This is an extensive summary of a food plant, and was fascinating for me to read based on my interest in the entire manufacturing process of food. The article really pinpoints the effect an economy of scale has on food. I recommend that most of the people at the co-op and Zingerman's read the article in its entirety for a more holistic understanding of what is on their shelf and what possibly makes it different (or not) than what's on the shelf at the big-box food store.

From the piece:
What doesn't come across in this description is the visceral experience of being in a place where there is, literally, so much dead meat all around. People can get used to it; I think people can get used to damn near anything. But it's about as far removed from the occasional chicken or pig slaughter on Grandma's farm as a spacecraft is from a horse-and-buggy. I'm not saying it's wrong; I like the cheap food too. It's an amazing thing that chicken costs about the same today in absolute (not inflation-adjusted) dollars as it did when I was a child. And we have technology to thank for that. I'm glad it's there.

But I'm also glad I know what it looks like, even if I didn't eat hamburgers for a month after I first learned. For one thing it gave me a great appreciation for why the food seems so different when I visit a place like Trinidad or the rural area around Veracruz where they don't have these economies of scale. It seems unlikely, but just as a cabinet made from hand-selected wood by a craftsman will not be the same as one stamp-constructed out of particle board laminate, the chicken that is raised in a barnyard isn't the same as one grown from genetically growth-optimized stock in a closed building and trucked to a closed facility to be mass-processed along with 100,000 other chickens a day. I've learned to appreciate such food when I can have it.