court among tight credit and a weak economy.”
Shares in the company fell 1.8% or 4 cents to $2.13 at 4:00 pm Monday on the NY Stock Exchange. The stock is down 93% year to date. Lenders are trying to work a thirty day grace period for the company’s debt and loan commitments. The company has a bond interest payment of $25.7 million due November 3rd, but will exercise a 30 day grace period.
Pilgrims Pride employs 1400 at its Hickory, Kentucky plant, just north of Mayfield in Graves County.
The company was started by the Pilgrim brothers in the 50s and is still run by Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim. 
These facts about the company are taken from their website. HQ Pilgrim's Pride Corporation
PO Box 93
Pittsburg, Texas 75686
800-824-1159
Vision: To be a World Class Food Company... Better Than the Best
Mission: Our Job Is Outstanding Customer Satisfaction... Every Day
For over six decades, Pilgrim's Pride has produced healthy, high-quality food products that go into some of the world's finest recipes. In fact, we developed a number of those recipes ourselves, so consumers of our products could enjoy and benefit from them to the fullest. Now we have developed a new recipe - one to enhance the quality and health of our company and all its stakeholders.
- Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation (NYSE: PPC) is the largest chicken company in the U.S. and the second-largest in Mexico.
- Our net sales in fiscal 2007 totaled $7.6 billion.
- Pilgrim's Pride is currently ranked #327 on the Fortune 500 list of largest U.S. corporations.
- Pilgrim's Pride employs approximately 53,500 people in the U.S. and Mexico.
- The company has major facilities in Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Puerto Rico and Mexico, as well as other facilities in Arizona and Utah.
- The company has the capacity to process more than 45 million birds per week for a total of more than 9 billion pounds of poultry per year.
- Pilgrim’s Pride products are sold to foodservice, retail and frozen entrée customers. The company’s primary distribution is through retailers, foodservice distributors and restaurants throughout the United States and Puerto Rico and in the Northern and Central regions of Mexico.
- Pilgrim’s Pride owns and operates 36 chicken processing plants (33 in the United States and three in Mexico) and 12 prepared-foods plants. Thirty-five feed mills and 48 hatcheries support these plants.
- Approximately 6,400 growers supply poultry for the company’s operations.
- EggsPlus™, our healthier alternative to the ordinary egg, has all the great nutrients a normal egg has to offer plus increased levels of Vitamin E, Lutein and Omega-3 essential fatty acids, which have been proven to reduce the risk of heart attack, cardiac sudden death and stroke.
- Pilgrim’s Pride produces 42 million dozen table eggs per year and can produce up to 1 million dozen eggs per week during peak holiday seasons.
- In Mt. Pleasant, Texas, Pilgrim’s Pride operates one of the largest prepared-foods plants in the United States, with the capability to produce 2,000 different products and more than 7 million pounds of finished goods per week.
- The company’s Live Oak, Florida, facility features advanced air-chilling technology to process chickens that are antibiotic-free and raised on an all-vegetable diet. This new premium product line supplies the growing natural foods retail supermarket segment.
- The company's further-processing facilities have the combined capacity to produce more than 1.5 billion pounds of product per year.
- Pilgrim’s Pride owns and operates eight distribution centers in the United States and 18 in Mexico.
- The company's distribution center located near Pittsburg, Texas, features a state-of-the-art, fully automated, 40-million-pound capacity freezer featuring RFID and GPS technologies, allowing worldwide inventory tracking.
- Plants in Mexico are strategically located to serve 75 percent of all Mexican consumers.
- The company exports commodity chicken products to more than 80 countries, including China, Japan, Kazakhstan and Russia.
- Pilgrim’s Feed manufactures more than 155,000 tons of high-quality bulk and bagged feed per year for livestock and show animals.
- The retail Fridge-to-Freezer Pak™, which separates chicken parts into individual vacuum-sealed pockets, was selected as an “Editor’s Pick” by the trade publication Progressive Grocer for the best new products of 2006.
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